Rümeysa Öztürk is Locked Up for an Op-ed: An Urgent Summit with the Student Newspaper that Published It
Where better to huddle up and discuss what to do about Rümeysa Öztürk and the chilling effect that is happening in journalism than on campus at Tufts University with the student journalists at The Tufts Daily?
This week Brian and Question Everything co-host a live event with the editor-in-chief and associate editor from The Tufts Daily – Arghya Thallapragada and Ellora Onion-De. Together they interview journalists and attorneys, including Carol Rose, part of Rümeysa's legal team and executive director of the Massachusetts ACLU, to learn what all happened to Rümeysa and why. What did her abduction by federal agents a month ago have to do with her immigration status as a Turkish graduate student studying child development, here on a student visa? Why did Secretary of State Marco Rubio say her Op-ed was cause for incarceration? Why is she still in ICE’s custody? And what happened to the constitutional protections around free speech and a free press that we depend on in a free society?
Joined by former editor-in-chief of both the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, Marty Baron; First Amendment lawyer Robert Bertsche; and senior politics reporter at The Intercept Akela Lacey; the group wrestles in real time with the gravity of this moment, not just for Rümeysa Öztürk, but for all of us.
Read the Op-ed Rümeysa and others wrote that ran in The Tufts Daily a year ago in March.
Watch the video of federal agents in plainclothes, forcing Rümeysa Öztürk into an SUV on March 25, 2025.
Quick thing: In our discussion Carol Rose says the ACLU has filed 100 legal actions in President Trump’s first 100 days. The specific count on those is actually higher: the ACLU filed 110 legal actions in the Trump administration’s first 100 days.
Sign up for our newsletter: www.kcrw.com/questioneverything
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
--------
1:19:34
Pounding Beers in a Shed, and Other Dispatches from the War on Free Speech
Last episode we discussed the campaign to overturn the Supreme Court decision that protects reporters’ ability to criticize and investigate people in power.
But even with that decision still in place, reporter David Enrich has discovered a shocking wave of legal attacks that is being waged on journalists in towns and cities across the country. These are often reporters at tiny, local outlets, trying to hold people accountable in their communities.
And these legal claims don’t even have to succeed - and they frequently don’t - to shut down reporters.
Plus, Brian waxes poetic about the first amendment, under the night sky.
This is part two of our series about David Enrich’s reporting from his book “Murder the Truth”. Listen to part one first – it’s called “Freedom of the press is great, until you’re the target.”
In our newsletter this week – Brian tells a personal story about how his lawyers helped him fend off a legal threat. Check that out at: www.kcrw.com/questioneverything
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
--------
27:49
Freedom of the press is great, until you're the target
For decades, a Supreme Court decision called New York Times vs Sullivan was widely beloved by people across the political spectrum. Hailed as a decision that gives the first amendment teeth and sets our country apart, as a place that prizes free speech.
But recently, right under our noses, some of the same people who once sang Times v Sullivan's praises have turned against it.
The story of the growing movement that is trying to get the Supreme Court to overturn perhaps the strongest protection for speech and the press in America.
This is part one of a two part series about the book Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful, by Times investigative editor David Enrich.
Sign up for our newsletter here to hear about one of Brian’s own legal battles: www.kcrw.com/questioneverything
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
--------
41:26
The masterpiece Prince documentary Netflix won’t let you see.
The best documentary filmmaker in America spent nearly five years of his life making a nine-hour masterpiece for Netflix.
It will never see the light of day.
After a nasty estate battle, the series won't be released. No one will ever see it.
In his first sit-down interview about this scandal, the filmmaker Ezra Edelman seeks catharsis – if not closure – in the fight for truth and control over the life story of Prince.
Thanks to “Pablo Torre Finds Out” for this incredible interview.
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
--------
48:42
He quit journalism to fight authoritarianism. How’s that going?
Last year, we did an episode with Barton Gellman, who talked about the war games he was running with high-level military leaders and government officials to prepare for a second Trump term.
A bunch of you have been asking us to have Barton back, to find out what he’s doing, now that the second Trump term is here. So we called him up.
Barton works at the Brennan Center for Justice.
“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Propagandist? Truth teller? Influencer? Question Everything unravels the contested work of journalists and the moral complexities surrounding the stories that impact us all.
Hosted by Brian Reed (S-Town, This American Life, The Trojan Horse Affair).
For outtakes and an inside peek inside the editorial conundrums that confront journalists every day, sign up for our newsletter at www.kcrw.com/questioneverything.
Question Everything is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
USA