Truth Matters

In his more than two decades at NBC News, Peter Alexander (BSJ98) has covered wars from Afghanistan to Iraq, visited the sites of natural disasters, and reported from the presidential campaign trail and lawn of the White House. Wherever his work takes him, and in all the complexity that it brings, Alexander’s core priority remains getting to the facts and serving the public interest.

Standing up for the facts, he notes, means balancing chasing scoops, having a depth of knowledge of any number of topics, and upholding rigorous editorial standards. Before content is aired, the NBC News team follows a robust process of fact checking and collaboration—bringing together legal, standards, and senior production teams. They also ensure “the little facts,” as Alexander calls them, such as accurate spelling and formatting of text on a graphic or a chyron. Small details are just as important as the “big ones” at a time where every decision can build or erode trust with audience members.

As NBC News’ chief White House correspondent, Alexander routinely parses a rapid-fire stream of statements in real time. A striking example involved a viral exchange in which he fact-checked a White House claim about social security fraud. In this exchange Alexander probed White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt for evidence of this fraud, following his own review of related documentations. Fraud, he notes, is a crime and not the same as wasteful spending, which is defined by one’s perception.

A video of the conversation gained millions of views—prompting a wave of messages from viewers who saw the clip on social media, including those who may have never seen his reporting before. These digital touchpoints offer an opportunity to make journalism matter to a new generation of information consumers.

“The technology can change,” Alexander says. “But our mission, our responsibility, doesn’t.”

A frequent speaker with current Medill students and early career alumni, Alexander also describes inspiring others to be a regular motivation.

“I tell young people, I’m just keeping the seat warm until it’s your turn,” he adds, reminding storytellers to ask, even when it feels intimidating.

“The worst anyone can do is say no,” he says. “It’s the advice I got from my parents that served me through journalism school and serves me to this day.” He recalls how some of his most memorable interviews—including with Fidel Castro in Cuba and renowned basketball player Yao Ming during the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics—only happened because he pushed for an interview.

Despite the pressures of the job, Alexander remains energized by its exhausting yet exhilarating possibilities.

For Julie Pace (BSJ04) defending press freedom is not a new endeavor—it's core to her work. From her years as a White House and political reporter, and as the Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press (AP), to her current role overseeing global operations as the AP’s executive editor, Pace has witnessed firsthand how journalism evolves under pressure.

Pace’s shift from reporting to management and leadership has only deepened her respect for journalism’s resilience. She describes the AP’s work globally—and its rich 179 year history—as “nothing short of a minor miracle” that lends perspective to how journalists continue to persist even when under threat.

For example, a first step is often understanding the legal protections journalists are meant to have in each location and the appropriate pathways for upholding their rights aligned with local laws. This can also mean collaborating with other news organizations to navigate difficult media environments together.

“There is power in numbers when multiple organizations come together to advocate for press freedom … and push back on particular actions. Being able to do that really quickly is one of the things we learned,” she adds, noting the essential interplay between trust and safety for reporters, their sources, and with peer media organizations. The AP also invests in digital safety and may even pull “reporters out of a country entirely so they can keep covering it from a safer place.”

Within a news cycle often defined by urgency and unpredictability, CNN anchor Omar Jimenez (BSJ15) believes the core of good journalistic practice remains unchanged: navigate the pressure and stay close to the truth.

Reflecting on a defining chapter of his career, Jimenez recalls the myriad weights that came with leading his network’s coverage of the 2020 murder of George Floyd, the related protests, and the ensuing trials. In reporting from a public street in Minneapolis, Jimenez and his team had been “doing what we had been doing for days” when they experienced direct intimidation from law enforcement while covering the news live.

“Just having the presence of the state patrol officers right around us, even having one of their hands on my arm as I was reporting, you could argue that was a form of intimidation. But it clearly took a step to the next level when we were actually put into handcuffs and led away,” he said.

Jimenez believes that deeper engagement with his viewers builds trust in his reporting and the media ecosystem in general. In turn, it drives influence through the power of human connection, supporting audience members to understand the implications of current events all the more.

Chris Casquejo felt a mix of shock and surprise by the outpouring of support from affiliate news organizations and media consumers that he collaborates with across Asia. This was in mid-March 2025, when over 1,000 staff at Voice of America (VOA) were first placed on administrative leave.

“In many ways, they took the news harder than I did, because to them, Voice of America is such a brand. In certain parts of the world, it's on par with Al Jazeera, CNN International, and the BBC in terms of a trusted media organization,” he notes. “To me, that was really hard to fathom given that we have such a smaller budget than all these global media organizations.”

VOA is an international broadcasting network funded by the U.S. federal government via Congressional approval. Since its creation during World War II, VOA has enjoyed legally-mandated editorial independence and played an important role providing consistent and accurate reporting to an audience of primarily non-Americans living abroad. Many of its audience members live in regions with historically and presently tight media control.

Casquejo, host and correspondent of VOA’s English to Asia affiliate news service, joined the agency in 2021. He describes his small team as a “de facto Washington bureau” for a range of media affiliates in South and Southeast Asia who are unable to base their correspondents in Washington, D.C. on a full-time basis. Casquejo credits his team’s dedicated and timely reporting, despite the significant time difference between the United States and Asia, as core contributors to their positive reputation.

Key stories include fact-based reporting of former President Joe Biden’s meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference and primary coverage of the 2024 U.S. general election.

“What's missing now is the coverage of everything that's happening with the Trump administration,” he said, reflecting that decades of trust built with media consumers has been shaken since the VOA network went dark in March. “I personally don’t know what they’re airing in our slots. The worry is that because there are so many content gaps to fill, [affiliate stations] are going to rely on Russian and Chinese sources, which are … state run media that toe their government lines. Voice of America was never that.”

What is also missing is VOA’s human interest coverage about the permeation of Asia’s cultures and tradition in the United States. For example, some favorite stories of Casquejo’s go well beyond politics. This includes highlighting historical and emerging culinary legacies, such as Detroit’s Chinatown and the proliferation of ube, a Filipino purple yam, amongst American consumers.

Despite his inability to speak specifically to the ongoing legal cases regarding VOA, Casquejo is clear about the stakes. He’s been focusing his energies on supporting colleagues who are U.S. visa holders, including those who may face safety risks if they return to their country of origin, or who may not have previously experienced the professional uncertainty of being let go before.

As of early June, the newest proposed restructuring for VOA would leave the smallest viable number of employees in place to comply with a judge’s order.

For Wall Street Journal reporter Sabrina Siddiqui (BSJ08), covering American politics has always been about holding power to account through day-to-day persistence and presence. She has covered three U.S. presidential administrations and four general election cycles for a variety of publications and is no stranger to tough conversations with political staffers.

But, while a reporter’s job is to hold any administration accountable, she adds that that can be easier said than done.

“It's not only the Trump administration where it's complicated. There's always an effort by any administration to shape the narrative and … try to exert some control on how a story will ultimately look. You just have to hold your ground. You have your reporting and you're giving them the opportunity to comment,” she said.

One experience that stands out the most is how the media has historically enjoyed significant access to American lawmakers. When covering Congress, for example, she became familiar with staking out meetings and walking directly up to an elected official for a statement. Even when challenging to get an official off script, the opportunity to pose questions to lawmakers so directly is something she views as uniquely American, compared to what reporters in some other countries have shared with her about their own experiences.

Duchesne Drew (MSJ94) has been on a mission rooted in inclusion, rigor, and public service since his early days as an education reporter.

“I spent a lot of time in classrooms as well as in spreadsheets and databases, trying to understand patterns,” he said. “ ... looking for both signs of hope and things we should do more of, and also signs of dysfunction and things we should stop doing or scale back.”

This hands-on work is “the heart” of what still guides Drew’s journalistic practice today. Following a rich community-focused career at the Minnesota Star Tribune and the St. Paul-based Bush Foundation, Drew joined Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) as president in 2020. Now at the helm of one of the largest public radio operations in the United States, he is responsible for content-related decision making that serves both Minnesotans and millions of other listeners around the country.

Much of MPR’s decision-making goes beyond breaking the news. It’s about music from Prince, to pipe organs, to Latin fusion and Afrobeats—building on Minnesota’s rich artistic history and elevating both popular and overlooked artists. It is about adapting content to reach new and younger listeners, who may not turn on the radio but who will consume podcasts, stream content, and engage with social media channels. It is about weekly segments on books, or for creating space for discourse and skill development. For example, Talking Sense, an initiative developed in the lead up to the 2024 elections, centers on helping people have civil, constructive conversations across differences on topics from incarceration to same-sex marriage.

“We are not just pushing information out, but also receiving and giving people space to share,” Drew said. “You can't do that well if you're only capturing and projecting a sliver of who we actually are.”

To achieve this, MPR regularly hosts roundtables and attends community events to gain insight into listener perspectives, using the insights to shape new and refine known projects. “[Reporters] need to do the hard work of getting out of your own lane, your own patterns, and seeking out people who may have different perspectives and histories than you do,” he adds.

Whether from listeners in towns that border Canada to population dense areas like the Twin Cities and amongst the state’s diverse East African, Hmong, and indigenous communities, Drew sees listener support as an investment in shared values and responsibility but also in financial resilience. He makes operational decisions to ensure these contributors can feel seen and valued in the station’s content offerings. In turn, nearly two-thirds of MPR’s funding comes from individual donors and enables the platform to keep creating and delivering  content and events for free.

“People who are members of the public choose to invest in us so that we can provide news, information, music, and cultural programming not just to them but to their neighbors and to people they will never, ever meet,” he said.

Still, as of mid-2025, MPR faced the potential to lose millions of dollars in funding. This is due to the White House request to Congress to repeal over $1 billion in funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the knock-on impact on MPR’s agreements with smaller outlets that rely more heavily on CPB funding to license content that MPR distributes. This includes content such as BBC programming through MPR’s national arm, American Public Media.