Masha Gessen
staff writer The New Yorker
Graciela Mochkofsky
dean Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a group of researchers and journalists came together to create a new resource and database to serve as a permanent home for Russia’s independent media, one that would be impossible to destroy or block. But the creators of the Russian Independent Media Archive (RIMA) had a larger ambition. They wanted to “better understand how authoritarianism and dictatorships work, and stand against propaganda and manipulation of the historical narrative.” This also wanted to create a model for people around the world fighting against a kind of tyranny grounded in the annihilation of the past.
Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen, one of the founders of the RIMA, will be in conversation with Graciela Mochkofsky a leading journalist and author on Latin America. Mochkofsky grew up in Argentina at a time when journalists were in the vanguard of efforts to recover a history that had been brutally suppressed under the military dictatorship. Mochkofsky is also the dean of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism in New York City where Gessen is a distinguished professor.
