Through the last half century, the National Association of Black Journalists has emerged as a vital voice in American journalism, one that has held the media industry to account and fostered opportunities for professional advancement as well as mentoring for a new generation. Its annual gathering has also invited candidates to the center stage to be interviewed on issues relating to Black voters in every presidential election since 1976.
But never in its long and distinguished history has the NABJ found itself in a spotlight so glaring as right now, after former President Donald Trump made an appearance last week at the annual gathering in Chicago that was contentious and at times hostile; and where Trump falsely suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris had misled voters about her race. Trump’s statements unleashed a torrent of criticism and were condemned as racist and divisive.
It was just days after this seismic event in national politics that NABJ came together on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, in a partnership with Report for America, to host a panel discussion about the growing racial voter gap and its implications for democracy.
“What we saw as a result of Trump’s conversation with Black journalists was that there are questions that mainstream media has ignored, or didn’t know to ask,” Dorothy Tucker, former President of the NABJ and an award-winning, investigative reporter for CBS News Chicago, told The Martha’s Vineyard Times, which served as a local co-host of the event.
Tucker, a summer visitor to the Island and coordinator of the second annual partnership of NABJ and Report for America, added, “What this panel of journalists bring is more analysis, insight and to provide more useful information that Americans can use when they cast their vote.”
Reliable information and how to present it to young Black men was at the center of the conversation, in light of the efforts by the Republican Party to connect with this group: “[Young Black men] are not reading or watching legacy media. There is a direct effort to reach Black men by the GOP, and they are doing it with a very determined strategy that cuts across different demographic groups,” said Michele Norris, a columnist for The Washington Post Opinion Section and author of Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity. “The message is to suppress participation in the vote by young Black men. It is not just about apathy, but about a campaign outside of what we do that is intending to suppress the vote.” added Norris
Trump’s appearance last Wednesday in Chicago, where he falsely claimed that Harris, the first Black woman and Asian American to serve as vice president, had in the past only promoted her Indian heritage, was the other central point of the conversation.
“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said during a panel with journalists Kadia Goba of Semafor, Rachel Scott of ABC News and Harris Faulkner of Fox News.
Harris is the first Black woman and Asian American to serve as Vice President. She is the daughter of two immigrants, a Jamaican father and an Indian mother. As an undergraduate, Harris attended Howard University, one of the nation’s most prominent historically Black colleges and universities. As a U.S. senator, Harris was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
At a rally in Texas last week, Harris dismissed Trump’s false claims, saying the comments represented “the same old show” of divisiveness and disrespect from Trump and she said that “America deserves better.”
At the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs, a seaside town on Martha’s Vineyard with a rich history of African American heritage, the audience packed the pews to hear a panel of prominent Black journalists discuss Trump’s remarks as well as the effects of recent legislative changes on voting rights and on how best to ensure equal access to the polls.
The moderator, Paula Williams Madison, a longtime NBC News executive and principal owner of The Africa Channel, opened the discussion wanting to “set the record straight” on falsehoods that she said Trump had made about the NABJ organizers being late to start the program and having faulty audio.
She said that Trump’s campaign team arrived insisting that he would not agree to be fact-checked in real-time. There was a standoff, she said, when NABJ refused to change the plan to fact-check his remarks, and then he finally took the stage.
Regarding Trump’s claim that the program started late, Madison said, “No, actually he arrived late.”
And, she added, “He left earlier than anticipated.”
“The truth of the matter is that we were dealing with a candidate who pretty often was not telling the truth. We just wanted to preface our discussion today with this: All journalists, we deal with truth and fact,” said Madison to a resounding applause that led to the start of the conversation.
The panelists on stage included: Errin Haines, a co-founder and editor at large for The 19th and an MSNBC contributor; Wesley Lowery, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop; Michele Norris, a columnist for The Washington Post Opinion Section and author of Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity; and Trymaine Lee, correspondent for MSNBC, host of the “Into America” podcast and contributing writer to the “1619 Project.”
Vincent McCraw, a Report for America regional manager and local NABJ chapter president in Detroit, said, “The NABJ/RFA forum is a testament to the continued work of both organizations to sustain and support the work of journalists — particularly Black journalists. The forum’s topic on why voting matters offered critical and provocative insights from five of the nation’s leading journalists on the importance of journalism to provide reliable and honest coverage to audiences.”
The event was framed by the research in a recent report from the Brennan Center for Justice, which highlights a troubling decline in Black voter participation since the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision to weaken the Voting Rights Act. For decades, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 fostered progress toward voting equality, but recent changes have reversed these advancements, prompting urgent dialogue about the future of voting rights.
Several of the panelists stressed the theme that Black voters, particularly young Black male voters, are being targeted with misinformation.
Norris described the media landscape as “asymmetrical warfare” in which trusted, fact-checked journalism goes largely ignored as young audiences consume more ubiquitous social media littered with falsehoods.
Lowery agreed, adding that the forces of influence went beyond just national dialogue on social media and included deliberate Russian interference as “part of an explicit effort to suppress the black vote to sow chaos and distrust by leaning into America’s unresolved racial tension and inequity.”
He continued, “There is a coordinated effort by, not just domestic actors, but by foreign international enemies targeted at Black Americans specifically as a means to get us to voluntarily give up our power by giving up our vote, by saying this election is not legitimate, that none of these candidates are trustworthy.”
“Unfortunately often these foreign actors are spending time thinking about how they can reach Black men more than our major media corporations are more than our political campaigns are,” Lowery said.
Charles Sennott is the founder and editor in chief of The GroundTruth Project, home to Report for America which partnered with NABJ on the event. And serves as Publisher of The Martha’s Vineyard Times, which was a local sponsor.
The post Days after Trump’s panel, NABJ journalists reflect on disinformation and Black voters appeared first on The GroundTruth Project.
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