Reality Check Commentary: An MSNBC Interview About Campus Protests Gives Prime-Time Journalism Lessons
The public is best served when journalists inform, not lecture, writes NewsGuard Editorial Director Eric Effron
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An MSNBC Interview About Campus Protests Gives Prime-Time Journalism Lessons
By Eric Effron, NewsGuard Editorial Director
Protests over the Israel-Hamas war have placed a spotlight on the role and integrity of journalism. An interview last week by MSNBC prime-time host Joy Reid of Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, served as a vivid snapshot of our current discourse.
Columbia has been in the forefront of the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests, and Reid likely expected Cobb to be a comrade-in-arms in advancing her left-leaning perspective on the Israel-Hamas war and the protesters.
Reid: “I mean, the thing is, this is an anti-war protest. In the classic sense. They're literally against a war, and are being met with police brutality, but this is happening all over the country. At Emory, they used tear gas on students. Talk about the historical context.”
Reid’s prompt seemed primed for an emotional reaction, reflecting an expectation that Cobb would echo a familiar critique of police conduct and support the anti-war stance. But Cobb, a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker who has a doctorate in history, wasn’t biting.
Cobb: “So there's the free speech side of it and also an array of voices from other students, some of whom [are] OK if graduation doesn’t happen because they're so supportive of this. Many of whom are not. Some did not get to do school during the pandemic. Some didn’t get a high school graduation. That's kind of the complex — and then there are a lot of parents and other dynamics. It's more complicated than just the straightforward thing.” (Columbia subsequently canceled its main graduation ceremony.)
After taking another stab at drawing Cobb into her outrage, Reid ended the segment with what I sensed was some exasperation: “I think we have to have a larger conversation about the way these schools really are part of the military industrial complex,” she concluded.
In other words, a “larger conversation” with a different guest who would be more apt to agree with the premise of her questions.
This exchange was both discouraging and encouraging.
It was discouraging because it drove home the point that prime-time cable news is not the place to get fair-minded coverage. For the most part, the host lectures us, and then interviews like-minded guests. It’s one reason MSNBC.com fails NewsGuard’s criterion for separating news and opinion.
But the exchange was also encouraging because it turns out that the person in charge of training some of the next generation of journalists — Dean Cobb — clearly sees his role not as an advocate, but as a curious observer, aware of complexities and multiple perspectives, not as an advocate for one side.
That approach may not make for entertaining cable news segments on hot issues. But it can be, dare I say it, informative.
Eric Effron is the Editorial Director of NewsGuard. He previously oversaw legal and business news at Reuters.
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