Mind of State

Veteran war correspondent Anne Barnard — Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign Affairs and NY Times Beirut Bureau Chief from 2012-2018 — discusses the complex trauma of Syria's ongoing civil war, its impact on politics in Europe and the US, and the inability of the UN and other international institutions to deal with such a profound magnitude of human suffering.Anne gives us a unique eye into the traumatic impact on journalists covering "forever wars."

University of Maryland professor Antoine Banks joins us to talk about how anger — specifically white anger — impacts everything from opinions on Obamacare to how black candidates are perceived and talked about. We also discuss how race and anger— on both side of the aisle — will impact the 2020 election.

What is truth in the post-modern world, where facts are in the eye of the beholder and ppartisans turn to their own tribes for reporting that reaffirms their polarized world views? Scotty McLennan, an ordained minister, lawyer, professor, and former Dean of Religious Life at Stanford University, joins us for a conversation about the quest for objective truth and journalistic ethics amidst a sea of media fragmentation and moral relativism.