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The Kicker

A Wild Start to the Year

Coda’s Natalia Antelava on Meta, Trump, and how journalism can survive 2025.

January 14, 2025
AP Photo/Art by Katie Kosma

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Natalia Antelava spent many years as a correspondent for the BBC, before starting her own media company, Coda Story, in 2016. She’s covered wars in the Middle East and the rise of authoritarianism across Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. For the past year, she was a Knight Fellow at Stanford, where she examined how journalism might survive in an era of AI and tech supremacy.

Antelava joins The Kicker to talk about Meta’s decision to do away with fact-checking, preparing for a second Trump administration, what mainstream reporters can learn from conservative podcasters—and why she’s still optimistic about what journalism can achieve in the year to come.

Read more:
“Noise Is the New Censorship” — Antelava on disinformation and authoritarianism
“Grieving California” — Coda’s 2018 essay on the Tubbs Fire

Hosted by Josh Hersh
Produced by Amanda Darrach

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Josh Hersh is an editor at CJR. He was previously a correspondent and senior producer at Vice News.