Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist and artist Mona Chalabi, a contributor to the New York Times, discusses her eye-catching work, her criticism of the paper’s coverage of Israel-Palestine and the current conflict in Gaza, and making a stand about that issue at the recent Pulitzer Prize ceremony.
Alan and Lionel also discuss the Silicon Valley boardroom drama which saw OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman sacked—and then return as boss just days later, via a big job offer from Microsoft—as well as the latest on who is likely to buy the Telegraph.
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Media Confidential is a podcast from Prospect.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Lionel Barber:
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Alan Rusbridger:
Hello, and welcome to Media Confidential, Prospect Magazine's weekly exploration of the fascinating and contested world of media, talking to key people at home and abroad. I am Alan Rusbridger.
Lionel Barber:
And I'm Lionel Barber. On this episode, British award-winning data journalist Mona Chalabi of The New York Times on her eye-catching work, her criticism of her own newspaper's coverage of the ongoing Gaza conflict, and making a stand at the recent ceremony in which she received the Pulitzer Prize.
Mona Chalabi:
The night was rough. I felt very distant from my colleagues that were in the room. It felt like, and I have felt this for a long time, that when it comes to this particular subject, namely reporting on Israel and Palestine, that there's a bit of a gulf between us, basically. I just wanted to say to my colleagues in the room that no one was saying Palestine, and to not even use the word Palestine is, in itself, a journalistic choice.
Alan Rusbridger:
Listen and follow us wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. And Media Confidential is on X/Twitter. We are @MediaConfPod.
So Lionel, what's in your inbox this week?
Lionel Barber:
I've been flooded with this astonishing story from Silicon Valley over the future of OpenAI, which launched the ChatGPT function, which has got everybody excited, millions of users. And the man behind that, of course, is the face of AI, Sam Altman, 38 years old. And last Friday, a few days ago, he was ousted by the board completely, without any notification. Everybody was surprised. This is an $86, $90 billion worth company, and he never saw it coming. And over the weekend, there've been all sorts of tos and fros, and we've just heard Sam Altman is actually back at the company. I think this tells you two things. One is in the AI world, the workforce matters. They have 770 employees, 700 people wanted to stay with Altman. And two, the funny governance, which is you had a nonprofit board, one or two academics in there, who were trying to run a capped or a for-profit operation, which was rapidly expanding, in which Microsoft had a large $14 billion investment. And frankly, the money won and the workers won, and Altman's back.
Alan Rusbridger:
That's quite an encouraging story, in its own way.
Lionel Barber:
I saw Sam Altman on stage in Sun Valley at the media conference in the summer, and I have to say, I thought he was really impressive, because he's balancing the idea that you have some safety guardrails around the development of AI, you don't have robots turning into Terminators and the end of humanity, versus the many, many, and we're going to see this over the next few years, many applications of AI, which will be money gushes.
Alan Rusbridger:
I had a fascinating conversation. I met somebody who knows all about AI over a meal the other day. The depressing bit was that he said that he thought that 10 years down the track, about 85% of news content was going to be produced by AI. The shining light, or the optimistic way of taking that, is that the 15% that isn't will be tremendously valuable. And so I think the lesson for news publishers is if you hold your nerve and you don't sack your entire workforce, there will be a premium on content that is still produced by human beings.
Lionel Barber:
You must keep the skills and evolve the form, the journalistic form. And I think we're going to hear from that with Mona Chalabi.
Alan Rusbridger:
I should say that Lionel and I are both in London. In fact, we are in Prospect Towers, which is a stone throw from the Palace of Westminster. If you hear the throbbing of a helicopter, I think it's not actually King Charles, though sometimes it is. I suspect it's to do with the security around the state visit of the President of South Korea. So, forgive the occasional chopper in the background. Anyway, here we are at Prospect Towers. And talking of which, you should check out the new seasonal subscription offer for Prospect Magazine, because we're discounting the price of the annual digital subscription by an astonishing 50%. So, to take advantage of this great deal, please visit Prospectmagazine, all one word, .co.uk/bf. But be quick, because the offer ends next Monday, the 27th of November.
So, this week we're going to meet a really interesting journalist, she's called Mona Chalabi. She has nearly half a million followers on Instagram for her really groundbreaking work on data graphics, data visualisations. I think she's only the second data artist in history to win the Pulitzer Prize, which is the grandest of all journalistic prizes. And yet it wasn't a happy experience for her. As somebody of Arab origin, she is deeply torn at the moment about the role of journalism in the coverage of Israel/Gaza. And so we wanted to talk to her about winning the Pulitzer Prize; about the generation, in a way, that she represents, which our previous guest, Marty Baron, the executive editor of The Washington Post, felt there was a chasm opening up between the older and younger members of the profession; what journalism is to people of her age; and also about her feelings about the incredibly delicate act that is involved in covering this dreadful conflict in the Middle East.
So Mona, welcome to Media Confidential. You've recently picked up the Premier Prize in American, maybe global, journalism, the Pulitzer Prize. I just want you to talk about the mixed feelings that you had. And I know immediately afterwards, you gave away the prize money to a Palestinian journalist group. But what are the mixed feelings that you had in picking up this incredible prize for your incredible work?
Mona Chalabi:
Yeah, it wasn't great, if I'm honest. I'm really, really grateful that I got the chance to celebrate back in May when it was announced, and I celebrated with the people who had worked on the project with me, the project that won. But yeah, the night was rough. I felt very distant from my colleagues that were in the room. It felt like, and I have felt this for a long time, that when it comes to this particular subject, namely reporting on Israel and Palestine, that there's a bit of a gulf between us, basically. And I think that gulf was especially clear on the night when there was no mention made of Palestine. Yeah.
I found out, an article came out over the weekend in The Washington Post, about me giving away the money, and in it the article mentioned, "Footage can be seen of Mona crying." And I was like, "What?" I had no idea that the ceremony is filmed. I don't know what kind of an incredibly dull individual would want to just watch back the dinner. I just wanted to say to my colleagues in the room that no one was saying Palestine, and to not even use the word Palestine is, in itself, a journalistic choice. And I really thought I was just saying it to the colleagues in the room, but apparently there's footage of it, which doesn't feel great, if I'm honest, yeah.
Lionel Barber:
Mona, you have talked about this conflicting emotion of feeling you deserve to be there, but you didn't really want to be there. Can you explain that tension?
Mona Chalabi:
Yeah, I don't know if it's even necessarily not wanting to be there, but it's a feeling of not belonging. So I've had to build a lot of self-confidence, I guess I would say, in journalism. So I do feel like I have a lot of clarity now that the work that I'm doing has some kind of usefulness, otherwise I don't know if I could keep on doing it. So that's, I guess, the sense of deservingness. But as far as belonging, again, when you're in a room where everyone seems to be nodding along, quite contentedly, to not saying the word Palestine, everyone seems to be nodding along quite contentedly to a very specific narrative, in which genocide isn't mentioned, in which ethnic cleansing isn't mentioned, in which racism isn't mentioned, which is a really important dimension of understanding what is happening. Yeah, it feels like you definitely don't belong in that room.
Alan Rusbridger:
Let's go backwards and then come back to the present day, because I think your journey into journalism is interesting. Grew up in East London, you are the daughter of first generation, second generation Iraqi.
Mona Chalabi:
What's funny, I still never ever, ever understand that terminology. Both of my parents were born in Iraq and moved to the UK as adults, and they both met each other in the UK.
Alan Rusbridger:
And then you stumbled into journalism how?
Mona Chalabi:
I ran towards it, I ran as fast as I could. I had studied international security at university in France. Not to get too into the weeds here, but it was a joyous experience thanks to the Erasmus scheme, which I believe... Does it no longer exist, Erasmus?
Lionel Barber:
Britain's not in it, because of Brexit.
Mona Chalabi:
Oh, how fantastic. I'm saying that very sarcastically, I hope you know. I benefited massively from doing the Erasmus scheme. Anyway, so moved to France, studied international security, and the goal was always to go and work for the United Nations. And I was always interested in data, as I mentioned, Lionel, I had met you while I was doing this internship-y sort of thing at the Economist Intelligence Unit, and really, really was fascinated by the uses of data there.
So I went to go and work for the UN; very quickly became disillusioned with the work that I was doing there. Partly because what I found was how dangerous echo chambers can be, especially when it comes to data. So asking a particular set of questions, getting a particular set of answers that reinforces the questions that you asked in the first place is very dangerous. And I understood, actually, that having a big audience actually results, if you do it right, results in more honesty and more accuracy. So I knew that I wanted to have a bigger audience, so that people could basically raise their hands and tell me, "You got it wrong." I did a one-day course at the Frontline Club in London on data journalism that was taught by Simon Rogers. After the course, I emailed him relentlessly, and asked if I could come in and do work experience.
Alan Rusbridger:
What sort of date is this, Mona?
Mona Chalabi:
Maybe 2012? Actually more like 2011, around about then. Started working, I did one day a week with Simon Rogers at The Guardian, which is where I met you, Alan. And as I mentioned, I want to be really, really upfront, because I'm always critical about the lack of transparency and networking in other journalistic spaces, I want to be clear that I know you, but not very well. I think we've only maybe had two conversations in the past? I remember-
Alan Rusbridger:
I once took you out for a drink to stop you leaving The Guardian. You ignored me. We'll come onto that.
Mona Chalabi:
I think we should. That meant so much to me. That meant so, so, so much to me, and we should talk about it. But anyway, started working at The Guardian. Luckily for me, I say this quite tongue in cheek, Simon left. And I say luckily not because he was a bad boss at all, but because it kind of created this vacuum where there was nobody else that was the data editor. And me, even though I was relatively junior and relatively inexperienced, kind of became a go-to person for data in the newsroom.
And I found it both exhilarating and terrifying. I thought I was too young. I was 25 at the time. And if you're interested in doing data journalism, and you've kind of become the defacto data editor at The Guardian in London, that's it. You've done it. And I thought, "Am I just going to spend the next 50 years of my career just doing this?" I do plan on working till I'm quite old. So yeah, I decided to apply. I wrote to Nate Silver in the US, thought I'd go and continue to learn. And I've spent the last 10 years over here.
Alan Rusbridger:
We should just explain, Nate Silver had started an organisation called FiveThirtyEight because he seemed to be the guy who called every election right. He was the sort of guru who was the king of data. So, he was the obvious person for a data journalist to go and work for.
Mona Chalabi:
He was the guru, or so I thought. Ethically, I don't believe that our job, as journalists, is to predict the future. And I think that that act of prediction becomes especially toxic and dangerous when it comes to democratic elections. So, I remember, not that long after I had started, it was the midterms. And I remember I was taking a taxi somewhere, and the person who was driving the taxi was talking about who he wanted to vote for. And he was like, "But I'm not going to vote for that guy, because the numbers say he doesn't have a chance of winning." What? We're months out, still, from the vote. What does that do to electoral behaviour, to be told who will and won't win? That actually influences democratic outcomes. So that terrified me.
And I also became really disillusioned with that brand of data journalism that is like... Everyone in that office self-described themselves as a nerd or a geek. And they kind of were posturing as that being some kind of self-criticism, or a humbling thing to say. But it was actually a massive boast. It was this idea that, "We are the smartest people in the room, we have access to this knowledge that you, layman over there, couldn't possibly understand. And maybe we'll write up a 10,000 word methodology of how we reached our conclusions, but it will only be accessible to the intellectual few." That's totally antithetical to my approach to journalism. If the work that you're creating isn't accessible to the broadest number possible, you are failing. And when I say "accessible", I'm not just talking about the summary of your conclusions. I think you have to be able to articulate to audiences how you got there. So for me, just as big a part of my data journalism is rendering the methodology intelligible to the broadest number of people. How did I calculate this?
Lionel Barber:
So Mona, I'm going to butter your parsnips, if you don't mind.
Mona Chalabi:
Oh, that isn't an expression I've heard before!
Lionel Barber:
First, you've got a photographic memory. I think I'm really good at memorising faces, and particularly conversations. And you reminded me that you had actually been in my office at the Financial Times, and we'd had an exchange about how to read the UK economy, where I talked about the skyline and the cranes outside my office. So I'm very impressed with that. But I think I wanted to talk to you about data journalism itself, because at the FT I created a new team. We used to have a statistics team. And I shouldn't take the credit, actually, it was colleagues. We wanted to find and discover and propagate new forms of storytelling. And if I may say, looking at your work, it's an extraordinary blend of facts with art. Can you talk about that, and give some examples? And I love the Jeff Bezos's wealth example.
Alan Rusbridger:
Which won the Pulitzer Prize.
Mona Chalabi:
So, this was a style of data journalism that I started to develop while I was at FiveThirtyEight, again, because I was kind of disillusioned with the style of data journalism that I was seeing. And I was also, frankly, a little bit depressed, so I would just sit and draw at my desk. And it found an audience. And I wonder, sometimes, if I'm being intellectually dishonest when I explain the reasons why I started doing this; I wonder if I'm just reverse engineering those explanations. But I really, really felt like a lot of data journalism was overstating certainty.
And you can overstate certainty in a number of ways. You can add a decimal place and a string of numbers where it doesn't belong. Like saying there's a 95.4% chance that this candidate is going to win, when millions of people haven't voted yet. I would say that's overstating certainty. And you can also overstate certainty by creating computer generated graphics that have this kind of veneer of objectivity. And they also almost give this impression that we're working with the natural sciences, when very often, as journalists, we're working with polling, we're working with a complicated set of assumptions. I felt like quick hand-drawn illustrations would bring back in that kind of element of subjectivity, that element of uncertainty. It would build a more intimate relationship with readers, where they would develop a kind of understanding and connection with who I am and what my biases are. And I do come to things with a set of biases, absolutely.
Alan Rusbridger:
But I just want to fill in a slightly missing gap here. The field of data journalism was pretty new when you entered it, people calling themselves data journalists was a new thing, and a lot of it was working with numbers and graphs and Excel spreadsheets and so on and so forth. But a separate field was data visualisations. So, that is how to actually make it sexy and intelligible. And these experiments that you were trying while you were at FiveThirtyEight, I don't know if Instagram was running them, but is that where you were publishing? You were literally working with crayons, weren't you? And as well as your professional life, doing whatever you were doing at FiveThirtyEight, this new style of visualisation was branching out on Instagram, where you now have nearly half a million followers.
Mona Chalabi:
I don't think data journalism is new. From the very first issue of The Guardian that was ever published, there was a table that was in it about educational outcomes.
Alan Rusbridger:
Going back a bit, that's 1821. That was before even I was born, yeah.
Mona Chalabi:
Exactly. And the table, we might not think of it as a form of data visualisation, but it absolutely is. One of my biggest inspirations is W. E. B. Du Bois, who was creating data visualisations for the 1900 Paris World Fair. So it's been around for a long time, but you're absolutely right, there was a cultural shift happening at the time that I was getting into journalism, where to call yourself a data journalist, to have that be your full role, was relatively new. And it was sexy, right? Exactly as you say, it was sought after.
Alan Rusbridger:
We're talking the day after Patrick Vallance gave evidence to the COVID commission, where he described dealing with the Prime Minister, brackets, former editor of The Spectator. He just couldn't handle numbers, he didn't understand what graphs were. I wonder if it's fair to say that when you came into mainstream journalism, you found you were surrounded by English literature graduates, like myself, and that you were sort of a slight oddity.
Mona Chalabi:
I think that's true. But again, I think actually the danger of it is that there was an over-reliance on the data journalist in the room. I was actually in quite a dangerous position, where anything I could say, people would just gobble it up, right? There's very few people to fact check and verify what I was doing. And that terrified me, and that's part of the reason why I decided to come to the US. It didn't necessarily make me feel lonely, I would say, because I don't think that those other people in the newsroom at The Guardian were necessarily bad at numbers. I think, very often, people have a negative emotional relationship with numbers, where they just assume, "I'm not good at this, this isn't for me." And again, that's part of me marrying artwork with data visualisation, is to overcome that emotional reaction of, "Ooh, ooh, ooh, charts? No."
Alan Rusbridger:
So, FiveThirtyEight, not a success.
Mona Chalabi:
Catastrophic failure. But, as you say, I started to post my work on Instagram while I was there, and when I first started doing it, I had a hundred followers, was literally in the stationery cupboard at work, dipping tampons into ketchup to show the rate of people that use tampons over time, much to my colleagues' confusion. And by the time that I left, I had an Instagram following, and I had a kind of audience outside of the walls of that organisation, which is quite an interesting situation to be in.
Alan Rusbridger:
So explain how you then formed a relationship with The New York Times. They'd been following you on Instagram?
Mona Chalabi:
I think that probably is fair to say. I don't know anyone on a personal basis that works there. As much as I have conflicting feelings about social media, most of them negative, I think it's given me a career. I think people have found my work through social media, and then I've been given opportunities, like an email out of the blue saying, "Hey, we're going to create a piece of work about the wealthiest individuals in the world, and we'd like to collaborate with you on it." And that's how the Jeff Bezos piece was born. See how I gave you a lovely little segue there?
Lionel Barber:
We'll carry it out. Mona, tell us about how you approached the question of bringing home, to a wider public, the stratospheric wealth of the Amazon founder.
Mona Chalabi:
It was a really interesting commission, because so often as journalists, we're trying to tell people things they may not necessarily know. But pretty much everyone knows Jeff Bezos is a filthy rich man. So actually, my job for this commission was to resensitize people to something that they already know, to make it feel surprising and new and, frankly, shocking. I'm not shy about the fact that my journalism does very often aim to elicit an emotion in people, I think emotions are underrated, as well as information. So yeah, I kind of wanted it to be shocking. So I worked with the incredible, incredible, incredible editors at The New York Times to create a series of charts that would re-reveal the scale of Bezos's wealth. And we did that through a range of techniques, including analogies.
Alan Rusbridger:
Well, like the land. That's an extraordinary graph, if I may say, jump in here. And you do it as a sort of large square, with lots and lots of squares inside, and you compare the size of the Pentagon, or Walt Disney's campus, to Jeff Bezos's landholding. And let's just say one is a lot bigger than the other.
Mona Chalabi:
I actually forgot about that chart. That's funny, because it was a series of charts. I forgot about that. And it's a good example, because I actually didn't know that Jeff Bezos held any land before I started working on this piece.
Lionel Barber:
Well, Alan, I think we got a picture of a journalist and a creator who is both passionate and rigorous in her work. And I believe, actually, talking about the passion, she did enter her work for the Pulitzer Prize without actually telling The New York Times, and actually saying that The New York Times had backed her. Mind you, that's not the first time that that's happened in the history of the Pulitzer Prize, or indeed, I hear, from The New York Times. But the work that she actually submitted, which was the graphics surrounding Jeff Bezos's wealth, I think, are magnificent. They are really clever. She just uses everyday image, whether it's a swimming pool, or it's a blood cell, or a truck, or just a graphic of a map, to illustrate how Bezos is a gazillion times more rich than the ordinary person earning a living wage.
Alan Rusbridger:
The illustration I loved was she worked out how long the average Amazon worker would have to work in order to get as rich as Bezos. And the answer I think, from memory, was 4.5 million years. So they would've been starting to work roundabout the time that human beings went from being four-legged creatures to two-legged creatures in order to get as rich as Bezos. So she has this very vivid imagination about how to capture a subject, and there's a lot of wit in her work. She draws in crayon, she then puts it into Photoshop, and adjusts it so that it is accurate to within a millimetre. So she's very conscious about working to the highest standards, and not being attacked for lack of rigour. So it's got both this sort of informality of, as it were, crayons and hand drawing, and yet is absolutely pinpoint accurate in terms of the data. And I think that's why she's got this huge following. It's just a very unusual approach.
Lionel Barber:
More from Mona Chalabi shortly on Media Confidential, including her criticism of her own paper, The New York Times, for their coverage of the Gaza conflict.
Alan Rusbridger:
Argentina has a new president, Javier Milei, who's described as an anarcho-capitalist. He promises to "take a chainsaw" to the economy to eradicate the excessive spending. But there's more to him than that. Isabel Hilton is one of our contributing editors who's spent a lot of time working in Argentina. And in this week's Prospect Podcast, she explores what the election of a somewhat unknown entity means for the volatile Argentinian economy.
Isabel Hilton:
He's very showy. He had this video in which he had all the Argentine ministries in stickers on the wall, and he would tear them off, and people would cheer. And so he would tear off the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Environment, all gone, gone. If you do abolish ministries, and you do away with the functions of the state, it's the poor who are going to be hit. But there's this desperation in Argentina that all other remedies appear to have failed, so let's back somebody, however implausible, who promises something completely different. He's certainly promising something completely different.
He's talked about being radical since he was elected. To do anything that requires legislation, that's going to be more complicated. He's going to have to build coalitions, he's going to have to work with other politicians. We don't see very much evidence that he has done that in the past, or that he's going to be any good at doing it. His entire campaign was pushing to extremes. And he has a whole social agenda, which is going to, again, alienate other politicians. So he's very anti-feminist, he's proposing to ban abortion, he thinks climate change is nonsense. There's a lot of baggage there.
Alan Rusbridger:
This is Media Confidential, with Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber. And on this episode, we're talking to the Pulitzer Prize winning data journalist, Mona Chalabi.
Lionel Barber:
And next, I wanted to find out more about her criticism of The New York Times, her own employer. On one level, she values the skill and resources of her editors and colleagues in the newsroom, but on another, she thinks the paper has been biassed on Israel/Palestine, and how it's covering what's happening in Gaza.
Mona Chalabi:
I don't think that's conflicted. I think every journalist has worked in an organisation where they feel like, on one particular subject, editors have got a bit of a blind spot. There's no theory here about some kind of nefarious system of control. It's just individuals getting it right and individuals getting it wrong. And I believe that there are a lot of individuals who work at The Times who happen to be quite senior, who have a blind spot when it comes to Israel and Palestine, and emotional as well as an informational blind spot. And I don't see any tension between pointing that out and continuing to work with them.
Alan Rusbridger:
Can I unpack your feelings here, Mona? Because one of the earlier interviews we did on this podcast was with Marty Baron, the former editor of The Washington Post, and he was very frank in his book that by the time he came to retire, he felt that there was a chasm opening up between his generation of editors, I think probably the same was true of Dean McKay, the former executive editor of The New York Times, and the younger people in the newsroom, and they felt that there was a new generation that came along that saw journalism differently, that it was about being more open about biases and attachments than it was a generation of people who came into journalism to change things. Do you recognise that division, and do you think that they describe it accurately?
Mona Chalabi:
Yes. I think everything that you've said is true. And I also wonder about... How can I say this in an articulate way? Did either of you watch, by any chance, the interview that was done on Democracy Now! with two editors at The New York Times who resigned slash were pushed out for having signed a letter in support of Palestinian human rights?
Alan Rusbridger:
No.
Lionel Barber:
I heard about it, didn't see it.
Mona Chalabi:
Yeah, it was an interesting interview in which one of the... It was actually a writer, sorry, I believe, by the name of Jamie.
Alan Rusbridger:
Jazmine Hughes.
Mona Chalabi:
Jazmine Hughes, and Jamie, I'm not sure what his last name is. He talked about the fact that he doesn't have a contract role at The New York Times, and therefore he was discussing what are his obligations towards this organisation, right? And I think that an added part of this has been that many, many, many journalists, the vast majority, don't have reliable, full-time roles that are well paid within institutions. And so many people have sought to build a career that is based on their position, their positionality, and their specific relationship with an audience, because they know they can't rely on an organisation, necessarily, to honestly provide healthcare benefits, let alone a long-term income.
Alan Rusbridger:
Do you see it from the point of view of the institution? So, in America, that there is a belief in objectivity, which you and I may not wholly share, but you've got an institution which is desperate to prove that it is, as they would see it, down the middle on a subject like Israel/Palestine. And they believe that if lots of their journalists are mouthing off on social media, showing their, as they would see it, biases, that people are less likely to trust The New York Times as an institution. Do you see that argument?
Mona Chalabi:
I see that argument. I would say that it's a disingenuous one. So, Jazmine Hughes, who resigned, but she was effectively pushed out, she was given a short amount of time in which to resign, otherwise she knew that she would be fired, is an essayist. Her whole role at The New York Times is to write from a subjective perspective. She has won awards for her subjective biases. And she's allowed to mouth off on social media about all kinds of things. This is a red line. She's not allowed to mouth off on social media to say "Palestinians deserve human rights", but she is allowed to mouth off, as you say, on social media about the treatment of Black women in the US, for example. That's fine.
Lionel Barber:
Are there any responsibilities you think you have as a journalist contributing to The New York Times, as well as the right that you have to express your views and your work?
Mona Chalabi:
I feel like my responsibility as a journalist is, first and foremost, to be truthful. So if it's the truthful position to state where I stand and to say, "I don't believe what's happening is correct", I think that's actually a fulfilment of my responsibilities, rather than a negation of them.
Alan Rusbridger:
Do you think that subjectivity is more healthy than objectivity? That, if everybody was frank about their implicit feelings on issues, at least you would know where they were coming from? The fault is trying to be objective, trying to pretend there is such a thing as objectivity.
Mona Chalabi:
I don't even understand, necessarily, setting up this paradigm where it's on a spectrum, and on one end there's subjectivity, on another end, there's objectivity. I feel like I have an opinion or a belief, I wouldn't even say an opinion, I have a belief that the Israeli government is currently engaged in a genocidal campaign against the people of Gaza, and against Palestine more broadly. That belief is based in facts. So, there's this marriage for all of us. I genuinely don't understand.
Lionel Barber:
I think what's different, Mona, if I could try to get at this, is that there are people who have very strong opinions, and they write opinions, and they're not always based on facts. What makes you really special, and I mean it, special, is that you are actually really basing your work on statistical evidence and facts, and then you're marshalling an argument, and then you're expressing extremely strong views. That makes you different. You're in the data field, you're not in the opinion pages of The New York Times. And I found it interesting, earlier, listening to your comments in an earlier interview, that you said you didn't even want to go anywhere near the opinion pages, you wanted to stay as a data journalist. And I think that's significant.
Mona Chalabi:
Yeah, that's definitely the case, because I've seen that kind of drift happening for a lot of Arab journalists, where we're no longer welcome to be reporters, but we can talk on this from a position of identity politics or yeah, as you say, just opinion. I guess I agree with everything that you said, but I also would like to say that I don't necessarily think of data as being an inherently higher form of information than other sources, right?
So if you sit down, for example, with a single mother who tells you that actually, becoming a mother while she was 16 was one of the best things that happened to her, it resulted in all of these positive outcomes. And I'm looking at a data set that says for most people who become parents in their teenage years, it has a detrimental effect on income, on education; those two things have to hold weight. It's not that the person who's telling you about their individual experiences needs to be discredited because that's not backed up by the data. It does concern me sometimes the way that data can flatten out individual experiences and kind of silence voices.
Alan Rusbridger:
Moving away from your own work, there were a couple of things about The New York Times coverage of Israel/Palestine that particularly grated with you. And do you want to just say what those were, and why you saw no tension in raising that, highlighting that, and your devotion to The New York Times, the paper you admire and want to go on working for?
Mona Chalabi:
Yeah, huge admiration, honestly, incredible, incredible institution. If we start at very, very, very high level, I would say The Times, like most Western media outlets, have framed this as an Israel-Gaza war, which is factually misleading. It is a Israel-Palestine war. People in the West Bank, too, are being affected massively by the violence, and have been for a long time. So that's step one, is the framing. And as I've mentioned before, that's infinitely better than the Israel-Hamas war, which is, again, a very, very false framing.
But it also comes down to the language choices that are used. So, using the term migration to describe mass-displacement caused by Israeli bombardment. To describe that as migration implies a degree of voluntary movement, which is just factually false. It's the language, but it's also about the style of writing. So I don't know if you've noticed, but so frequently in The New York Times reporting right now, there will be entire sentences, frequently the very first sentence in an article, followed by a comma, "Israeli sources said", "Israeli officials said", "US officials said". That, to me, is not good journalism; to repeat, wholesale, what officials are saying to you, and then providing the context to that, the questioning, the verifying, much later on in the article, if at all. And what you see is that seeps in, even without quote marks, throughout the body of the text.
So, for example, the phrase "human shields" has been repeated throughout New York Times reporting. There is no evidence whatsoever that Hamas has used people as human shields. And that's just been kind of swallowed now, and assumed to be fact without evidence. Where is the fact-checking? Where is the journalism? I don't know, is journalism reporting, or is it... I'm trying to think of this distinction between reporting and fact-checking, if that distinction even exists.
Alan Rusbridger:
People who want to be unkind to that form of journalism call it stenography, don't they?
Mona Chalabi:
It's where my East London roots are showing up, I don't know what buttering your parsnips means, I don't know what stenography means.
Alan Rusbridger:
I don't know what buttering parsnips means either, I think that's an FT term.
Lionel Barber:
It's the South London term, come on, now.
Alan Rusbridger:
Us North Londoners, we don't understand. What do you hope the future holds for you? Are there new forms of graphic visualisation that you're desperate to get stuck into? Do you want to make films? What are you itching to do next?
Mona Chalabi:
See, before October, and actually before the Pulitzers, I was shifting towards TV and film. I've been working on a TV show for the past three years.
Alan Rusbridger:
For Jeff Bezos, is that right?
Mona Chalabi:
That's right. Very awkward. And I've also been working on a book for the past three years as well. But I don't know, I'm just so committed to journalism right now. And it's a surreal time, because don't even know if "journalism" is an appropriate term for what we're doing. So again, to go back to what you was describing as this distinction between an older generation and the younger generation, a younger generation who is trying to communicate information in a way that actually directly addresses injustice. I don't think that the reporting that I'm doing on Israel and Palestine right now is going to be achieving that. I actually think that many of us feel like our work has drifted more towards the work of, frankly, becoming historians. I think I'm trying to capture the facts as accurately and honestly as I can for future generations, not for this one.
Alan Rusbridger:
Do you think, and we've talked about this generational shift, and I've sensed with many young journalists, they go into journalism with a view of what journalism is about, and then they feel incredibly frustrated in many of the places they work that they just can't do the journalism that they really wanted to do, do you think that's a widespread feeling about people your age and younger? And if so, where will that frustration find relief? Are there new forms of journalism or outlets that you believe are hopeful for the future of journalism?
Mona Chalabi:
I do think it's partly a young/old thing. And again, you see this particularly when it comes to Israel and Palestine. I don't know if you heard the leaked audio from, I believe it was Greenblatt at the ADL talking about we don't have a left/right communications problem, we have a young/old problem, we have a TikTok problem, we are losing the younger generation. So there is, without a doubt, a generational thing. I would also say that a key factor here is the fact that I'm not white, and a lot of journalists who come from various different marginalised groups just have felt like newsrooms... They're very often a space where certain elements of the status quo aren't questioned. The status quo, as it stands, might serve some of those editors in certain ways. So I definitely think that that has been a frustration.
And I think, frankly, a lot of us are maybe turning to individualised platforms, I guess, like TikTok, like Instagram, to reach audiences with the work that we want to make. I don't think that's a very good solution, if I'm honest, despite the fact that it has saved my career, essentially. I'm not arrogant enough to believe that I alone can do good work without a team around me. And the work that I have done at The Guardian, having those checks and balances there, having people to push back to say, "I don't think that's the right title for that piece. Do you have a better source?" That's good, it makes all of our work better, that kind of mutual accountability. So I think it's a difficult and painful period of transition for the industry as a whole.
Alan Rusbridger:
Mona, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a fascinating conversation, even if we never got to the bottom of what buttered parsnips are.
Lionel Barber:
Thank you, Mona. Just come to South London. I'll make some for you.
Mona Chalabi:
Can I say the thing, though, that Alan, I know you're trying to avoid me saying it, but I really did... The reason why I'm a journalist now is because my first taste of journalism was at The Guardian, and I really did feel like you were a phenomenal editor, and I felt like even though I was so junior, I would basically never really make eye contact with anyone, I was so shy, I felt really insecure as I was trying to learn about this field. And yet I still felt respected within that institution. It's part of the reason why, by the way, coming to the US was a real shock to the system. And I'm just very, very grateful for everything that you did while I was there, including I'd only been there for about a year, and to have the editor in chief sit me down and try to get me not to leave for the US? I was so flattered.
Alan Rusbridger:
Well, it didn't work though, did it? You still left.
Mona Chalabi:
But do you remember what you said? Do you remember what you said?
Alan Rusbridger:
What did I say?
Mona Chalabi:
You said the grass isn't always greener.
Alan Rusbridger:
I wasn't wrong.
Mona Chalabi:
You wasn't wrong. The grass wasn't greener. And yet I'm still so glad that I came over here, because I think long, long-term, it's benefited my career.
Alan Rusbridger:
I thought that was fascinating. We could easily have talked for another couple of hours about the issues that underlie that. So, this question of whether objectivity or subjectivity is a better or more honest approach is one that we really only began to scratch the surface there. And also this question about if an IDF or Israeli government spokesman says something, do you report it uncritically? Now, as I said during the interview, there's a generation of journalists who say, "Journalists shouldn't be stenographers." I.e., you don't just write down what other people say, your job is to interrogate it. I remember my colleague Nick Davies saying if somebody says the weather outside is sunny, and somebody says the weather outside is raining, your job is not to write down both of them, that's stenography. Your job is to look out the window and find out for yourself. But in the context of a war, I'm sure The New York Times would say, "Well, we need to put on the record what they're saying, whether or not we can verify it's true in the moment."
Lionel Barber:
I think there's a problem here if you say, suddenly, "I'm not going to quote what the Israeli Defence Forces are saying, because I don't believe it's true, or we can't verify it." It seems to me, number one, in a war, as you say, the fog of war, you have to take account of what both sides are saying. You also have to weigh the credibility of the source, and that's what got people in trouble with the missile strike on the hospital in Gaza.
I think the second point is Mona is operating in a distinctly interesting greyish zone. She's not a reporter, but she's a fact-based data analyst. She doesn't want to go into opinion writing. That's sort of a lower form. So she wants the rigour of the data journalism, but she also wants to be able to heavily comment and come at this with an argument or an activist's perspective. And that does raise some issues. Although I think, obviously, she's got more latitude than I would attribute to reporters.
Alan Rusbridger:
I think she does have a point about double standards. So I've heard her in a different podcast talk about Marty Peretz, who was the owner of the New Republic, and quoted him saying, really, I would say, outrageous things about Arab journalists and Arabs, which, if you reversed the position, would be completely unacceptable. And yet I think her argument is he's still accepted in polite society. And so I think she thinks there's a double standard in relation to Arab journalists versus people who are more broadly sympathetic towards Israel. And that pain, I think, is evident in everything she thinks about the world in which she's actually operating very successfully.
Lionel Barber:
And she makes a very good point about the underrepresentation of Arab journalists in American newsrooms. The other point, it's about disclosure. How many journalists... I remember I was offered the chance to go on an Israeli government sponsored trip to Israel to fly by helicopter over the Gaza Strip and to visit officials. And I would've gained a very important perspective, but I wouldn't have been in control of my circumstances. So I actually turned it down, did go on my own, accompanied by very experienced reporters and a senior editor, and made up my own mind thereby.
Alan Rusbridger:
So, all in all, a fascinating interview. Back at home, Lionel, almost daily there have been new developments about this story about who's going to end up owning The Daily Telegraph. I think we're recording today on Wednesday morning, and the story today is different from the story yesterday. Summarise the developments.
Lionel Barber:
Well, Alan, bear with me, because this is a little bit complicated, but the favourite, as it looks now, is a consortium backed by Abu Dhabi money, that's the oil-rich Gulf state, and a company called RedBird, that's a Wall Street investment firm, with one of the lead players being Jeff Zucker, and he ran CNN until recently. Essentially, they've come up with enough money to pay back the Barclay brothers' loan, the debt owed to Lloyds Bank.
Alan Rusbridger:
Which is about £600 million, isn't it?
Lionel Barber:
Actually, it's more, it's £1.1 billion.
Alan Rusbridger:
Well, that's with the interest. Yeah, sorry. So it's, just to disentangle, the cost of the paper's about £600 million.
Lionel Barber:
Correct.
Alan Rusbridger:
The debt is twice that.
Lionel Barber:
Correct.
Alan Rusbridger:
Yeah, correct.
Lionel Barber:
And what they're going to do, tricky but interesting, is convert the debt by that loan into equity. So, by helping the Barclay brothers, releasing them of their debt, they then use that loan and convert it into equity to be owners of The Daily Telegraph. So this has meant that the process of sale, organised by Goldman Sachs, is now suspended, and we'll have to see whether Lloyds obviously wants its money back. So that's why they're in the driving seat at the moment.
Alan Rusbridger:
But this morning's story is that Paul Marshall, as we know him to be, the owner of GB News, or the 50% owner of GB News, believes that the government may not want to have The Daily Telegraph owned by a Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund, is this? Or is it...
Lionel Barber:
It's actually, and should we call it an entity?
Alan Rusbridger:
An entity.
Lionel Barber:
But the key figure is Sheikh Mansour, who is the owner of, wait for it, Manchester City. So I think this will be looked at by the government, by Ofcom, your favourite-
Alan Rusbridger:
My favourite regulator.
Lionel Barber:
... regulator, as well as the Competition and Markets Authority. And it will revolve around, well, there is American money through RedBird, but obviously the bulk is from Abu Dhabi.
Alan Rusbridger:
And remind us, who's giving Paul Marshall his money?
Lionel Barber:
Well, Paul Marshall makes a very valid point here. He's got his own money from his own hedge fund, Marshall Wace, and also the backing of Ken Gryphon, who's a hugely successful billionaire, runs Citadel hedge fund, one of the most successful on Wall Street. He also owns one of the most valuable properties in London. Better not say where it is.
Alan Rusbridger:
But I suppose the question is, does it matter if British venerable titles come into foreign ownership? Paul Marshall's ownership of GB News is in conjunction with Legatum, which is an institute based in, I think, Dubai. Rupert Murdoch owns The Times, and he is an American, if not an Australian citizen, doesn't pay personal taxes here, I don't think. The Independent is now part-owned by the Anglicised British son of a KGB officer who has brought in the Saudis. So, does it matter if The Telegraph was going to be owned by money that comes from the Middle East?
Lionel Barber:
Well, in that context, I suppose you're dealing with some fairly polluted water, so to speak. But I think the question you should ask is what is the human rights record in these Gulf States? What commitments have they got, in terms of a free press there? Just look at the record. Overall, it's certainly worthy of scrutiny,
Alan Rusbridger:
But enough that Lucy Frazer, who's the culture minister, would stop it?
Lionel Barber:
That would be a big decision. What kind of signal would it send to other foreign investors looking to invest in Britain in other sectors? And I think the government does need to be mindful of that. However, just to let this through without any scrutiny at all seems, to me, wrong.
If you have any questions for us about the media, email them to MediaConfidential@Prospectmagazine.co.uk, and we'll answer a few of them in a future episode.
Alan Rusbridger:
Thank you for listening to Media Confidential, brought to you by Prospect Magazine and Fresh Air. The producer is Danny Garlick.
Lionel Barber:
Remember to listen and follow us wherever you get your podcasts.
Alan Rusbridger:
And we're on Twitter/X too, and our handle there is @MediaConfPod.
Lionel Barber:
Until next time.
