NPR's Mara Liasson in Conversation with Scott Shafer

Few journalists have tracked America’s political transformation as closely, or as clearly, as Mara Liasson. As NPR’s national political correspondent since the early 1990s, she has reported from the frontlines of Washington through presidencies, scandals, shutdowns, and social revolutions. She’s witnessed the transformation of U.S. politics from policy debate and deal-making to hyperpartisan information warfare. Through it all, she has remained one of the most trusted and unflinching voices in American political journalism.

Liasson joins KQED Live onstage to bring her decades of inside experience, signature clarity, and dry wit, to bear on some of the most urgent questions of our time: How do reporters hold power to account in an age of tribal polarization driven by algorithms and a fractured media environment? What happens when the press — and truth itself — becomes a political target? And what can citizens do to restore democratic institutions?

Whether you’re a lifelong NPR listener or part of the generation rethinking political reporting, don’t miss this rare chance from one of the nation’s most respected journalists about how we got here and where democracy goes next.