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By Joe Arney

When early reports of Donald Trump’s behavior at the National Association of Black Journalists convention started to trickle in, Angie Chuang’s first thoughts were not as much about the candidate as they were about the men and women in attendance at the conference.

As a reporter, Chuang—now an associate professor of journalism at the College of Media, Communication and Information at the University of Colorado Boulder—was a member of the Asian American Journalists Association who attended many conferences like last week’s NABJ event.

“Going to conferences like that as a young reporter was so important to my career development, my morale and my mental health,” Chuang said. “They became moments for me to say I existed in this white world, but I can be with a group that relates to this and can get help with things I may not be able to ask about in the newsroom. They were times of revitalization for me.”

That sense of community and support was especially important to Chuang as the first reporter tasked with covering race and ethnicity for The Oregonian. At the time, in the early 2000s, newsrooms were beginning to come to grips with the need to diversify both their coverage and their correspondents.

The economic maelstrom devastating media companies has arrested efforts to bring more voices of color to newsrooms, she said, with less Black representation in the industry today than a decade ago.

“I expect a lot of journalists who did go to the NABJ event had to pay for their expenses, or take vacation days to attend,” Chuang said. “What’s lost in this discussion is the entire event shifted to this focus on Trump and the internal conflict in the organization, and I’m certain that as a result, journalists and students who went lost out on some of that solidarity.”

When low key goes high profile

NABJ and news organizations like it have welcomed presidential candidates to speak for decades—Chuang recalls seeing contenders like Bill Bradley and George W. Bush accept invitations—and those talks never generate much in the way of headlines. As Trump spoke—casting doubt on Vice President Kamala Harris’ Black heritage and belittling the female journalists hosting the panel—news organizations began immediately reporting his invective.  

Ironically—or perhaps not—Chuang said an issue worth discussing in a conference like this one is how to cover a candidate with a long history of making coded remarks that are racist or misogynistic. She said there’s a clear generational divide separating older journalists—who see their role as objectively reporting what newsmakers say—and younger ones who want to challenge lies and hate speech.

It is refreshing, she said, to see journalists thinking more critically about their place in writing that first draft of history, and while Trump is causing a lot of professional soul searching, much of that dates back to the 1990s and the establishment of the 24-hour news cycle. Suddenly, the ho-hum became headline news as broadcasters raced to fill airtime.

“The mainstream media lost context as the loudest, most outrageous personalities were able to insert themselves into the discourse around the most important issues,” she said.

Chuang said she’s grateful to not be in a position to decide what’s news and what’s not when it comes to Trump—the mainstream media has been excoriated for the bothsidesism it employed in covering the 2016 presidential campaign—but she is the author of a forthcoming book, American Otherness in Journalism: News Media Constructions of Identity and Belonging, that she’s had to extensively recast to consider the profound changes in how journalists think about and do their work in the Trump age. The book is due out next fall.

“It’s about how the mainstream news media has constructed American identity—and how it is conditional and different when people are either people of color or immigrants, or perceived as other in some way,” she said. “Trump has dramatically shifted the narrative with his coded speech about race—and talent for inserting himself into stories about race to ensure all the attention goes to him.”

Was the insatiable coverage of Trump’s remarks an example of important coverage of a newsmaker, or just amplifying red meat for his base? Even as a scholar whose expertise is the role of culture in constructing identities, and a reporter who covered such topics, Chuang admitted she isn’t always sure.  

“It is impossible to ignore these things, because they are racist and misogynistic, and they are emblematic of who he is,” she said. “And yet, it has this way of sucking the life out of all political discussion, crowding out more important issues and stories.

“We really need to train reporters to give more context, to take a breath and not just focus on being first out there. And I know that’s really hard, because the rewards for being first and getting those clicks ahead of the crowd are well established at this point. So I can’t blame the reporters who feel these moments are worth covering, because I feel as conflicted as they do.”

Photo by Charles Rex Arbogast of The Associated Press.