Mona Chalabi

Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist Mona Chalabi delivers our inaugural John Caldon memorial lecture, remembering the investment banker, TV innovator and inspirational entrepreneur, who died in 2021.

Chalabi argues that journalists need to think differently about language – so that readers don’t feel hopeless in the face of wars, colonialism, the climate crisis and Nazi salutes in 2025. If we want to resist war and injustice, we need to resist the idea that resistance is futile.

From the 2003 Iraq War – when millions marched against going to war – to the invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing occupation of Palestine, we see how narratives of ‘freedom’ and ‘security’ continue to be weaponised to justify war and repression. The same playbook of media manipulation, selective outrage and suppression of dissent is at work. The sense of powerlessness many felt in 2003 persists, deepening into a broader crisis of defeatism. Maybe the issue isn’t just ‘manufacturing consent’ but rather manufacturing despair.