Interesting report on the journalism, free speech panels from the virtual reunion.

Is it really true the name Julian Assange did not come up?

Also the fact that news outlets like CNN, NBC, Yahoo, The Washington Post, and Time are owned by tech companies and tech giants (AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Amazon’s Bezos and Salesforce’s Benioff respectively) with their expected bias was not worth mentioning?

By any standard, this is a dark, dark time for journalism and the public’s lack of confidence in the products of the news industry is well earned.

That the panel was devoted primarily to self-congratulation — “Langfitt and Vega expressed awe at how seamless [NPR pivoted] to home-based reporting” — and the mounting of straw men like QAnon to try to explain away the low and declining trust Americans have in the news media was not inspiring.

The subject is important and deserved more serious consideration.

Ken McCarthy ’81
Tivoli, N.Y.