National Journalists Discuss Our Wild Election

NCS welcomed three journalists to campus Friday to answer questions on a range of issues surrounding the 2016 elections, from newspaper endorsements and the Republican Party's image to the extent to which news outlets facilitated Donald Trump's rise by providing him "free media."
 
Judy Woodruff, Ray Suarez, and Joy-Ann Reid tackled questions from NCS Upper and Middle School students in an hour-long assembly at the Underwood Athletic Center.
 
Woodruff, the co-anchor and managing editor of "PBS NewsHour," credited Trump's performance in early Republican presidential debates for giving him credibility among the media, which led to more news outlets giving him attention. "They started paying more attention to him and this phenomenon," she said, adding that the topic will likely be one addressed by "many term papers and doctoral dissertations in the years to come."
 
Reid, the host of MSNBC's "The Reid Report" and former managing editor of TheGrio.com, said, "You have to be media-friendly" to become president. Most of Trump's GOP rivals were not, while Trump "is probably the most media-friendly candidate we've ever had." He received $2 billion worth of free media attention—that is, coverage he didn't have to pay for—because he meant good ratings for TV networks that "became addicted to the entertainment value of Donald Trump."
 
"A politician who's willing to say outrageous things and say them on our air" was irresistible to TV executives, said Suarez, a longtime public-media journalist who most recently hosted a program on Al-Jazeera America. "He rewrote the book on how you run for president."
 
Reid agreed: "I think you're going to see more unconventional candidates try to run, whether for president or other offices, the way he did. They won't be necessarily to replicate it."
 
But, she noted, if Trump has changed how American elections are run in the future, so has Hillary Clinton. "A woman running for president of the United States: That, in and of itself, changes everything. It's a completely new paradigm for American politics."
 
A senior asked about whether Trump's campaign will transform the Republican Party's image, regardless of whether he is elected president. Reid said it was certain, noting that Trump's status as the party's standard-bearer is establishing young people's opinion of what a Republican is.
 
But she also noted that societal changes pose challenges for the GOP: "The Republican Party is becoming essentially a white political party, and our demographics in this country are changing. I look at this lovely group of you, as diverse as you are, and that's what America looks like," Reid said.
 
Suarez added that the Republican Party historically does well with married adults, but the number of unmarried adults is growing in the United States. "It's an enormous problem for the Republican Party," he said, but "Democrats would be fools to assume that they can just dine richly on this demographic gift and not deliver in policy terms to keep those voters."
 
The three speakers collectively have more than 75 years of newsroom experience, and some of the questions focused on journalism, including how news outlets decide whether and how much to pursue investigative stories and the divide between news and opinion in today's media environment. Reid noted that "crowd-sourced" reporting through social media has become central to modern journalism.
 
An assembly where journalists discuss the upcoming presidential election is a quadrennial tradition at NCS, and previous participants include Gwen Ifill, Tucker Carlson, Jim VandeHei, and Mary Kate Cary. (This was Woodruff's third time to take part, after 2004 and 2008.)
 
NCS extends our thanks to Reid, Suarez, and Woodruff for coming to the Close. We also thank social sciences teacher David Sahr and senior chaplain Eva Cavaleri for helping to bring in our guests. The NCS Center for Ethical Leadership and Service arranged today's assembly.
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    • Joy-Ann Reid, Ray Suarez, and Judy Woodruf

    • Upper School students introduce our speakers

    • Students had a chance after the assembly for some 1-on-1 Q&A.

    • Judy Woodruff with 10th-grade students.

    • Joy-Ann Reid with 10th-grade students.