Journalist and advocate Kira Kay, the creator and executive director of the nonprofit news organization Bureau for International Reporting (BIR), drew a connection between her journalism background and her approach to human rights advocacy and international justice at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice’s annual lecture on Tuesday.
The BIR produces television news on international human rights and justice, focusing on overlooked foreign issues and regions. Kay, a former journalism professor at Princeton, said that the BIR’s goal is to “make nuanced stories understandable… for the average American who cares to tune in” and to educate the public about what “justice processes exist, expose their failings and spur public engagement around these issues.”
Speaking at Stanford Law School, Kay emphasized that her journalism skills — asking open-ended questions, hearing both sides of a story and understanding how to talk to vulnerable people — have been integral to her advocacy work.
“Journalists can go where others sometimes can’t, whether into the halls of power to question policymakers or deeply into the field to hear directly from victims,” Kay said.
Jessie Brunner, associate director of strategy and program development at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice, told The Daily that Kay’s talk “offered an inside look into the complex and challenging considerations journalists face to bring stories of human rights abuse and the path toward justice and reconciliation to American television audiences.”
In bringing attention to some of the less publicized global instances of human rights abuse, Kay has highlighted “just one of many paths that students might take as they pursue careers after Stanford,” Brunner added.
Drawing on clips of her work in Uganda, Cambodia, Argentina and Myanmar, Kay illustrated the role of journalism in producing evidence to inform the justice process, advance the rule of law, develop the capacity of local media and build cross-regional and institutional expertise.
“It’s very hard to cover one part of the world repetitively,” she said, noting that even major newspapers like The New York Times rarely cover the same parts of the world consistently, hoping to avoid losing readers’ interest. “But I can go to Cambodia, to Sierra Leone, to Bosnia, and see similarities… in a way that cross-references experiences.”
Kay also stressed the importance of finding a careful balance in stories between the perspectives of Western analysts, respected local voices and victims of human rights abuses themselves.
For students at the lecture, Kay’s work was compelling. “The storytelling of each clip was super powerful and helped us understand difficult situations like special courts in Cambodia and the ICC’s prosecution in absentia,” said Avery Miller ’26. “She brings crucial human rights issues to light through her work and is making a huge impact with her nonprofit journalistic efforts.”
Kay also discussed the challenges of attracting American readers’ interest in international human rights stories. “The elevator pitch you’re giving to your editor is why this matters to an American audience, not just why this is a bad situation that needs to be improved,” she said.
Touching on the ethical challenges for a journalist working in human rights, Kay said that she generally does not intervene on behalf of the people she interviews because her goal is to share a community’s problems as widely as possible.
“I want to help all the children who didn’t have the luck of the camera showing up at that right moment,” she said.