Philadelphia Event to Be Streamed, Fact-Checked
The National Association of Black Journalists will host an in-person conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, NABJ announced Friday. “This event will feature an interview between Vice President Harris and NABJ member journalists. It will take place in Philadelphia — a city deeply tied to NABJ’s legacy,” it said.
The journalists conducting the interview were not identified. The event is to take place at public radio station WHYY, and streamed on WHYY’s platforms and NABJ’s YouTube and Facebook pages at 2:30 p.m. EDT, the organization said.
[Saturday night update:
[At 9:17 p.m. EDT, NABJ announced the panelists: Gerren Keith Gaynor, White House correspondent and managing editor of politics at theGrio; Eugene Daniels, “Playbook” co-author and White House correspondent for Politico; and Tonya Mosley, co-host of WHYY’s “Fresh Air with Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley.” Daniels is also president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.
[The choices address criticisms of the Aug. 1 panel composition — ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott, Fox News host Harris Faulkner and Semafor reporter Kadia Goba. Members cited the lack of Black men or a representative from the Black press, and questioned whether Faulkner of Fox News was an NABJ member. She was not. Faulkner later criticized Scott for causing an “emotional” start to the interview with Trump.
[NABJ leaders said then that they did not have much time to assemble the questioners. Paula Madison, a liaison between NABJ and the Harris campaign, told the Aug. 3 NABJ business meeting that, “In the debriefing we had, we said if we had it to do all over again, we would have had the Black press and [male] journalists on the panel.”]
Friday’s NABJ announcement continued, “PolitiFact will provide real-time fact-checking of the conversation via the #NABJFactCheck social media hashtag and through a live feed on the NABJ website. The event will be attended by NABJ professional and student members and 100 journalism and communications students from local HBCUs will be invited,” a reference to historically Black colleges and universities.
“It is not a campaign event, and it is not open to the public. . . . Seating is limited. Members and students interested in attending must RSVP by September 16 to attend.”
After a firestorm over its invitation to Donald Trump to participate in its Chicago convention, his subsequent interview by an NABJ panel, and failure to secure an appearance by the vice president along with Trump, NABJ President Ken Lemon said, “We are in talks about virtual options in the future” with Harris “and are still working to reach an agreement.” He later narrowed the timeline to September.
The upcoming appearance coincides with a White House national HBCU conference at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown from Sept. 15 to Sept. 19, Fallon Roth reported for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
It will be Harris’ 13th visit this year to Pennsylvania, the battleground state with the most electoral votes, Carmen Russell-Sluchansky noted for WHYY. Sarah J. Glover, a past NABJ president, is WHYY’s vice president of news.
Several members of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists were among the 44 journalists who met in Washington, D.C., to form NABJ in 1975. Today, NABJ’s affiliate chapter in Philadelphia is NABJ-Philly, although the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists still exists.
The Harris appearance also follows what has been overwhelmingly considered a triumph for the vice president in her debate Tuesday with Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.
“Harris’ campaign advisers made clear she will be doing more media interviews, including with unconventional outlets,” Politico reported afterward.
The debate with Trump — which might be the only encounter between the two before the election — was also significant in that four national Black media organizations simulcast it.
Eleven Black-press publishers or editors, some hosting local debate watch parties, delivered their analyses one by one for Word In Black’s YouTube audience. (Credit: YouTube)
That gave Black journalists and commentators at two of them — Word in Black, a consortium of publishers of the Black press, and the independent “Roland Martin Unfiltered” — an opportunity to provide Black-focused analysis immediately following the 90-minute event. BET and TheGrio TV simulcast the debate, but provided no commentary or analysis before or after.
For the “Word In Black” event, 11 publishers or editors, some hosting local debate watch parties, delivered their analyses one by one for a YouTube audience. Some, such as Tacuma Roeback of the Chicago Defender and A.R. Shaw of the Atlanta Daily World, wrote their own columns as well
“It’s critically important to hear Black voices and Black perspectives on this election (or literally anything) in a society that treats us like less than an afterthought,” Houston’s Aswad Walker, associate editor of the Defender Network, messaged Journal-isms afterward.
“The fact that Black media caught immediately a Harris/Trump debate moment that went viral (Harris’s long pause, saying ‘This………… former president’”), a moment white media didn’t notice, says all you need to know about the value and importance of our perspective. During that Harris pause, Black World did two things… 1) fill in the blanks with all the things we’d call Trump and 2) imagine all the colorful descriptors Harris wanted to call Trump. Whether planned or not by Harris, Blackworld and Black media noticed it.”
Joseph Williams, Word In Black deputy managing director, explained the origin of the event: “Our marketing team, led by Larry Lee and Patrick Washington, developed the idea during a PR committee call on August 20. They brought it to the leadership, which saw an opportunity to engage with our readership and bought in.
“Given the response – 1,300 emails collected and a lot of participation on the livestream – it’s safe to say we’re probably going to do it again. There’s a meeting and debrief on Monday where ideas will be discussed about more streaming. . . .”
Roland Martin kept his iPad open during the conversation so he could monitor social-media comments, such as LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the voting rights group Black Voters Matter, writing, “This wasn’t a debate; this was a declaration of leadership.” (Credit: YouTube)
Word In Black’s audience was relatively small compared with ‘Roland Martin Unfiltered,” a daily, streamed Black news show that Martin said started with an idea six years ago. It began with 157,000 subscribers on YouTube, Martin wrote on LinkedIn. “Today, it’s nearly 1.4 million. We’ve exceeded 1 billion views across multiple platforms.” At 1:06 a.m. Eastern, 16,447 were still watching on YouTube, though the debate itself ended at 9:30 p.m.
Martin’s conversation included eight academics and commentators in a would-be living room for analysis with a “just among us” feel. “Am I trippin’, am I trippin’?” asked one, remarking on Harris’ strong performance. But she quickly followed with, “We always have Black people who are the best or first, but they don’t always get the job.” Martin cautioned against overconfidence. “She has not won. She won a debate. She has not won the election,” Martin said of Harris. He outlined next steps, such as advocating early voting.
Publishers or editors participating in the Word In Black event were:
Elinor Tatum of the New York Amsterdam News, Alexis Taylor of the Afro-American in Baltimore; Juan Benn Jr. of the Washington Informer and the Hilltop at Howard University; Patrick Washington of the Dallas Weekly; Shaw of the Atlanta Daily World; Williamena Kwapo of the Sacramento (Calif.) Observer; Walker of the Houston Defender Network; Donnell Suggs of the Atlanta Voice; Roeback of the Chicago Defender; Jeremy Allen of the Michigan Chronicle and Alvin A. Reid of the St. Louis American.
