Patrick Radden Keefe is worried about the future of a free press in the United States. A renowned investigative journalist, he is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished nonfiction writers of his generation. The first time he left the country during Donald Trump’s first term, he says, he did not dare take his laptop with him for fear it might be seized when he returned through New York airport, the city where he lives. “For me, as an American who hasn’t broken the law, to be scared to pass through my own airport because I’m worried about a secret police, a modern-day equivalent of the Stasi, is very worrisome,” he says over coffee at a restaurant in Barcelona. At The New Yorker, the prestigious magazine where he has worked for the past 20 years, they are already thinking about what to do if the Department of Justice comes through the door with a search warrant. Radden Keefe, 50, a master of telling stories that read like novels but are in fact true accounts with meticulously verified details, made a major impact in 2019 with Say Nothing, a book that recounted the entire IRA conflict through the story of one family. He was in Barcelona to take part in the Biennial of Thought and to present his new book, London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth, the story of a young impostor, dazzled by the power of money, who becomes trapped in a spiral of lies and finds himself surrounded by mobsters in a London steeped in corruption. Question. Your new book explores a London shaped by offshore wealth and opaque corporate structures that are difficult to trace. What did you discover about the city during your research, and to what extent are politicians and public institutions responsible for allowing all of this to flourish?Answer. In the book, there is a quote from Boris Johnson, from when he was the mayor of London, saying London is to the billionaire as the jungles of Sumatra are to the orangutan. There were schools actively recruiting the children of Russian oligarchs, cultural institutions happy to take their money, and real-estate agents eager to cater to them. We live in very mercenary times. Have money? Welcome. Are you a criminal? We won’t ask questions. And I think, in a way, this is the story of our century: if you have enough money, it can be used to justify a multitude of sins. Q. We are facing a severe housing crisis. Your book mentions the luxurious apartments that stand empty. What are the social consequences of a real-estate market increasingly shaped by global wealth and less responsive to the needs of local residents?A. There used to be the idea that if you put in the work, you would eventually be able to buy a home. Many young people today are thinking about the short term; life is like a casino, I have to get rich quick. The person who spends years working honestly and saving a bit each month is a sucker, because they no longer receive the reward they once expected at the end of the road. And what happens then? That is one reason for the rise of cryptocurrencies and gambling among young people. They look for shortcuts to get rich quick. And all of this has to do with housing. This is the downstream consequence of a housing market in which the next generation is frozen out. Q. In an essay you wrote for the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), Fragile Truths, you said that you wanted to work for The New Yorker because it was a place where “objective truth was a thing, it existed and it could be discovered through rigorous reporting, and explained through artful prose.” Do we need truth?A. Yes. I think truth exists, science exists, facts exist. We live in an era in which everybody’s kind of living in their own little virtual reality, with social media and algorithms — there’s no longer a monoculture. That makes it difficult for many people to see that truth exists. It is essential that we acknowledge truth as a philosophical matter. And for journalists, truth is a process: you work toward an objective and must impose a rigorous method on yourself. For the last 20 years, we have heard that the big legacy media are in decline. I think there is now an opportunity for them, because we live in a time when people don’t trust what they see on their screens. We are swimming in an informational sewer. Having a place to turn to when you want to know what is true and what is not is essential for democracy. And for our sanity. Q. In many countries, including Spain, studies show trust in legacy media has fallen. What mistakes were made that led people to lose confidence in the press?A. I wouldn’t lay too much blame on the legacy media. Some opportunistic politicians found that it’s helpful to demonize the press. Donald Trump is a historically consequential figure. He is incredibly influential. He does certain things and their effects spread first through my country and then around the world. And when you have a phrase like “fake news…” —Q. Or alternative facts…A. Exactly. He says: don’t trust the press. And once you introduce that little drop of poison, that small dose of cyanide into the system, you break people’s trust. Social media accelerates that process. I think there is now an opportunity because most people, when they look at their phones, trust nothing they see. We have come to accept the idea that there are no experts, there is no science, you can’t trust anything. There is a kind of madness in that. I don’t think any of us want to live in a world like that. Q. What do you make of the growing use of artificial intelligence by writers? The issue raises a host of debates, one of them being where the line lies between assistance and authorship... A. I’m not a Luddite; I am not anti-AI. I think all technology is a tool —it’s a question of how you use it. I use it for very specific things. It is very helpful for translation. But you must be very careful when using it for research, because it hallucinates and makes things up. For me, the issue is simple: I don’t let it touch my writing. Any writer who does is a fool. The best way to become obsolete because of AI is to let AI write for you. What I say to young journalists is that if you’re doing your job in a way that AI could replace you, then you’re doing it badly and you probably will be replaced. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition