In a community forum packed with 100 attendees, veteran journalists from across Southern Arizona delivered a stark warning: local news is under siege from lawsuits, budget cuts, and coordinated attacks on press credibility—but they’re not backing down.
The panel discussion was held by the Green Valley Democrats on October 12, 2025, and moderated by yours truly. It brought together reporters and editors from print, broadcast, and digital outlets who painted a sobering picture of an industry fighting for survival while defending democracy itself.
“Facts Don’t Matter Anymore”
Dan Shearer, editorial director overseeing 30 newspapers for Wick Media, didn’t mince words about the challenges facing his newsrooms.
“The most shocking thing for me over the last 10 years is that facts don’t matter,” Shearer said. “We traffic in facts, and we thought that people respected and wanted that, and we find that’s simply not the case.”
Shearer, who describes himself as “hands down the most conservative person in the room,” drew applause when he declared journalists must be “truthful, not neutral”—especially when covering political figures who “lie almost every time their mouth is moving.”
Financial pressures mount
Even as the news profession evolves online, the dangers grow sharper. Lawsuits against journalists and outlets pile up — many designed not to win but to bankrupt. “We’re in for $30,000 right now defending against suits that will be dismissed,” Shearer revealed. “That’s how they silence local papers. Not through bullets — through bills.”
Asked about the surge in political lawsuits, the press veteran didn’t mince words. “Trump sues to punish truth,” Shearer said flatly. “People tell me we’re supposed to be ‘neutral.’ No. We’re supposed to be truthful. If that makes us sound biased, so be it.”
“This is the way that you could shut down a newspaper chain quite quickly,” he warned. “For the first time in my career, 40 years, I am very concerned about local journalism.”
Panelist Bohdan Zachary, Director of Original Content at Arizona Public Media, described an even steeper climb. The federal government’s October cutoff of funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting wiped out $1.1 million from AZPM’s budget—money that sustained programs like Arizona Illustrated and forced layoffs of four talented producers.
Zachary choked up describing CPB’s shutdown: “There’s a deep sense of loss.”
“It’s catastrophic,” he said, describing layoffs and the scramble to rebuild with new hires and partnerships. Still, he vowed, “We are as committed as ever to telling the stories of the communities we serve.”
Zachary said the collapse of public broadcasting funding and the increasing threat of FCC interference amount to a coordinated attack on independent media. “Each station must now survive on its own. When the FCC investigates a PBS or NPR outlet, the legal costs alone can kill it,” he said. “We face new assaults that we didn’t imagine possible a decade ago.”
Yet AZPM is fighting back, hiring six new reporters and consolidating news operations. “We are so committed to telling the news of the communities we serve,” Zachary declared.
Truth sandwich
Paul Ingram, photojournalist and investigator for the Tucson Sentinel, recounted the daily battle reporters face when truth collides with propaganda. “We go to the place, talk to the people who are actually involved, and carry their stories to you,” he said. “When people lie to us, we show that they’re lying—immediately, with evidence.”
Ingram’s “truth sandwich” method cuts falsehoods off at the knees: quote the lie, follow it with the evidence, and end with verified facts.
Ingram added, “People who sue journalists do it because they know journalism matters — they’re afraid of what we expose.” The nonprofit model is gaining traction nationally, with readers directly funding journalism in their communities.
Combating Misinformation
The panel tackled head-on the challenge of competing with social media, where one in five people now get news from TikTok.
Kendal Blust, award-winning UA journalism professor and a longtime reporter in the Arizona-Sonora borderlands, focused on the next generation of reporters. “Our students arrive thinking TikTok is news,” she said.
“We have to teach them to tell the difference between disinformation and truth — and to be flexible. Journalism remains as essential now as it has ever been.”
“One of the first things we do is ensure they’re exposed to the good news produced by our colleagues in Tucson, across Arizona, and throughout the country,” she said. “But certainly, as reporters, we find and report and share the truth.
Ingram shared a telling anecdote about covering the 2023 border surge. While Fox News portrayed a “dangerous situation” with armed border patrol agents, Ingram’s footage showed him “wandering around and fist-bumping people.”
“What we do is try to go to the place, talk to the people who are involved, and then carry that to you,” Ingram explained. “When people lie to us, we show that they’re lying.”
AI is a sarcastic parrot
The panelists were united in warning that technology has become both a tool and a threat. Artificial intelligence, they agreed, has transformed workflows but not without risks. They expressed deep skepticism about artificial intelligence replacing human reporters.
Ingram dismissed AI as “not intelligent—it’s a statistical model” prone to “hallucinating” false information. He described AI-generated writing as “a sarcastic parrot — fancy nonsense packaged as knowledge.”
Shearer admitted to testing it for research and summarization but said, “No machine can replace a reporter who talks to real people.”
“Do you really want text generated by ChatGPT, or do you want me to go drive somewhere and talk to somebody?” he asked. “That’s literally why I’m in journalism.”
Resilience and solidarity
Despite the grim outlook, the conversation closed on resilience and solidarity. Ingram recounted a moment when reporters collectively confronted former Governor Doug Ducey at a press conference until he stormed out. “We made him answer questions he didn’t want to answer,” he said.
“That’s what happens when reporters back each other up,” Ingram said. “When these guys try to punish one of us for reporting a story they don’t like, they’re going to have to punish us all,” Ingram said.
Shearer agreed. “We fight our battles locally, one phone call or story at a time. But if press leaders start losing their nerve, democracy trembles.”
Blust nodded in closing. “Journalists must stand together — educators, young reporters, veterans — all of us,” she said. “We can’t afford to go silent. Not now.”
The audience rose in applause at the end of the program. I summed it up with one final plea. “Support local journalism. If you care about democracy, donate to the Tucson Sentinel, to PBS, to your community papers. Because without them, the truth disappears.”
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