“Truth is a luxury good and also an acquired taste,” Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Jesse Eisinger said to a crowd of students, faculty and community members on Monday. “[Truth] challenges your assumptions and makes you uncomfortable — that’s not a great product to sell.”

Eisinger spoke with Hendrick Townley MBA ’25 at “Press Under Pressure: Compliance and the Cost of Truth,” a discussion co-hosted by the Graduate School of Business’ Corporation and Society Initiative (CASI).

Eisinger’s conversation occurred against a changing landscape for the press. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump’s administration banned the Associated Press (AP) indefinitely from the Oval Office and Air Force One after the organization refused to rename the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America,” as declared by Trump. 

Eisinger acknowledged that the journalism industry was unprepared for the administrative changes. “I think every mainstream organization should have united and said we’re going to have some kind of united action,” said Eisinger in response to the removal of the AP from the White House press pool. “There’s been a little bit of protest, but I don’t think it’s been particularly effective,” he said.

Last week, the Trump administration set new limits on White House journalists. In a break from tradition, the Trump administration will determine which news outlets will have access to the president during events where space is limited. Previously, this decision was made by the White House Correspondents’ Association, a group of journalists who cover news related to the president and the White House. 

With a background in reporting on financial crime and political corruption, Eisinger is now senior editor and reporter for the non-profit investigative journalism organization ProPublica. Prior to joining ProPublica in 2009, Eisinger was the Wall Street editor for Conde Nast Portfolio. In 2007, Eisinger’s article “Wall Street Requiem,” predicted the failure of investment banks Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

In 2011, Eisinger and his co-author, Jake Bernstein, were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for their series “The Wall Street Money Machine” that documented the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis. Following the financial crisis, Eisinger wrote “The Chickenshit Club,” covering the failures of the Justice Department in prosecuting the financial executives responsible for the recession. 

Eisinger also expressed concern about major media corporations settling defamation lawsuits with Trump. “I don’t call them settlements, I call them bribes to get the administration off their back for reasons that have nothing to do with journalism,” Eisinger said.

In December, Disney agreed to pay $15 million to Trump with a public apology for statements made by ABC commenter George Stephanopoulos last summer regarding the E. Jean Carroll case. Additionally, Paramount recently announced they were in settlement negotiations over Trump’s defamation lawsuit, which was filed days before the election and claimed that Paramount subsidiary CBS deceptively edited an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Calling the lawsuits “utterly frivolous,” Eisinger decried the “corporate interests” that he believes motivated the decisions to settle. “Their willingness to settle were acts of immense cowardice that did an enormous amount of damage to journalism and to the public interest and they should be ashamed,” said Eisinger.

Stanford Law School professor Deborah Sivas J.D. ’87 found the event interesting, but disheartening. Sivas voiced concerns about misinformation, disinformation and changes to the freedom of the press. “It’s almost like we’re living in 1984,” she said. “If you don’t say the ‘Gulf of America,’ you’re out.”

Townley, a student leader for CASI who interviewed Eisinger, reflected on the importance of continuing the conversation. “[CASI] is generally trying to create more space at the business school to have big picture conversations around how all sorts of organizations contribute to society,” said Townley. 

Originally the GSB’s Public Management Program, GSB professor and founding faculty director Anat Admati created CASI with hopes of educating GSB executives to be better citizens of the world.

Admati believes that understanding the media is central to that goal. “It’s always the media,” she said. “It’s hovering over everything we do.”