<p dir="ltr">It&rsquo;s easy to get frustrated with the charade reporters are supposed to keep up, where they pretend they don&rsquo;t have opinions or feelings or any kind of human thoughts about a story they&rsquo;re reporting. Plenty of journalists have been trying to break out of that charade. But the decision to do that: it can be a fraught one, with real implications.&nbsp;</p> <p dir="ltr">This week, we&rsquo;re re-upping a story we first ran last year about journalist Dana Ballout. Dana struggled with this personal-professional dilemma while investigating a story about Hassan Diab &mdash; a sociology professor who&rsquo;s living as a free man in Canada, yet is convicted of a terrible crime in France. Dana and her co-host, Alex Atack, open up about their reporting on the series <em>The Copernic Affair</em>, and why Dana ultimately cut her own opinions out of the show, even though her co-host and editors wanted to include them.&nbsp;</p> <p dir="ltr">This also prompts Brian to revisit his own experience dropping the charade in a previous podcast he made for The New York Times and Serial: <em>The Trojan Horse Affair</em>.&nbsp;</p> <p dir="ltr">You can check out <em>The Copernic Affair</em> wherever you get your podcasts or at <a href="https://www.canadaland.com/shows/the-copernic-affair/">https://www.canadaland.com/shows/the-copernic-affair/.</a></p> <p dir="ltr">Same with <em>The Trojan Horse Affair &ndash;&nbsp;</em> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/podcasts/trojan-horse-affair.html">https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/podcasts/trojan-horse-affair.</a></p> <p dir="ltr"><strong id="docs-internal-guid-bfc4ad06-7fff-fc2b-0b9e-1153fc35168b"></strong>&ldquo;Question Everything&rdquo; is a production of<a href="http://www.kcrw.org/"> KCRW</a> and<a href="http://www.placementtheory.com/"> Placement Theory</a>. We have a <a href="http://questioneverything.substack.com">Substack</a>.</p> <p>Guests:&nbsp;</p> <ul> <li>Dana Ballout and Alex Atack, co-hosts of <em>The Copernic Affair</em></li> <li>Hamza Syed, co-host of <em>The Trojan Horse Affair</em></li> </ul> <p dir="ltr">Please support the organizations that support this show:</p> <ul> <li dir="ltr">Ground News is a platform that makes it easy to compare news sources, read between the lines of media bias and break free from algorithms. Go to <a href="groundnews.com/QUESTION">groundnews.com/QUESTION </a>to get 40% off the unlimited Vantage plan.</li> <li dir="ltr">Get 15% off OneSkin with the code QUESTION at <a href="https://www.oneskin.co/QUESTION">https://www.oneskin.co/QUESTION</a>&nbsp; #oneskinpod</li> <li dir="ltr">Listen to our supporter <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/more-muslim/id1872019004">More Muslim</a> wherever you get podcasts.<strong id="docs-internal-guid-b881f196-7fff-5c9a-d3dc-765db6e22a25"></strong></li> </ul> <p>This episode originally aired on March 27th, 2025.</p>