The Challenges and Responsibilities of Journalism Today

April 4, 2019 - 3:30pm
A conversation with David Cay Johnston Founder and Editor, DC Report; Emily Flitter, Journalist and Reporter, The New York Times; and James Henry, Contributing Editor, American Interest.
ISPS Policy Lab See map
77 Prospect St., Room B11

A conversation with David Cay Johnston Founder and Editor, DC Report; Emily Flitter, Journalist and Reporter, The New York Times; and James Henry, Contributing Editor, American Interest.

About the Speakers

David Cay Johnston, a 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, is author of the four national bestsellers, the most recent of which are It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America and in 2016 The Making of Donald Trump. Johnston is co-founder of DCReport.org, a free non-advertising news service that covers what the Trump administration is doing to our government.

In 1988 Johnston started covering Trump, a major figure in his 1992 casino industry exposé Temples of Chance.

The Washington Monthly calls Johnston “one of America’s most important journalists” and the Portland Oregonian says is work is the equal of the great muckrakers Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens and Upton Sinclair.

Johnston teaches pre-law students at Syracuse University. His next book will propose a 21st Century tax system for the United States and other advanced countries.

Emily Flitter has been a banking reporter for The New York Times since late 2017. Before joining the Times, she spent eight years at Reuters News covering Wall Street, white collar crime, the Trump campaign and environmental issues.

For the Times, she has written about Goldman Sachs’s role in the looting of a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund, Wells Fargo’s lingering high-pressure sales culture, an investigation into Japan’s largest bank over money-laundering controls and a cover-up of bad behavior by a wealth manager at Morgan Stanley. She also obtained records showing Jared Kushner has been able to avoid paying income tax several times over recent years.

Ms. Flitter covered the 2008 financial crisis for the trade newspaper American Banker in Washington.

She began her career as a freelance journalist in Cairo, Egypt. She graduated from Wellesley College and has a master’s in Near Eastern studies and journalism from New York University.

James S. Henry, Esq. is a leading economist, attorney, and investigative journalist who has written and spoken widely on the issues of tax justice, financial secrecy, offshore havens, and development finance.

He has served as Director of Economic Research (chief economist), McKinsey & Co.; VP Strategy, IBM/Lotus Development; Business Development Manager, Chairman’s Office (Jack Welch), GE; and Senior Consultant, Monitor Company.

He has served as founder and Managing Director of Sag Harbor Group, a strategy consulting firm, which has served such leading clients as ABB, Bell Labs/ AT&T, Charles Allen & Co., the Calvert Fund, Cemex, ChinaTrust, the Joint Caribbean Task Force (Scotland Yard/FBI), IBM/Lotus, Intel, South Africa Telecom, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Swedish Power Board, TransAlta, and Volvo.

Mr. Henry is currently a Senior Fellow at Columbia U’s Center for Sustainable Investment, a Senior Advisor to the Tax Justice Network, and a Global Justice Fellow at Yale, where he leads a popular graduate seminar on “Global Justice Problems” with Prof. Thomas Pogge and Krishen Mehta.

Mr. Henry has served as Chair of the Global Alliance for Tax Justice, a member of the TJN’s Global Board, and a founder and steering committee member of TJN-USA. He has served an active pro bono environmental and constitutional lawyer, as a founder of the Northern Environmental Law Center, based in Sag Harbor, New York. In 2009-10 he was the Edward R. Murrow Fellow in Investigative Journalism at Tufts U./ The Fletcher School of Diplomacy.

Mr. Henry has written or contributed to numerous books on the subject of tax havens, debt, capital flight, and development.

Mr. Henry is a widely-published investigative journalist, who has travelled to more than 50 developing countries. His articles have appeared in many leading publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, the Nation, the New Republic, The Financial Times, the Economist, Jornal do Brasil, the Philippines Inquirer, La Nacion, and El Pais. He is regular contributor to the American Interest, whose recent stories about organized crime, Russia, and the Trump Administration have received widespread attention.

He is a featured contributor and Senior Investigative Editor of DCReport.Org, founded by Pulitzer prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston. He also administers two online investigative
websites of his own: globalhavenindustry.com and submergingmarkets.com.

Since 2013 he has given three TED talks on tax justice and the global haven industry. He has also been a prominent contributor to many recent documentaries. He has been a featured presenter on Democracy Now, the Real News Network, NPR, and the BBC.

Mr. Henry has testified several times before the US Senate on economic policy issues, is a frequent speaker at forums on international development, and has been interviewed on a wide variety of economic issues for leading networks and radio stations.