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Speaker 1: dot com to sign up, Hey, how you doing. My
Speaker 1: name is Roy Wood Jr. And this is a special
Speaker 1: edition of Beyond the Scenes Live from Austin, Texas at
Speaker 1: south By Southwest. Audience, how are you all doing? A
Speaker 1: big ye hawk to you if you don't know, we
Speaker 1: are the podcast that takes segments and topics that we've
Speaker 1: discussed on the Daily Show and we dig into those
Speaker 1: topics a little bit deeper, like this. This is what
Speaker 1: this podcast about. See, I like barbecues. We want to
Speaker 1: explain this podcast like barbecue. Okay, this this podcast is
Speaker 1: like that white piece of bread under the ribs that's
Speaker 1: soaked in the salt. You know, you you came for
Speaker 1: the ribs. You know, that's Trevor or Travling or the ribs.
Speaker 1: But then after you have the ribs, you're like, you
Speaker 1: know what, that little piece of bread was pretty good too.
Speaker 1: That's some good ass bread. So that's what this podcast is. Uh. Today,
Speaker 1: we're going to be breaking down the topic of what
Speaker 1: it means to be black in media. Specifically, we're talking
Speaker 1: about journalists and we're also talking about correspondence and their
Speaker 1: role in the newsroom. The newsroom, we all know it's
Speaker 1: a predominantly white place. And what is it like even
Speaker 1: pre George Floyd and post George Floyd and even pre
Speaker 1: Trump and post Trump in that era where people are
Speaker 1: already anti black, but to add anti media on top
Speaker 1: of that, some of the struggles that people deal with
Speaker 1: in that regard and also some of the solutions, and
Speaker 1: I'm very curious when I get to the panel on
Speaker 1: how they are able to release some of that stress.
Speaker 1: So without aside, it is my pleasure for us to
Speaker 1: meet our panelists today. Our first guest is the moderator
Speaker 1: of Washington Week PBS. She is also the Washington correspondent
Speaker 1: for NBC News. Ladies and gentlemen, your miche Al Cinder.
Speaker 1: Happy to be here, excited to be here, Oh thank you,
Speaker 1: swinging microphone around, swinging microphone. Just look, there we go,
Speaker 1: There we go? Can you hear used? In a second?
Speaker 1: There this next brother on the panel. The people listening
Speaker 1: can't see this amazing leather jacket, but that is definitely
Speaker 1: an amazing Texas jacket right there. They don't let you
Speaker 1: wear that on CBS News when you're anchoring. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm from CBS News and CBS Mornings, where he's also
Speaker 1: a correspondent ladies and gentlemen, Vladimir duty A, please give
Speaker 1: it up, hi, everybody. And our last panelist is someone
Speaker 1: that is now in the correspondent space, and she's been
Speaker 1: in there and in some capacities in the past for
Speaker 1: a lot of various positions, all across Washington, all over
Speaker 1: the Aisle. But now you will know her on May
Speaker 1: seven with her new show on MSNBC and Peacock. It
Speaker 1: will debut in May. She is Simone D. Sanders' reading's
Speaker 1: happy to be here now, before we get into the
Speaker 1: conversation with the panel about what it means to be
Speaker 1: black in journalism, Like I said, Beyond the Scenes is
Speaker 1: a show that's derivative of topics that we have already
Speaker 1: breached on The Daily Show. So let's roll a quick
Speaker 1: clip of the last time I talked about what it
Speaker 1: means to be black in media. This clip is from
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen. When you're blacking on TV, people say,
Speaker 1: awesome stuff. Do you like this the post colonial victim?
Speaker 1: I don't get it. Sorry, yeah, no, you don't think
Speaker 1: Gary Busey and that ain't even the worst stuff. Say
Speaker 1: you're a cocaine dealer and you kind of look like
Speaker 1: one a little bit. He just said that out loud.
Speaker 1: Most people would have cussed that dude out. But if
Speaker 1: you're a black journalist, you gotta keep your cool. Talk
Speaker 1: journalists constantly have to bite their tongue they come closer
Speaker 1: to the line, but God bless them, they never cross
Speaker 1: it because if they do, then they'll be labeled an
Speaker 1: angry black man. You can't be emotional about anything. Black
Speaker 1: journalists keeping it together. It's one of the few things
Speaker 1: moving the conversation on rates forward. So I salute the
Speaker 1: brave men and women of cable news because best believe
Speaker 1: if I was in your shoes, I wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to hold myself back. I'm just tired of the police
Speaker 1: getting the brunt of everything that's going on inside the
Speaker 1: Chicago New People. And so with that aside, let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and get into our conversation now and what it
Speaker 1: means to be black and journalism and media. Uh some morning.
Speaker 1: I want to start with you because you know your
Speaker 1: Mesh and Vladimir, I know that you all deal with
Speaker 1: a lot of that stress, but it's often in a
Speaker 1: construct but you can't exactly custom people out the way
Speaker 1: you want to. But simone because We've seen you on
Speaker 1: the various news talk shows, Siman, and you're very You're
Speaker 1: very curse. Has there been a time, For the record,
Speaker 1: I have never cursed. There has there has. Obviously there
Speaker 1: have been times where I would like to curse, but
Speaker 1: I have never cursed, because in the back of my head,
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, I want to come back to work
Speaker 1: the next day. I do remember very vividly there was
Speaker 1: a time where someone I used to be a commentator
Speaker 1: on CNN. I was political commentator. Um and I've worked
Speaker 1: in all various spaces in places in the news, but
Speaker 1: at that time, I was a political commentator. After I
Speaker 1: worked for Senator Bernie Sanders is his press secretary when
Speaker 1: he ran for president. That's why I met you meet
Speaker 1: she was on the campaign trail and was on the
Speaker 1: Bernie beat. My phone it's filled with baby Simone pictures.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of pictures of Simone standing next
Speaker 1: to Bernie Sanders. Here we go, travel it all over
Speaker 1: the country together with this one, and I'm on this
Speaker 1: panel of CNN. It was post Charlie Ittsville and we're
Speaker 1: talking about you know, in the Trump area, you talked
Speaker 1: about things like white supremacy, every day, and you know, racism,
Speaker 1: and you argued about whether it was real, which is
Speaker 1: kind of insane given what we have all witnessed and
Speaker 1: seen in our television. C C January six and post
Speaker 1: Charlottesville were having a conversation about the people who had
Speaker 1: gotten the permit to have the neo Nazi rally march,
Speaker 1: because you gotta get a permit to do that. And
Speaker 1: the gentleman that I was on with former Attorney General
Speaker 1: of UM Virginia, King Kuccinelli, he told me that he
Speaker 1: told me to shut up. He said, Tom, you just
Speaker 1: shut up for a minute and let me talk. And
Speaker 1: I was like, And then Chris Cuomo was on in
Speaker 1: the morning at that time, and I remember Chris saying, oh, now, Ken,
Speaker 1: we don't talk to people like that. And I was like,
Speaker 1: he sure doesn't talk to me like that, No, he doesn't.
Speaker 1: You can shut up like you're kind to excuse white
Speaker 1: supremacy on this program and I will not stand by
Speaker 1: and let it happen. And he's like, well, how do
Speaker 1: you get them to stop talking? I'm like, I'm right here.
Speaker 1: That was an excuse. Look at that, not even how
Speaker 1: they got the permit, And can I finish someone, well,
Speaker 1: you just shut up for a minute and let me
Speaker 1: shut up National television. Do you get to both of
Speaker 1: you stopped for a second, can hold on a second?
Speaker 1: You need a reset, You need a reset. It was crazy,
Speaker 1: It was crazy. It was so crazy. So that was
Speaker 1: a moment where I am glad that no curse words
Speaker 1: came out of my mouth, because that is not okay
Speaker 1: from morning television's television period. But it was insane. What's
Speaker 1: the name of your book that you just wrote, No,
Speaker 1: you shut up speaking truth to power and we claiming
Speaker 1: America and took his line and flip them Livings and eliminade.
Speaker 1: Now you had have been, you know, covering Washington for
Speaker 1: quite a while, and you have had some things said
Speaker 1: to you. You know, we can just start. Let's just
Speaker 1: start with Trump and in the thick of just asking
Speaker 1: very valid questions, very basic, rudimentary level reporter to leader
Speaker 1: of the free world questions, and you've been calling I
Speaker 1: want to get this right, and I'm quoting them. You've
Speaker 1: been called by the President then President racist, nasty, untruthful,
Speaker 1: and you're also told to not be threatening. How do
Speaker 1: you keep your composure in those moments when you're having
Speaker 1: nasty interactions, not just with Trump, but with anyone within
Speaker 1: the administration that is trying to shoot you away or
Speaker 1: dismiss questions that represent the valid concerns of the public.
Speaker 1: How do you keep your composure, because that composure is
Speaker 1: an important ingredient in being able to do your every
Speaker 1: day Um there are a couple ways that I that
Speaker 1: I deal with that, and I think there are two
Speaker 1: big ways. The first is that I want to keep
Speaker 1: my job. And I think that as a black woman,
Speaker 1: you get this muscle that you have learned to use
Speaker 1: over and over again because people say crazy things to
Speaker 1: you all your life. So but long before Trump called
Speaker 1: me nasty, someone told me I wasn't pretty enough to
Speaker 1: be on TV, and editor told me I wasn't smart
Speaker 1: enough to be in their news room. I didn't look
Speaker 1: confident enough to be a reporter. Black people everywhere walking
Speaker 1: around do all sorts of things to make sure that
Speaker 1: they survive interactions with the police, that they survive interactions
Speaker 1: with their with their supervisors, and they survive interactions at
Speaker 1: the hospital. UM So, I think, honestly, when I think
Speaker 1: about sort of how I was able to keep my composure,
Speaker 1: it's that as a black woman. I had used that
Speaker 1: muscle so many times now. I will also say that
Speaker 1: my mother is a hot blooded Haitian lady, and she
Speaker 1: was like, whose daughter are you? Like, I don't understand
Speaker 1: how Trump is screaming at you and you're coming back
Speaker 1: and be like, sir, do we have enough test for
Speaker 1: COVID or not? Um? But the second part of that
Speaker 1: question is that when I think about March, people were scared,
Speaker 1: and I could feel it in my bones that we
Speaker 1: were a country who needed answers. We needed to know
Speaker 1: if our grandmother got sick, was she gonna have a ventilator?
Speaker 1: I wanted to know if their states needed more mass,
Speaker 1: were we actually able to provide them that. I was
Speaker 1: having family members call me up who were getting fired
Speaker 1: from dry cleaners, makeup artists, who didn't have jobs. Um,
Speaker 1: my mother who was working in the school systems. She
Speaker 1: was retired now. But I was thinking about all of
Speaker 1: those people and thinking, they're watching TV and like, while
Speaker 1: it might be funny to see kind of this character
Speaker 1: of a president screaming at people, in reality people were like, okay,
Speaker 1: but are we like, apart from all this craziness, are
Speaker 1: you ready or not? And that was like a question
Speaker 1: that I kept on asking, and I wanted to keep
Speaker 1: asking because I think that we as a nation needed answers.
Speaker 1: So I think it's that double It's the it's the
Speaker 1: double consciousness that the boys always talked about. It's one
Speaker 1: having sort of the real responsibility of a journal us
Speaker 1: in my mind, but also just being black and really
Speaker 1: realizing that I know how to survive crazy frankly crazy
Speaker 1: people screaming at me, and especially crazy powerful men screaming
Speaker 1: at me. I'm like, it's it's one of those things
Speaker 1: you just go, oh, yeah, that makes sense. You've been
Speaker 1: a disrespectful for so long that that's just some new disrespect. Ladimir,
Speaker 1: When you got into journalism, were you are aware at
Speaker 1: the time, you know how much backlash there would be
Speaker 1: with where we are now in media and the role
Speaker 1: that your race plays into being able to either cover
Speaker 1: or not cover a story or dealing with the with
Speaker 1: the bullshit in the newsroom. Um. Yeah, because for me,
Speaker 1: what you described is as a muscle. For me, I've
Speaker 1: always equated it to uh I absorbed body blows, and
Speaker 1: I've always likened myself to Muhammad Ali uh facing George Foreman,
Speaker 1: and Ali is getting those blows, he's getting punched, and
Speaker 1: everybody's saying he's gonna go down, He's gonna go down.
Speaker 1: But you know, Ali used to do that thing where
Speaker 1: he would just go not gonna get me, not gonna
Speaker 1: get me. He would shake his head right. And that
Speaker 1: has been my existence, Yemish, yours, your father's yours. That's
Speaker 1: been our existence for since we first came here. And
Speaker 1: I think that the what you're seeing, what you heard
Speaker 1: from Yrmish and and Simone was high profile for four
Speaker 1: millions of people watching CNN right with CNN, yeah, um
Speaker 1: and for Yumish the president of the United States. But
Speaker 1: what that was indicative of is what happens in newsrooms
Speaker 1: and in boardrooms all across America every single day from
Speaker 1: the day. I remember once I did a story UM
Speaker 1: in the wake of the terrorist attacks in France, and
Speaker 1: UM I had done a story, a series of stories
Speaker 1: on the surrounding neighborhoods in Paris where most of the
Speaker 1: young people UM were mostly from from Africa, from West Africa.
Speaker 1: And I came back and I was talking to somebody
Speaker 1: in the newsroom and he said to me, man, that
Speaker 1: was really powerful reporting that you did. I gotta think, man,
Speaker 1: you know those people, the Muslims that live in some
Speaker 1: of those neighborhoods, they're like the n words of France.
Speaker 1: And I was like, did he just write? And and
Speaker 1: he said it so casually, just came off his lips
Speaker 1: like you know, and I was like, well, no, not really,
Speaker 1: and all right, I gotta go, and you know, and
Speaker 1: I you know, my head as I walked away, I
Speaker 1: thought to myself, isn't that isn't that the time when
Speaker 1: you go to somebody and you go, what do you
Speaker 1: say to me? Like you step up to them and
Speaker 1: you say something. But I just remember thinking to myself,
Speaker 1: like this is so par for the course. I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm kind of phased, but I'm not that phased. Or
Speaker 1: when another person I don't have any hair if you
Speaker 1: can't tell it right, and I tell my mom it's
Speaker 1: my choice. But but this one dude in the newsroom
Speaker 1: was like, hey, glad, what's up? And he like, must
Speaker 1: my hair? Like as like like patting me on the head.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I'm a fifty year old man,
Speaker 1: and you know, and this person just like man handled
Speaker 1: me in a way that I haven't been like man
Speaker 1: handled ever, not even by my father. They ever did that,
Speaker 1: you know, and I didn't. I just remember just being
Speaker 1: kind of shocked that he did it, but also having
Speaker 1: sort of no recourse because that's just kind of the
Speaker 1: way it is, these little microaggressions that happen over time,
Speaker 1: and and I knew them because I came from a
Speaker 1: different industry. I spent twenty years in global finance before
Speaker 1: I became a reporter, and so I witnessed it there too,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't new for me. And as you said,
Speaker 1: as Simone indicated, you know, it's just one of those
Speaker 1: things that you know, sort of grin embarrassed. I also
Speaker 1: think part of it is because my parents, like Emisha's,
Speaker 1: are immigrants, um, And if I came home from school
Speaker 1: one day and I said, you know, I could use
Speaker 1: the N word on me, my mom would say, so, like,
Speaker 1: just get good grades because he'll be a custodian and
Speaker 1: you'll be a doctor or you'll be a lawyer, you know,
Speaker 1: and like they they I think sometimes grants have these
Speaker 1: blinders on either side that say, yeah, it's it sucks
Speaker 1: that you got called the N word, or it sucks
Speaker 1: that you're being bullied because you're dressing black all the time.
Speaker 1: But but the reality is, look what we came from
Speaker 1: to give you this life, and you can grin and
Speaker 1: bear it if we had to grin and bear what
Speaker 1: we went through to get you here, beautiful. When did
Speaker 1: you all realize that you were black in media and
Speaker 1: not just in media, because, like, I know that we
Speaker 1: have this responsibility as black people to focus on issues
Speaker 1: that affect our people because we go back to those
Speaker 1: communities and we we got neighbors and home homeboys from
Speaker 1: high school and people you kick it with and they're
Speaker 1: going through real stuff? Is there? When did you first
Speaker 1: have that realization? And also, like the bigger part of it,
Speaker 1: are y'all ever concerned about being labeled like only focusing
Speaker 1: on the black stuff? Why do you want pitching the
Speaker 1: black stuff? Like, are you ever afraid of that stigma
Speaker 1: of being the race reporter? I'm not And I say
Speaker 1: that because I think I want. I really love black
Speaker 1: people so and I was raised by Haitian immigrants who
Speaker 1: really taught me to love the history of black people.
Speaker 1: Haiti being you know, the first country in the Western
Speaker 1: hemisphere where enslaved people wrestled their freedom from white masters
Speaker 1: kicked them out of the country. Even we've been having
Speaker 1: all sorts of issues after that. But the pride that
Speaker 1: you get from growing up Haitian, for me, UM has
Speaker 1: made it so that I'm unequivocally invested in telling stories
Speaker 1: about immigrants and black people while also making sure that
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to tell stories about Ukraine and China
Speaker 1: and all the other stuff. UM. I had some well
Speaker 1: meaning mentors, well meaning people, UM, black people who told me,
Speaker 1: you know, be very careful about telling too many stories
Speaker 1: about black people, because you'll be pigeonholed. Because they had
Speaker 1: their experiences. Sometimes they were the first black reporter at
Speaker 1: the New York Times or other places where they could
Speaker 1: not do anything but tell stories about black people. I'm
Speaker 1: lucky that while I've had some interactions with editors who say,
Speaker 1: you know, you're you need to be really careful, I've
Speaker 1: had a lot of editors who say, no, we understand
Speaker 1: that you have an expertise and you should do that. UM.
Speaker 1: I think about Trayvon Martin. So I was in my
Speaker 1: twenties when Trayvon got killed. UM, and I was in
Speaker 1: a newsroom at the US at USA Today, and we
Speaker 1: were having this national conversation about whether or not Trayvon
Speaker 1: was a troublemaker? Was he a bad kid? And I
Speaker 1: sort of was like, well, when I grew up in Miami,
Speaker 1: I went I grew up literally across the street from
Speaker 1: one of his high schools. My cousins went to school
Speaker 1: with him, And I was like, a seventeen year old
Speaker 1: who smokes weed, who has gold teeth, who likes m
Speaker 1: m A is every seventeen year old in Miami. There's nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing at all different about this kid than the person
Speaker 1: that you're standing that standing in your news room right now.
Speaker 1: And I was very, very vocal about that, and I
Speaker 1: had editors, I would say, some of them white men
Speaker 1: who had my back, who said, no, she's smart and
Speaker 1: she's accurate, and she's gonna do this. So I think
Speaker 1: for me, Um, I've never really shot away from it.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, your last question or one
Speaker 1: of your questions about sort of when did you realize
Speaker 1: you were black and media, I'll say, I mean, I
Speaker 1: always knew I was black, and I always sort of
Speaker 1: knew that, right like I always feel like I knew
Speaker 1: going into the industry because I I got into into
Speaker 1: journalism because of the story of Emmett till So I
Speaker 1: mean not in that I knew exactly why I wanted
Speaker 1: to get into media was was tied to civil rights.
Speaker 1: But when Ferguson happened and cities were on fire, and
Speaker 1: I was able to walk around and tell stories in
Speaker 1: a way that a lot of people couldn't because they
Speaker 1: didn't people didn't see them to have credibility in the community.
Speaker 1: Because people were talking about looters and I was getting
Speaker 1: walked to my car while people were trying to steal
Speaker 1: Gray Goose. They were like, hey, lady, you need to
Speaker 1: walk into my guests. Please walk me into my car.
Speaker 1: Like like you quote unquote looter helped me out. Like
Speaker 1: I just was like, oh yeah, I'm being black comedians,
Speaker 1: this is all right. I can cover the protest. I
Speaker 1: will go to the right all by myself and be fine,
Speaker 1: like simone. Like even with your MSNBC show, as you
Speaker 1: start to shape what the conversations are that you focus
Speaker 1: on week to week, does that sit in the back
Speaker 1: of your mind of where does race player role in
Speaker 1: the thing is that I'm passionate about or opinion to
Speaker 1: be damned about what you think about the types of
Speaker 1: stuff that I want to talk about. You know, when
Speaker 1: I. I I came to the world of media via politics,
Speaker 1: and I remember my first like big political job was
Speaker 1: working for Senator Sanders. I had worked a number of
Speaker 1: campaigns before that, UM, but at nobody either had a
Speaker 1: concept that I had worked anywhere before that. They thought, okay, uh,
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders and his black people, he's gonna hire this
Speaker 1: black lady. Hopefully she knows how to do her job.
Speaker 1: So when I left the campaign and then started to
Speaker 1: do all these other things, particularly and UM media, there
Speaker 1: were lots of people like me says that you know,
Speaker 1: people told her that she you basically didn't look like
Speaker 1: a correspondent, You didn't look like a reporter. I had
Speaker 1: agents tell me that I wasn't really palatable enough for
Speaker 1: cable television. And this was after I had served as
Speaker 1: somebody's national spokesperson for a presidential campaign where I was
Speaker 1: on TV almost every day. I had people tell me that, um,
Speaker 1: I didn't sound like what people were used to hearing
Speaker 1: when they turned on the television. And what that meant
Speaker 1: is that I didn't sound like a old white man
Speaker 1: or old white lady, because those are the people on
Speaker 1: TV at the time. Switch Yeah, yeah, that I was
Speaker 1: just like okay, and maybe maybe I was a little
Speaker 1: too bald, too black, or too big. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I looked like it's for a while.
Speaker 1: So when I started doing uh, when I started being
Speaker 1: a commentator, and this plays into the things that I
Speaker 1: think about now as I'm building my show. Um. I
Speaker 1: had somebody tell me once, a black man who has
Speaker 1: been in the TV space for a very long time,
Speaker 1: and he called me up when I first got a contract,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, I want you to know something.
Speaker 1: You are not light skin, skinning with long hair. And
Speaker 1: I said facts and he said, so because of that,
Speaker 1: there are just some things that you specifically cannot do
Speaker 1: and cannot say because whether you like it or not,
Speaker 1: people will hear it differently and take it differently coming
Speaker 1: from you, and people feel whenever I tell that story,
Speaker 1: people feel different ways about it. But the reality is
Speaker 1: that it is true. And so I don't approach I've
Speaker 1: never approached like TV and I'm not approached in my show,
Speaker 1: like how can I speak for black people? Because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm black. Every day, you know, I wake up every morning.
Speaker 1: It's a black woman. One word. Um. People always say,
Speaker 1: you know, during the a couple of years ago, everybody
Speaker 1: we would get on TV and folks would say, why
Speaker 1: do you always have to talk about race? Why are
Speaker 1: you trying to make it about race? And the reality
Speaker 1: is that it is always about race for me. Every
Speaker 1: time I leave the house, people are making judgments about me,
Speaker 1: what I think, what I can do, what I know,
Speaker 1: who I am, what I believe, how much money I
Speaker 1: have based on the fact that I'm a black woman
Speaker 1: one word. They don't they don't see that I'm They
Speaker 1: don't they don't even get the concept that I'm from
Speaker 1: Nebraska and grew up going to Catholin School my entire life.
Speaker 1: Somebody or I was like, what, Nebraska, Yes, there are
Speaker 1: black people there. Okay, Malcolm X's from Nebraska, y'all. So
Speaker 1: as I'm putting together the kind of show that I
Speaker 1: want to do I want to do, I've been telling
Speaker 1: the folks at MSNBC, I'm excited to do the news
Speaker 1: and people are like, oh, okay. And so one of
Speaker 1: the exacts told me they said, you know, I did
Speaker 1: not think you were gonna come here saying you want
Speaker 1: to do the news, but we're gonna say you want
Speaker 1: to tell people your story? And I was like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I want to do the news because yeah, I do
Speaker 1: the hand story, and I thought that was I think
Speaker 1: it's great that I'm surprising people because for so long,
Speaker 1: so many people that don't look like us sitting here
Speaker 1: get to have gotten to decide what the news is.
Speaker 1: The news is, yes, Ukraine, China, what the president said today,
Speaker 1: where the vice president traveled. The news is also what
Speaker 1: is happening in media and politics. The news is also
Speaker 1: this thing that happened in north Omaha, Nebraska, predominantly African
Speaker 1: American part of the city. The news was happening in Chicago,
Speaker 1: and it's not just a shooting, Okay. The news is
Speaker 1: how Detroit is emerging as a new culture hub and uh,
Speaker 1: fashion houses are going there and they've got this great
Speaker 1: opera opening on Malcolm X. Okay, Malcolm X is becoming
Speaker 1: an opera. Like that is the news, and I get
Speaker 1: to decide what the news is because it's my show. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: same point about assimilation. There's a book about ESPN and
Speaker 1: the oral history of the history of that network, and
Speaker 1: they talk about when Stewart Scott first came to that
Speaker 1: network and how a lot of people at that network
Speaker 1: didn't like the way Stewart Scott went about doing sports
Speaker 1: high lights. Broadcast. It's very you know, it's it to me.
Speaker 1: Broadcast is the one medium of journalism that leaves the
Speaker 1: least amount of space for creative improvisation, and like it
Speaker 1: is the last like it's the last place where they go,
Speaker 1: all right, you can do something a little differently. Did
Speaker 1: you ever run into that pressure where you have a
Speaker 1: pressure by people to not be the style of journalists
Speaker 1: that you are now not really and and I will say,
Speaker 1: first of all, um, just to jump off your last
Speaker 1: question and wrap it up with this one. I went
Speaker 1: to Africa. That's how much I realized that I was
Speaker 1: a black reporter. I raised my hand. Is anybody here Nigeria,
Speaker 1: American or from Nigeria? Yes? Okay, so i I I
Speaker 1: CNN sent me to West Africa to be to Nigeria,
Speaker 1: to Legos, Nigeria, to be there West Africa correspondent. And
Speaker 1: and first of all, kudos to them for for recognizing
Speaker 1: that it was important to have a black person telling
Speaker 1: stories on the continent um, which I think is important,
Speaker 1: although there are obviously white Africans as well, um. And
Speaker 1: and for me, there was something beautiful about telling stories
Speaker 1: about humanity, the same stories that we tell here. Car crash,
Speaker 1: you know, a kidnapping, um, an agriculture minister that wants
Speaker 1: to you know, uh, you know, grow a certain crop
Speaker 1: in a country and make that a number one export.
Speaker 1: Like these are the things that in a normal world
Speaker 1: happen every single day, but in our country they are
Speaker 1: tinged with this um. You know, with the things that
Speaker 1: we're talking about here, and it was so refreshing. Can
Speaker 1: I just tell you it was how refreshing it was
Speaker 1: just to be a reporter and never in fact, and
Speaker 1: this goes to your question. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I think has always been and I'm very aware of this, UM,
Speaker 1: and I've talked about this with other reporters, black reporters,
Speaker 1: reporters of color, is that even for me, I am
Speaker 1: sometimes some of the things that you Mesh and someone
Speaker 1: are talking about don't affect me. Why because I'm a
Speaker 1: man number one and two because I'm also a light
Speaker 1: skinned black man, and that has you know, when you're
Speaker 1: from a multi ethnic background, you're in these two different
Speaker 1: worlds where you are something like sometimes the probably the
Speaker 1: reason that that one dude use the N word around
Speaker 1: me is because he was Somebody probably went to him
Speaker 1: afterwards or like did you say that? And for oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I didn't realize. I didn't realize that,
Speaker 1: oh you know, and so and even then when he
Speaker 1: said that, I remember thinking to myself that that could
Speaker 1: be one of the reasons that that happened. UM. And
Speaker 1: so that is my privilege, that it's my lane of
Speaker 1: privilege that I have that these two young women don't have.
Speaker 1: And I recognize that as well. So to the question
Speaker 1: that you asked about, you know, having those sort of coats,
Speaker 1: which Stewart was a a trailblazer for everybody who's on television,
Speaker 1: like point blank. But and and from that, I took that, look,
Speaker 1: this is who I am, you know. When I joined
Speaker 1: CBS News. CBS News is the most traditional of the
Speaker 1: three UH legacy broadcasts UM networks, I think UM and
Speaker 1: certainly it is buttoned up, but I'm not that buttoned
Speaker 1: up when I'm in the field, when I'm reporting on terrorism,
Speaker 1: when I'm in When I was in Ferguson, that was
Speaker 1: my first big story for CNN for CBS, I thought
Speaker 1: it was weird to be in the streets, you know,
Speaker 1: interviewing people protesting every night and in a suit and tie.
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't that doesn't make any sense
Speaker 1: to me. So I'm gonna address like I would when
Speaker 1: I'm doing any story that requires, you know, me to
Speaker 1: sort of be in the crowd, be with people, and
Speaker 1: to not stand apart from them. I don't want to
Speaker 1: stand upon. The reason I became a reporter is not
Speaker 1: to stand apart from people. I don't want to go
Speaker 1: into a situation, even a dangerous one with security. I
Speaker 1: want to be my authentic self and CBS News has
Speaker 1: allowed me to do that. And so I think that
Speaker 1: Stewart and people that came before him did sort of
Speaker 1: open up that door a little bit to allow us
Speaker 1: to not be Like when I first got to you know,
Speaker 1: when I first started working in news, people would say
Speaker 1: to me when I got into the tracking booth, which
Speaker 1: is where you actually do your pieces and you're supposed
Speaker 1: to you know, they would say, Hey, did you listen
Speaker 1: to that reporter you know who's white, who's from you know,
Speaker 1: West Texas? Can you sound like that guy? And I
Speaker 1: was like no, because, like, first of all, why would
Speaker 1: you want that? Why would you want me to sound
Speaker 1: like that person? Why wouldn't you want me to sound
Speaker 1: like me? And eventually, what you do realize, to be fair,
Speaker 1: is that in the news business, they're always nervous about
Speaker 1: anybody that's new when you come into this news business,
Speaker 1: and they do kind of want you to behave a
Speaker 1: certain way that they know, quote unquote works. And I
Speaker 1: remember what black producer saying to me, dude, dude, don't
Speaker 1: worry about it. He's like, you know, you're gonna they're
Speaker 1: gonna go in there and they're gonna say, can you
Speaker 1: please sound like that person? Can you please sound like
Speaker 1: this person? Can you sound like And then six months
Speaker 1: into the job, they're gonna be like to the next
Speaker 1: guy that comes in, can you sound like glad? Because
Speaker 1: that's what we want And that ultimately is what happened.
Speaker 1: But it wouldn't have happened without people like like Stewart. Okay,
Speaker 1: So to your point bleat about having a black producer
Speaker 1: and being a black reporter post George Floyd, right, we are,
Speaker 1: we are, We know what happened. Every corporation that we
Speaker 1: love black people and we promised to hire all of
Speaker 1: the blacks that have done everything black people coming for us,
Speaker 1: and we love you and we want you to know
Speaker 1: how much we love. Look, we put black lives matter,
Speaker 1: and I wonder if our building how much of that
Speaker 1: you know, that's how they sell. How much of that
Speaker 1: corporate kumbaye ya that was happening in trickled down to
Speaker 1: the to your respective news rooms for real and for
Speaker 1: positive have there? Have you all seen changes in your
Speaker 1: newsrooms with regards to staffing and the types of stories
Speaker 1: that you're allowed to cover. I will say for CBS News,
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of CBS we have. Uh. First of all,
Speaker 1: are our our vice president News just became the first
Speaker 1: black female network news president, Kim Godwin family. Every time
Speaker 1: I'm around FAMIU people, I feel like I should have
Speaker 1: gotten a Famiu Kim Godwin, who's now running a network.
Speaker 1: And of course Rashida Jones at MSNBC, but at CBS
Speaker 1: News specifically Terry Stewart, who's our executive vice president of
Speaker 1: News as a black woman. UH Ingrid Cyprian Matthews, who
Speaker 1: is in charge of all of news gathering for CBS
Speaker 1: News is Afro Latina. UM. The producer of my show
Speaker 1: The CBS Warnings, Sean Thomas is a black woman. UM.
Speaker 1: And you've got Gayle King on our air. You've got
Speaker 1: Dareka Duncan, You've got Michelle Miller. Um, You've got me.
Speaker 1: You've got Jeff pa Gays in Washington, we Ja Jang
Speaker 1: covers the White House. I feel like we are one
Speaker 1: of the most incredibly diverse newsrooms in America. UM. And
Speaker 1: can it be better? Of course, it can always be better,
Speaker 1: But there's a cognizant, there's a there's an understanding that
Speaker 1: people like us, like myself, like like Weigia, like Michelle,
Speaker 1: like Darika, like Gail, that that we matter and our
Speaker 1: perspective is integral to the jobs that we do as
Speaker 1: journalists for CBS News. So I'm very proud of that.
Speaker 1: I would echo. You know, I'm new to MSNBC. I
Speaker 1: just I became a member of the family in January,
Speaker 1: and that was through the leadership of Rashida Jones, MSNBC
Speaker 1: network President. And Rashida came up through the ranks. You know,
Speaker 1: she knows how to produce a show, she knows how
Speaker 1: to line produce. She she's she's an executive now with
Speaker 1: the perspective of so many various folks in the newsroom,
Speaker 1: and an executive that knows that there are lots of
Speaker 1: people that watch our network and because there are a
Speaker 1: number of different MSNBC viewers, this is a place where
Speaker 1: you can go and get many things. She's investing in
Speaker 1: and streaming and various voices. I mean, Aimon Moyodeine has
Speaker 1: a show. Whence the last time you heard somebody named
Speaker 1: Amon Moyodeine with a show on television? And on streaming Okay,
Speaker 1: she found and hired excellent great talent like myself, folks
Speaker 1: liking me sho okay coach amiss and brought the great
Speaker 1: Yamish over two jobs. Two jobs. She hosts the show
Speaker 1: and Washington correspondent Joy Reid is in prime time. There's
Speaker 1: a black woman who has a show in prime time
Speaker 1: that people watch. Uh, Tiffany Cross has a show now
Speaker 1: on weekends like Jonathan ca Part hosts the show The
Speaker 1: Sunday Show on Sundays. Rashida Jones did that, and so
Speaker 1: I would just say that I think, um m s
Speaker 1: and i' let's not forget I mean on NBC News
Speaker 1: unless to hope that people are watching at night when
Speaker 1: they're watching their nightly news channels. So I agree with
Speaker 1: Flat it can always be better, but there have been
Speaker 1: intentional people have to be intentional about seeing and hearing
Speaker 1: people both in front of and behind the camera. And
Speaker 1: I think that's why I'm so excited to be a
Speaker 1: part of MSNBC in the NBC Universal family because I
Speaker 1: feel and see that every day like there is their
Speaker 1: resources being put into talent to make sure the they
Speaker 1: are successful. Give me, does it feel like lip service
Speaker 1: at all, you know where you are on your side.
Speaker 1: It seems like like speak to the importance I guess,
Speaker 1: of not just black people in front of the camera,
Speaker 1: but black people in the leadership and decision making positions
Speaker 1: that are able to put all of those names that
Speaker 1: she ever mentioned in places where they could flourish. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it diversity has to be not just getting
Speaker 1: people on the entry level. It has to be promoting people,
Speaker 1: has to be paying people, right, um. And I think
Speaker 1: that we have seen those changes, and I think, honestly,
Speaker 1: they started happening after President Obama was elected. After President
Speaker 1: O Mama was elected, almost every network said, wait, where's
Speaker 1: the black correspondent to cover the black president at the
Speaker 1: White House. I was not there, but I can talk
Speaker 1: to I talk to older black reporters, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people gotta come up off of Obama. So I
Speaker 1: think that if you really think about it, Um, that's
Speaker 1: that really started because people were like, oh, wait, how
Speaker 1: do we cover this guy when Barack Who's saying Obama?
Speaker 1: Where are the black people? And that's just sort of
Speaker 1: what happened the meeting day. At the meeting to day
Speaker 1: were just like listen, we gotta get a black back,
Speaker 1: and you'll talk to the black and we'll get better questions. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly what because I mean, you're making
Speaker 1: an important point. I used to work at the White House.
Speaker 1: I used to work for the Vice President. I was
Speaker 1: a spokesperson, and I can tell you that not only
Speaker 1: at the White Hospital. On these campaigns post President Obama,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, we need to do a meeting with
Speaker 1: the black press. We need to win. What are we
Speaker 1: doing on black press? And I it was it was
Speaker 1: so important to me that folks are not talking there.
Speaker 1: You're talking about reporters who are also black. Like when
Speaker 1: you're calling give me, you're not calling the black press,
Speaker 1: you are calling a reporter who was also black. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I will say I think the thing that makes
Speaker 1: me a little nervous is that we are living in
Speaker 1: a country where we had this inflection point after George
Speaker 1: Floyd and we had this quote unquote you were talking
Speaker 1: about sort of the crazy conversations that we were having
Speaker 1: during Trump. We had those crazy post racial society conversations
Speaker 1: where I was like, I'm sorry, I walked down this
Speaker 1: serio and I'm still black. What post racial society could
Speaker 1: we ever even like, why is that even a phrase
Speaker 1: that was ever even invented? Um, So I think that
Speaker 1: I'm a little worried about whether or not we just
Speaker 1: have more inflection points. That's what America does. We freely,
Speaker 1: we flee enslaved people, and then we have reconstruction. In KKK,
Speaker 1: we George Floyd gets strangled and murdered, and we have
Speaker 1: a conversation about diversity, and then critical race theory happens
Speaker 1: and we're banning books. I'm really kind of still watching
Speaker 1: sort of what America does. But America historically has always
Speaker 1: done this thing where we think we're interested in diversity,
Speaker 1: that when we really learned about what America was in
Speaker 1: sixty nineteen, we're like, we don't want to we don't
Speaker 1: don't want to watch that, We don't want to learn
Speaker 1: about that and that stuff. You know. I think that. Um.
Speaker 1: What's also been interesting to me is we all talked
Speaker 1: about how our newsrooms are incredibly diverse now, but when
Speaker 1: I got into the new business, it's still And I
Speaker 1: spoke to my colleague Michelle Miller about this recently. Um,
Speaker 1: My earliest mentors were white, and that just sort of
Speaker 1: speaks to how the change has happened, you know, very
Speaker 1: rapidly in the last you know, five or six or
Speaker 1: seven years, um My mentor Anderson Cooper. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't. When I got into the news business, I
Speaker 1: didn't know any I'd watch people I knew I had
Speaker 1: watched that Bradley, I had watched Byron Pitts um and
Speaker 1: and people that I admired, Sharlene Hunter Galt um. But
Speaker 1: but I I didn't really know anybody, um like Anderson
Speaker 1: who was black. You know. And now, of course you
Speaker 1: know plenty of people that have picked up his mant
Speaker 1: only kind of reporting that he does um and and
Speaker 1: I've run with it. But but but you know, he
Speaker 1: you know, for me to get my foot in the door,
Speaker 1: if I'd come across a Kim Godwin, then who knows, right,
Speaker 1: But but I didn't. I came up. But luckily I
Speaker 1: came across a guy who was like, hey, I think
Speaker 1: this kid has what it takes um and and helped
Speaker 1: me like launch my career. Um And I cannot imagine
Speaker 1: as somebody who admired I mean, I adored Ed Bradley.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be Ed Bradley or Gordon Parks. No
Speaker 1: of my two guys when either make films like corn
Speaker 1: Park did or or be like Ed Bradley and and UM,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what it was like for Ed to
Speaker 1: be uh in the newsroom. Um in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: and the nineteen seventies when he was the only one.
Speaker 1: I spoke to Connie Chung about what it was like
Speaker 1: to be the only Asian woman. Yeah, she you know,
Speaker 1: she had some Knnie has some great stories if you
Speaker 1: ever want. You know, she's writing a book. But I
Speaker 1: spoke to her about what it was like, and she
Speaker 1: actually had insights because she knew Ed back in the day,
Speaker 1: back in the early nineteen seventies and the late nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties when when she was just you know, a young reporter.
Speaker 1: There's a very famous photo. It's of Connie Chung. She's
Speaker 1: only probably in her twenties and she's covering Watergate. My wife,
Speaker 1: who's Asian American, has this photo as like her background
Speaker 1: her her wallpaper. It's this photo of all these white
Speaker 1: men in ties and cigars and cigarettes, and they're all
Speaker 1: on the phone and they're hustling nerve, they're reporting. It's
Speaker 1: during the Watergate hearings and right in the middle of
Speaker 1: the room is a young Connie Chung like looking up
Speaker 1: like like and you google his photo and see if
Speaker 1: you you want to know our mood sometimes if that
Speaker 1: is the mood right, because it's like you're surrounded by
Speaker 1: a lot of these people and you're the only one
Speaker 1: sometimes and that's changing. But that's how you sometimes feel.
Speaker 1: And uh, that's why those those people that came, like
Speaker 1: your dad, Roy, I cannot imagine what it would have
Speaker 1: been like to try to be the only one and
Speaker 1: to try to raise your hand and say to a
Speaker 1: network president or to an executive producer, this is the
Speaker 1: story that I think we should cover and have them
Speaker 1: say it seems like kind of a black thing, like
Speaker 1: an urban thing. I don't think so. My father used
Speaker 1: to tell me that's part of why he always wanted
Speaker 1: to be out in the field so he wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to put up with stuff in the new in the newsroom,
Speaker 1: he was like, you know, just send me to the
Speaker 1: civil rights rad I'd rather get just let me go.
Speaker 1: I'd rather take a billy clap to the head. My
Speaker 1: father was inbedded with black platoons and Vietnam um that
Speaker 1: we're dealing with. He says, send me to Vietnam on
Speaker 1: the front line. I would cover that than be in
Speaker 1: this room with Well, I mean all we need to
Speaker 1: put that on a T shirt. I think I think
Speaker 1: the point that lad made is an important one, and
Speaker 1: that that it is not just on black people and
Speaker 1: people of color, that it's gonna take intersectional work like
Speaker 1: white people in newsrooms have to want to and do
Speaker 1: want to see the value and see the changing landscape
Speaker 1: and be invested and be a part of that. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody that works on on my team as I'm building
Speaker 1: my show at MSNBC is not black, you know I
Speaker 1: have I've had white mentors that gave me opportunities and chances.
Speaker 1: Amy and tell Us at CNN is the person that
Speaker 1: how I first got a contract, and I probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: be on anybody's radar to have worked on more presidential campaigns,
Speaker 1: let alone now have a show at MSNBC. If that
Speaker 1: white woman over there didn't think that, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: I was talented, But it was even Miley that also
Speaker 1: in MSNBC way back when who a black woman who invested?
Speaker 1: So I think we have to I think a lot
Speaker 1: of times folks get into these um oh, if it
Speaker 1: ain't all black everything. And yeah, you know, we love
Speaker 1: a little all black, we love all black, but the
Speaker 1: reality is the world that we live in is not
Speaker 1: all black, and the problem is that all black. If
Speaker 1: you're gonna fix an issue, I think about what Tony
Speaker 1: Morrison said. Oh my god, I mean, I love Tony Morrison.
Speaker 1: I can't believe they're banning her books. I can't even
Speaker 1: talk about it because, um, I think about Tony Morrison
Speaker 1: and she she talks about the fact that if there,
Speaker 1: if if white people in particular, if they can only
Speaker 1: be tall, if you're kneeling, if someone else is kneeling,
Speaker 1: then the problem is you, not black people. And I
Speaker 1: think that it has to be. It will never be
Speaker 1: people of color fixing the issues in America. It will
Speaker 1: always have to be an interracial solution because the problem
Speaker 1: is interracial. Um. And and that to me is what
Speaker 1: makes me nervous. Frankly, I think I'm optimistic. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: great to see all these these voices and leadership, but
Speaker 1: I'm still thinking about the fact that we live in America,
Speaker 1: and America always has a way to reinvent racism, always
Speaker 1: has a way to figure out how to just change
Speaker 1: the rules on everybody, and I just I don't know
Speaker 1: how do y'all deal with the stress of all of this,
Speaker 1: Like it is a it is a quicker question for you.
Speaker 1: You mean you can tell the truth, it's just you
Speaker 1: and me. Do you read I sometimes read them? I
Speaker 1: sometimes read them, um because Okay, so there are two things.
Speaker 1: I am a reporter who is constantly looking for stories,
Speaker 1: and I've found stories on Twitter before. I've also found
Speaker 1: people who have given me sort of feedback that I
Speaker 1: found to be helpful. Um. I think that Twitter has increasingly,
Speaker 1: I think, over the pandemic, gotten to be, especially because
Speaker 1: most of my social media Twitter has gotten to me
Speaker 1: a more angry kind of just place where I feel
Speaker 1: like everybody has PTSD because we've been living through this
Speaker 1: pandemic that just threw our whole lives up and we're
Speaker 1: all walking around like we're okay because we zoomed our
Speaker 1: way through the problem. But everyone's kind of on edge
Speaker 1: in reality. And I think that that Twitter has become
Speaker 1: a little bit more or less of a place that
Speaker 1: I want to to be um in terms of like
Speaker 1: checking my mentions, I do think if I'm honest, like
Speaker 1: black Twitter, to me, I look at black two and
Speaker 1: I think, Okay, I don't want to be eaten alive,
Speaker 1: so like I want to make sure that I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do something that is that it that feels credible.
Speaker 1: But it's also problematic because sometimes black Twitter can be
Speaker 1: really really cruel. Sometimes you say something and people come
Speaker 1: at you and you're like, Okay, well that's not really
Speaker 1: what I what that was. That wasn't the intention of
Speaker 1: what I said. And I'm seeing other people sort of
Speaker 1: be really really mean to other people. Um in the
Speaker 1: spirit of of sort of the black Twitter crowd think,
Speaker 1: and I think that that can be it can be scary. Um. Frankly,
Speaker 1: I would say that the way that I deal with
Speaker 1: stresses that I don't get too high off the love
Speaker 1: that I get from people, um, and I don't get
Speaker 1: too low off the hate that I get from people.
Speaker 1: I don't try to let it impact what I think
Speaker 1: too much because for me, I really am trying to
Speaker 1: deal with the people who I know love me. So
Speaker 1: for me, what covid did was really helped me understand
Speaker 1: who I want around me and understand who I trust
Speaker 1: and who was who feels safe. And my husband stuck
Speaker 1: in d C so he couldn't come today, sadly, um
Speaker 1: for all sorts of reasons that I won't get into.
Speaker 1: But my husband, um, you know, he to me finding
Speaker 1: love was was incredible. Um. And having someone too, frankly,
Speaker 1: be able to vent, to to be able to be
Speaker 1: loved on, to be able to to to talk about
Speaker 1: your day. He's a journalist too, covering Loudon County, which
Speaker 1: of course now is like a crazy county, but that's
Speaker 1: a county where critical race the area, and they're doing
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff with transgender rights. And I think
Speaker 1: that to be able to have someone who really kind
Speaker 1: of understands storytelling and understands the stresses of journalism has
Speaker 1: just been sort of incredible to me. And then I
Speaker 1: think I have a lot of friends, and a lot
Speaker 1: of friends of different races, but black women in particular,
Speaker 1: they show up for me in ways that I just
Speaker 1: to the stay I think, really give me goose bumps.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, we're talking about black media,
Speaker 1: but I have friends that are Wall Street bankers, who
Speaker 1: are nurses, who are makeup artists, and we all have
Speaker 1: the same sort of lived experiences, which is that what
Speaker 1: we think is an issue in media and black people.
Speaker 1: It's really an issue in America, the microaggressions, the people
Speaker 1: not you're being uncomfortable because you don't look the way
Speaker 1: that that traditionally people looked, whether you were working at
Speaker 1: a bank or whether you're in media, that the thing
Speaker 1: that you know. I think it can be really easy
Speaker 1: to feel personalized where you're supervised to tell you something
Speaker 1: that's wild, and then you talk to your friend who
Speaker 1: works on Wall Street and you're like, oh, you've been
Speaker 1: passed over for promotion three times and now you're now
Speaker 1: you're training people who don't know more than you. Oh okay, Well,
Speaker 1: this isn't just media. This isn't just sort of one way.
Speaker 1: It's it's how the country works. And that to me
Speaker 1: is it's it's why maybe I'm the pessimistic kind of
Speaker 1: sound in one up here, but I think that's what
Speaker 1: makes me nervous. That's what makes me nervous. I think
Speaker 1: she's realistic. You're realistic, You're pragmatic. Black people are nothing
Speaker 1: of pragmatic. Okay. It is understanding the reality of what
Speaker 1: it is, but still having the ability to hope for
Speaker 1: what can be. The Vice President talks about to the
Speaker 1: ability to see what can be and broad and by
Speaker 1: what has been that is that is the essence of
Speaker 1: this right here. So then what's your stress relief? Like
Speaker 1: what do you do after a long day of just
Speaker 1: dealing with race and all of this craziness and getting
Speaker 1: talked too crazy and then you gotta go cover crazy?
Speaker 1: Because the thing with the Daily show that's frustrating, and
Speaker 1: I talked to the other correspondence about it, is that
Speaker 1: to find the joke, you must consume ten to fifteen
Speaker 1: terrible stories. You have to read all of them. Do
Speaker 1: you read the national paper, you read two local papers,
Speaker 1: and you find all of the stuff that's divisive that
Speaker 1: everybody is arguing about, and somewhere there is one little
Speaker 1: negget of a joke that you you dust it all
Speaker 1: and you email it up to Trevoring to produce it.
Speaker 1: They go, that's funny, but doing a different direction today,
Speaker 1: like so flat someone, what do you all do to
Speaker 1: deal with that stress? Like how do you I mean,
Speaker 1: I called to the nail shop that people know I
Speaker 1: love my nails. Honey, I go to the nail shop.
Speaker 1: I'll take two three hours. My fiance will tell you
Speaker 1: just won't find me on a random Wednesday, don't let
Speaker 1: it be Sunday afternoon. And then I agree with you
Speaker 1: me like I'm getting married this um summer, very excited. Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: he is fine. And the I think the pandemic thing
Speaker 1: that I think the pandemic was the best thing to
Speaker 1: happen to us, because it was just a crazy time
Speaker 1: for me professionally, for both of us actually, and we
Speaker 1: could unwind, like when I felt like the people were
Speaker 1: not being fair to me and my and and whether
Speaker 1: at work on the internet, like he, I could talk
Speaker 1: to him about it and he would call balls and strikes.
Speaker 1: He could say, if it's left up, it's fft up,
Speaker 1: or you know what, you actually meet thicker skinning, we're
Speaker 1: gonna we could cry in the closet and then let's go.
Speaker 1: So that is what it's been helpful for me, I
Speaker 1: think for me. You know, you you said something interesting
Speaker 1: two things, roy Um. One you talked about the death
Speaker 1: of nuance, and that's where I feel we have, where
Speaker 1: we've come in the last four or five years, that
Speaker 1: there's very little nuance in our interactions with each other.
Speaker 1: And that is what I love most about my job,
Speaker 1: about my life, about the people that I interact with
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. And the point that you made
Speaker 1: about searching for that one little funny nugget that is,
Speaker 1: you know how you're going to build out a joke.
Speaker 1: That's what I do with people. I know that there
Speaker 1: are people that you know that I I am not
Speaker 1: unaware that there are terrible people out there. But one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I became a journalist, one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I gave up a career to start at the
Speaker 1: very bottom as an intern um. When I was, you know,
Speaker 1: almost forty years old. I will know was very successful
Speaker 1: stre man. Okay, you know, I wasn't like a hedge
Speaker 1: fund guy, but I was doing okay for myself. But
Speaker 1: you know the reason is I I really, really really
Speaker 1: get off on talking to people of all stripes of
Speaker 1: you know, all traditions and backgrounds, and that brings me
Speaker 1: immense joy. I love interacting with people. I love hearing
Speaker 1: their stories. I love sharing my stories. I love finding
Speaker 1: that commonality. That is what drives my journalism and and
Speaker 1: and what Twitter does is it removes all of that
Speaker 1: so that you know, you say one like I told
Speaker 1: you on that call that I you know I want
Speaker 1: you guys will laugh at this I um was once
Speaker 1: you know, you know on TV, as you guys know,
Speaker 1: sometimes they're like we gotta go, we gotta go. The
Speaker 1: producers will get in your ear. We're going to commercial.
Speaker 1: It's a hard wall. So I was doing a story
Speaker 1: and I was talking really really quickly, and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, and then this happened to Tupac Shaker, all right,
Speaker 1: gotta go all of a sudden, right that dude right here.
Speaker 1: I was like, what, that's exactly what happened. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, Yeah, exactly. Twitter got all like crazy, like
Speaker 1: my mentions blew up. This dude, like who the hell
Speaker 1: like talking Tupac shakor Lad, like even like my own
Speaker 1: colleagues in the newsroom came up to my office, Lad,
Speaker 1: and I was like, guys, I know it was a mistake.
Speaker 1: It was like a twist of the tongue. And people
Speaker 1: were like, oh, mass if I I somehow you provoking
Speaker 1: your black card? Glad, you can't be like I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Like can we just like can we not
Speaker 1: even flub our words without the entire world coming down
Speaker 1: on you? Because if you sit down and talk to me,
Speaker 1: you know that I know who tupac Is and I
Speaker 1: got him on rotation on my Spotify, but like everybody
Speaker 1: thought like, oh yeah, of course because he grew up
Speaker 1: in a white school, like you know, like and it
Speaker 1: was like, it's so I I get off on that.
Speaker 1: That's what relieves my stress. This podcast is supported by
Speaker 1: f X. IS Atlanta returns March FX stream on Hulu Europe.
Speaker 1: HiT's Different Atlanta Season three takes Paperboy, Earn Van, and
Speaker 1: Darius across the pond and they diving deep with new success,
Speaker 1: new connections, and new weird effects. Is Atlanta premiers March
Speaker 1: on f X stream on Hulu. This episode is brought
Speaker 1: to you by HP. When you're working apart from your team,
Speaker 1: feeling connected can be a challenge. Presenting HP Presence, a
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Speaker 1: gonna go now to some questions here for myself by audience.
Speaker 1: Before we wrap up here, here's one. This is from
Speaker 1: an anonymous person. Um is there an example of a
Speaker 1: story you pitched that you were passionate about that got
Speaker 1: shut down. I'm very passionate about, UM the plight of
Speaker 1: sexual and domestic violence against women of color in this
Speaker 1: country and UH and you know, UM, when I was
Speaker 1: first starting out that we were coming across we were
Speaker 1: coming up to the anniversary of the Central Park Jager
Speaker 1: that the night that she was brutally assaulted in Central Park.
Speaker 1: UM And I was still in journalism school. I was
Speaker 1: still in grad school, and I wanted to do this story.
Speaker 1: And I thought, if I could do a really really
Speaker 1: good pitch in j school, I can maybe pitch at
Speaker 1: the CNN and maybe they would do it as a
Speaker 1: dot com story. Because what I decided to do is,
Speaker 1: rather than look back at Trisia Miiley, the Solomon Brothers
Speaker 1: banker who was who is sexually assaulted, I went and
Speaker 1: found what other women in New York City that very
Speaker 1: week also got sexually assaulted brutally like Trisiha Miiley. And
Speaker 1: I found that there were five women who had UH suffered.
Speaker 1: One woman was thrown off the roof of a building
Speaker 1: UM in New York City. She survived miraculously. Um And
Speaker 1: and I went and looked for those press clippings. There
Speaker 1: was not one mentioned on television, of course, and in
Speaker 1: the only in the New York Times was there in
Speaker 1: the Metro section where there are a couple of brief
Speaker 1: like you know, they have those like metro updates. This
Speaker 1: is what happened in this part, in this part of
Speaker 1: the city. And so I went back and I interviewed
Speaker 1: people who remembered those incidents, you know, um, in the community,
Speaker 1: and we went back and we told that story, and
Speaker 1: then we we took it from Trician Miley, and then
Speaker 1: we we said, okay, these five women, and then we
Speaker 1: started a whole sort of running commentary on the number
Speaker 1: of missing black women that have you know, gone missing
Speaker 1: over the last couple of years. And no one knows
Speaker 1: that that was the name of the piece. No one
Speaker 1: knows their name, right, nobody knew the names of these
Speaker 1: women except the loved ones who are still mourning them.
Speaker 1: And um, and I did the piece, and I was
Speaker 1: very proud of it. And I you know, I showed
Speaker 1: it to some people, you know, uh and and you know,
Speaker 1: in the newsroom outside of school, and they were like,
Speaker 1: this is a great journalism school piece. This is a
Speaker 1: great journalism school piece. You know, and I get it.
Speaker 1: I absolutely get it. I mean it's like, first of all,
Speaker 1: newsrooms will tell you we don't like to do memorial pieces.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely true, So there is some um validity to
Speaker 1: what they were saying. But but the fact that we
Speaker 1: are still at a point where we are often not
Speaker 1: telling the stories of these victims in the same way
Speaker 1: that we tell the stories of other victims is something
Speaker 1: that you know, I think is difficult to to. It's
Speaker 1: it's a hurdle, it's a challenge. They shut you down.
Speaker 1: I know, they shut you down. Tell me by the
Speaker 1: time they shut you down. You asked the question, and
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm sure I have a running list
Speaker 1: of quick of stories that have been shut down. I mean,
Speaker 1: so many stories have been shut down, especially because I
Speaker 1: remember when I was first starting out, I wouldn't even
Speaker 1: put that I spoke Haitian creole on my resume because
Speaker 1: I didn't think anyone cared. Every job that I've been to,
Speaker 1: I've always pitched stories about Haiti, and I've luckily been
Speaker 1: able to always get a couple of stories in. But
Speaker 1: it's always been oh there's an earthquake, let's do Haiti now,
Speaker 1: or oh, my God, the president was assassinated. Now we
Speaker 1: really care. Oh my god, those black immigrants they're getting
Speaker 1: whipped on the border, and now we're going to go.
Speaker 1: And I think that I've always, um just tried to
Speaker 1: keep an eye on Haiti in general. But can I
Speaker 1: just say and thing about that when I first met
Speaker 1: Anderson Um it was uh I sat in his office
Speaker 1: November of two thousand and nine, and we were talking
Speaker 1: about Haiti because he has he is, long before the earthquake,
Speaker 1: been a champion for Haiti. And I said to him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd like to pitch some stories on Haiti. He's like, dude,
Speaker 1: I try all the time, and I even I can't
Speaker 1: get them on the air. Right. And this was like
Speaker 1: two months before the earthquake. So so I bring that
Speaker 1: up because we sat back, we like both of us
Speaker 1: like sort of leaned back in our chairs, and we're like, yeah, man, like,
Speaker 1: nobody ever wants to do a story on Haiti unless
Speaker 1: something really horrible happens. And then two months later the
Speaker 1: earthquake happens. Sorry sorry to touch off but that, but
Speaker 1: even Anderson Cooper Is could be sitting here and being like,
Speaker 1: I can't get Haiti stories on the Air. I would say,
Speaker 1: Haiti stories are definitely um top of mind to me.
Speaker 1: When I think about that, I also think stories about
Speaker 1: sort of um emerging, emerging political stories surrounding black people.
Speaker 1: So I remember this story that I wanted to do
Speaker 1: in two and I was working with another black reporter,
Speaker 1: UM and I don't think I'm portraying anything here, which
Speaker 1: is that we were doing a story about black people
Speaker 1: not being that excited about Hillry Clinton for a number
Speaker 1: of reasons, um. And that story basically never got written,
Speaker 1: and I was kind of like, hey, we should really
Speaker 1: write this story, like we have black donors, there's an
Speaker 1: issue here, and it just like never got written. And
Speaker 1: I think that lazy and someone else wrote the story,
Speaker 1: like girl, like don't even get me sorry about But
Speaker 1: after after Hillary laws, like, oh my god, how did
Speaker 1: we not know this? Guys like yall that black people
Speaker 1: had some issues with Hilary. Hey, by the way, some
Speaker 1: of them were Haitian in Miami, which is a state
Speaker 1: she needed to win, and Haitians in Miami. We're looking
Speaker 1: at her like what did you do with the with
Speaker 1: the aid organization? Your brother's making millions of dollars, getting
Speaker 1: diamonds and Haiti, what are you talking about? So they
Speaker 1: were just they were like, you know what, I'm so
Speaker 1: better about that. I'm just gonna stop to that point
Speaker 1: that that ties perfectly into another question from another anonymous
Speaker 1: and simone, I want you to start with this one
Speaker 1: because you've worked with politicians of differing races. Anonymous person asks,
Speaker 1: what do you think of the way the media covers
Speaker 1: politicians is they're a double standard and how they cover
Speaker 1: black politicians there is a double standard, And how they
Speaker 1: cover the first woman, the first woman of color, the
Speaker 1: first black woman of South Asian descent, who is the
Speaker 1: Vice President of the United States of America. That's for
Speaker 1: damn sure, Okay. I spent I spent the last year
Speaker 1: of my life blocking and tackling verbally on the phone
Speaker 1: with people every single day. I used to joke with
Speaker 1: folks that I had the worst job in the White
Speaker 1: House because because and I said I had the worst job,
Speaker 1: I actually I had the best job in the White House.
Speaker 1: But I would joke with the reporters that had the
Speaker 1: worst job because I can't just I couldn't just pitch
Speaker 1: a story. I gotta explain to you why what I
Speaker 1: am pitching is true. I can't just say, you know
Speaker 1: what the vice president of the governing partner to the president.
Speaker 1: People are like, okay, but how tell me how, like
Speaker 1: what does she actually do every day? Were you asking
Speaker 1: what Mike Pens did every day? That's my question to you.
Speaker 1: You know, I will never I will never forget that. Um.
Speaker 1: So we went to Guatemala. When I worked for the
Speaker 1: vice president, she did a trip to Guatemala, Mexico. And
Speaker 1: while she was in Guatemala, she did an interview with
Speaker 1: Lester Holt. And everyone has seen this interview with Lester Holton,
Speaker 1: but I actually know everyone has seen the clip from
Speaker 1: the interview with Lester Hoult. People probably didn't see the
Speaker 1: actual interview, but there's a moment in the interview where
Speaker 1: um Lester is asking the vice president multiple times what
Speaker 1: does she have plans to go to the border? And
Speaker 1: he asked about seven or eight times, and the eight
Speaker 1: times she says, well, I haven't been to Europe there,
Speaker 1: so can you have any plans to visit the border?
Speaker 1: I'm hearing Guatemala today. At some point, you know we
Speaker 1: are going to the border. We've been to the border.
Speaker 1: So this whole, this whole, this whole thing about the border.
Speaker 1: We've been to the border, we've into the boarding. You
Speaker 1: haven't been to the border, and I haven't been to Europe,
Speaker 1: and I don't know. I don't understand the point that
Speaker 1: you're making. That is the clip that I you know,
Speaker 1: when I wake up the next morning, it's the clips everywhere.
Speaker 1: Wasn't a great clip. We come back from the trip
Speaker 1: and a week later, reporters on my phone and uh,
Speaker 1: it's one reporter from Alan that I will not name,
Speaker 1: is like, well, we're doing a story about the fallout
Speaker 1: from the terrible trip. And I said, oh, you mean
Speaker 1: the fallout from the moment in the moment in the interview,
Speaker 1: because we just have to put it in context. It
Speaker 1: was a moment in the interview. It wasn't a bad
Speaker 1: trip like there was a was a diplomatic success. So
Speaker 1: I'm putting my spin on it because it was a
Speaker 1: diplomatical success. And this reporter says, he says, you know,
Speaker 1: so she's gonna get media training now, and I was like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: whoa whoa. I said, I worked for President Joe Biden
Speaker 1: for two years on the campaign trip, Okay, I answered
Speaker 1: question after question after question about gaffs and and Joe
Speaker 1: Biden and his gaffs, and I pushed back on him,
Speaker 1: and not one one point that any of these reporters
Speaker 1: asked me was the Joe Biden Canada, Joe Biden gonna
Speaker 1: give media training. Why are you asking me? Is this
Speaker 1: black woman who was a twice lesson district attorney, twice
Speaker 1: elected attorney general of the largest partment of justice only
Speaker 1: second to the Department of Justice of the United States
Speaker 1: of America, a former United States Senator, and the Vice
Speaker 1: President United As America give media training? Do you think
Speaker 1: that's an appropriate question to be asking me? He was like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean I thought it was until we did. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: It's crazy to me. It is crazy. And I fundamentally
Speaker 1: believe that women, women period, but also women of color specifically,
Speaker 1: are covered differently because people are not used to seeing
Speaker 1: women of color, especially black women, in leadership positions. It
Speaker 1: is just something fundamentally like it's like their mind gotta
Speaker 1: do a shift. It's just like, but what is really
Speaker 1: happening in there? And it's like it is last day.
Speaker 1: It is like, I'm not lying. I mean, you just
Speaker 1: saw that a couple of less than a week ten
Speaker 1: days ago, people what was bubbling under the surface the
Speaker 1: first black woman to be nominated to Supreme Court of
Speaker 1: the United States. People were asking, have you seen her
Speaker 1: law school entrance exams? I need to see her middle
Speaker 1: school trans to be clear. People were also asking, what
Speaker 1: was Kamala Harris eligible to be vice president? There was
Speaker 1: a little burger at the bubble to the service, and
Speaker 1: we just kind of slapped it down real hard, but
Speaker 1: it was it was bubbling. It was like, we can
Speaker 1: have legitimate questions about all sorts of things, but that
Speaker 1: was a question that was being asked the Vice President
Speaker 1: of the United States. Was she born in this Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's from Oakland? What Okay? So let's end on the
Speaker 1: last question from the audience that I think we'll leave
Speaker 1: us on some optimism because I do believe the cheering
Speaker 1: is the future. Teach them will and let them lead
Speaker 1: the way, show them all the beauty. It's in the Bible.
Speaker 1: It's third carent uh. All right, tell me y'all know
Speaker 1: that ain't in the bibble the Heathens? Is that in
Speaker 1: the Bible? Somebody just Dominique asked, what I think is
Speaker 1: a very very solid question for us to end on.
Speaker 1: And that's what advice do you have for up and
Speaker 1: coming black and other BIPOP creators starting out or transitioning
Speaker 1: into journalism, Because I'm sure there's rules in journalism that
Speaker 1: you learned twenty whatever years ago, ten fifteen years ago
Speaker 1: that don't apply now. So how has the job changed
Speaker 1: and what advice would you give to these people entering
Speaker 1: the field that honestly is ever evolving? The rules are
Speaker 1: ever There isn't much that I learned at FAMI, you
Speaker 1: and O one that really applies today other than the
Speaker 1: basics of just getting the information. But what advice would
Speaker 1: yall have to newvies? I would say, first, I think
Speaker 1: the basic advice from family and O one is still
Speaker 1: the advice get the stories right, do good journalism. That
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the basics. You have to know the basics.
Speaker 1: I think mentorship is key, and I think mentorship is
Speaker 1: not just trying to get ahold of Ed Gordon or
Speaker 1: Anderson Cooper, get ahold of the local journalist in your area,
Speaker 1: to talk to the person two years older than you
Speaker 1: who graduated from your college and now is an intern
Speaker 1: or a or an entry level reporter. Some of my
Speaker 1: best mentors are people who know what the industry is
Speaker 1: looking for right now. So I think we talked about mentorship,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't have to be Oprah. It could be
Speaker 1: anybody UM that there for if you are listening, I
Speaker 1: would love for you to the meeting. Put that out
Speaker 1: there and let Jesus take care of But I will
Speaker 1: say that I would say. The third thing is the
Speaker 1: best advice that I got from one of my mentors,
Speaker 1: the great Gwen Eiffel, who was so real, who was
Speaker 1: the black woman who made history on Washington Week UM
Speaker 1: by becoming the first black woman to host her own
Speaker 1: nationally televised UM news program in Washington Week. She told
Speaker 1: me to be myself. And I walked up to her
Speaker 1: one day and I was very nervous, And I should
Speaker 1: tell you I met her through the hairdresser because we're
Speaker 1: black women and what what what where else would you mean? Right? UM?
Speaker 1: But I want up to her one day and I
Speaker 1: was nervous and I couldn't remember. She knew who I was,
Speaker 1: and I said, Hi, my name's yeah, mich but you
Speaker 1: can call me Miche because I knew my name was
Speaker 1: always sort of this name that people got wrong. And
Speaker 1: she said, no, don't let people nickname you, and it
Speaker 1: it's stuck with me to my core because what she
Speaker 1: was saying is go where you're going, but don't be
Speaker 1: able to recognize yourself when you get there. Don't just
Speaker 1: don't just sell everything about you. And then you look
Speaker 1: up and it's like, yeah, I'm an anchor and I
Speaker 1: got my own show. But actually I look more like
Speaker 1: Lauren London than you meet, even though you know we
Speaker 1: don't look alike. But I don't want to say she's
Speaker 1: a beautiful woman. But what I don't want is to
Speaker 1: look anything but like what I am. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: straighten my hair. I'm not gonna make become racially ambiguous
Speaker 1: to kind of let people sort of make me into
Speaker 1: something that I'm not. I want to be exactly who
Speaker 1: I am, um, And that that's being intentional. And I
Speaker 1: was listening to a podcast with Lauren London, which is
Speaker 1: why she's on my mind, because she was just talking
Speaker 1: about the fact that life will chin check you. Life
Speaker 1: will do all sorts of stuff to you, um, but
Speaker 1: you have to in some ways. And she said this
Speaker 1: and it was so powerful and I love Lauren London.
Speaker 1: She talked about being a spirit of celebration and meaning
Speaker 1: that when you see people getting stuff being a spirit
Speaker 1: of celebration for them, you will see a snapshot of
Speaker 1: someone's life and you think, why don't I have my
Speaker 1: own show, or why don't I have Why am I
Speaker 1: not a correspondent? It's like what will be yours will
Speaker 1: be yours? And be very intentional about what you're going after.
Speaker 1: But don't lose yourself. Don't lose yourself, and and and
Speaker 1: and be backwards and trying to figure out all these
Speaker 1: different things. Like I said, people told me I was
Speaker 1: too pretty, I was probably too big and too black
Speaker 1: for some people to put me on. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean to me what I mean. One of my
Speaker 1: best mentors is my mother, who is like, wait, no,
Speaker 1: you look like me, so don't change anything because I
Speaker 1: like seeing myself on TV. So I think for me,
Speaker 1: it's it's that. It's really so. I think if you
Speaker 1: have those things, which is the basics first, and then
Speaker 1: mentorship and not losing yourself, then you'll be on your way.
Speaker 1: My my message is a little darker. Actually, even though
Speaker 1: you said you want supposed to be cheering, my message
Speaker 1: is for people who want to be journalists specifically, UM,
Speaker 1: and and specifically I guess this is maybe even maybe
Speaker 1: geared to broadcast journalism. UM. Don't do this job because
Speaker 1: you want to be on television, or you want to
Speaker 1: have a brand, or you want to elevate your profile.
Speaker 1: This job no matter what beat you cover, whether it's
Speaker 1: entertainment or it's Washington, or you cover wars, it is
Speaker 1: incredibly There are journalists being killed all over the world.
Speaker 1: Two who do this job. I take it very, very seriously.
Speaker 1: I know that generally on on the feature pieces that
Speaker 1: I do, I'm fun and I'm bubbly, and you know,
Speaker 1: and I do love love everybody. That's true. But you know,
Speaker 1: I've seen some stuff, UM in my years as a
Speaker 1: reporter UM around the world, UH, that I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: I was in Sierra Leone and UM I was getting
Speaker 1: ready to interview the president there and his press sector.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, your reporters, even the typewriter. We
Speaker 1: don't have typewriters anymore, but he said, you're typewriter is
Speaker 1: your A K forty seven. And it's stuck with me
Speaker 1: because that is how the people with power see what
Speaker 1: we do. I don't care if you are covering the
Speaker 1: red carpet at the Academy Awards, or you're sitting and
Speaker 1: staying and taking direct questions or a line of fire
Speaker 1: from the President of the United States. This is a
Speaker 1: job that carries with it an enormous responsibility. And if
Speaker 1: you can see yourself fitting in that and and and
Speaker 1: holding up that mantle and doing all the things that
Speaker 1: you said, the truth and the accuracy UM, that's important,
Speaker 1: but also just taking it seriously for what it is,
Speaker 1: which is a job that you must be prepared to
Speaker 1: lose your life for in the pursuit of truth and
Speaker 1: in the pursuit of the story that you're trying to tell,
Speaker 1: especially if you're holding people uh in power accountable. That
Speaker 1: is what we do at all levels, whether you're a producer,
Speaker 1: your production assistant, you're an anchor, correspondent, Roy, what you
Speaker 1: guys do on the Daily Show, Simone, what you're about
Speaker 1: to do at MSNBC, that is what we do and
Speaker 1: I I do personally. I I want people to understand
Speaker 1: that because what's happened now because of the rise of
Speaker 1: social media and the ubiquity of of information UM and
Speaker 1: different platforms where people can elevate their brand, you start
Speaker 1: to see a little bit of that creeping where people
Speaker 1: are more focused on how they look and how they
Speaker 1: sound and how they dress and the stuff that they wear.
Speaker 1: And that's cool. I'm fine with that, but but to
Speaker 1: never let it diminish what we do, because it's the
Speaker 1: only job that specifically was put into the Constitution of
Speaker 1: the United States of America, and they did that for
Speaker 1: a purpose. So I'm gonna build off of what Lad
Speaker 1: said because I think it is really important. As someone
Speaker 1: who is making the full time transition, I often I
Speaker 1: think about being sure that I am authentic and I
Speaker 1: tell the truth and that you do the work. And
Speaker 1: so I go to teleprompter prep, you know, past my
Speaker 1: office the other day and I was like, girl, I'm
Speaker 1: practicing on the computer. I'm gonna be in the studio
Speaker 1: next week. Um so that when on May seven, when
Speaker 1: you turn on MSNBC at four pm, you're gonna say, damn,
Speaker 1: that girl knows how to read that teleproblem. She really
Speaker 1: understood the back of that story, or wow, she really
Speaker 1: through the commercial so effortlessly, or oh she really thought
Speaker 1: about this segment Like I'm going to do the work
Speaker 1: and there are there's always gonna be someone a mentor
Speaker 1: told me this one. There's always gonna be somebody better
Speaker 1: than use, somebody smarter than you, somebody fasting you, somebody
Speaker 1: pretty and you, who went to a better school, who
Speaker 1: has more money. But you control if someone is able
Speaker 1: to outwork you, and there's one thing about me, You're
Speaker 1: not gonna outwork me. I get up early and I
Speaker 1: will stay up late. I will do the research myself.
Speaker 1: I will download the own packet. I will go out
Speaker 1: and call and pick up the phone and ask the
Speaker 1: questions because I want to know. And I think that
Speaker 1: people that want to be in the media space. I
Speaker 1: used to hate when I would do college campuses and
Speaker 1: young people will come up to me and they say,
Speaker 1: I want to be a commentator like you, And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, nobody, I'm I have an expertise. I'm
Speaker 1: a I'm a I I have a political expertise. That's
Speaker 1: why they pay me on television. They were paying me
Speaker 1: to commentate because I know what I'm talking about. I've
Speaker 1: worked fifteen campaigns. If I work my first presidential or
Speaker 1: races all across the country, from governor's races to uh
Speaker 1: things on reservations to mayoral races to state legislative races,
Speaker 1: and I've worked three to presidential campaigns and got the
Speaker 1: current president United States selected. Okay, we're for the first
Speaker 1: black woman to sit the most powerful black woman, I
Speaker 1: would argue in the world. So I have an expertise.
Speaker 1: So people who are like I want to be on TV,
Speaker 1: what is your expertise? Honey, you need to get expertise
Speaker 1: and then someone will pay you for your expertise to
Speaker 1: talk about it. But some of y'all don't got no expertise.
Speaker 1: I'm just being Some of y'all don't got an expertise,
Speaker 1: So then you hopping on. Everybody got a podcast, now, Roy,
Speaker 1: they like this podcast. You know, everybody their podcasting out
Speaker 1: their garages with their homeboys and homegirls, and y'all don't
Speaker 1: got no expertise. You better get an expertise. You better
Speaker 1: do the work. Why do I want to hear from you?
Speaker 1: The thing about my show is I want to only
Speaker 1: talk to the people that know. It's a lot of
Speaker 1: people on TV that do not know. Can I just
Speaker 1: say real quick for it that you know, there's nobody Simone,
Speaker 1: there's nobody like ymiche right, and and you hear oftentimes
Speaker 1: people say, well, I want to be a little bit
Speaker 1: like Oprah with a little bit of lester Hole thrown
Speaker 1: in there, and funny like Trevor. And I always say, like,
Speaker 1: I think that when I was younger, I've probably thought
Speaker 1: that way too, because you look at people that you
Speaker 1: admire and you say, well, I want to I'm a
Speaker 1: little like that. But I'm also a little like that.
Speaker 1: But as I've gotten older, don't. I don't think that way.
Speaker 1: You just be who you are. That is what will
Speaker 1: attract people who maybe ten years ago what I said,
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, simone, but now let's look
Speaker 1: at them as they are. That's right. You don't you
Speaker 1: want to say you want me if you have expertise
Speaker 1: because of me, not because I remind you. I don't
Speaker 1: want somebody to look at me and say, oh, you
Speaker 1: kind of remind me of lester Hole door, you know. No,
Speaker 1: I don't want you to look at me and say
Speaker 1: he could be a younger version of Lester or the
Speaker 1: right lesser and I practically a stage um. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't want that. I want you to say, you know,
Speaker 1: Vlad is I when I watch Lad and when I
Speaker 1: hear is warning, when I see his reporting it's uniquely
Speaker 1: his and that's what I think is important. I would
Speaker 1: add one thing. I think people need to take care
Speaker 1: of themselves. Um, you know I said, I don't take
Speaker 1: it lightly that I think a lot of people really
Speaker 1: are walking around with PTSC. I think that we are
Speaker 1: a country that lost more than eight hundred thousand, nearing
Speaker 1: nine thousand people. People died of COVID, but people died
Speaker 1: of heart attacks, people killed themselves. We all watched George
Speaker 1: Floyd get strung, get strangled to death over and over
Speaker 1: again if you watch the trial. I'm an emotional person,
Speaker 1: I think, and for me, I take things into my heart.
Speaker 1: I really when I'm telling stories or when I'm looking
Speaker 1: at people, I really I think maybe it's a blessing
Speaker 1: or curse. I take a little bit of that, that empathy,
Speaker 1: that that feeling with me, and that's that is a
Speaker 1: tough place to be, especially right now. It's a heavy, heavy,
Speaker 1: heavy time, Which is why I think, like Lauren London
Speaker 1: was on my heart because you know, you think about
Speaker 1: what she lost a nipsey, and you think about sort
Speaker 1: of what we're all we've all lost in connection, in
Speaker 1: in in in in grief. I mean, I think take
Speaker 1: care of yourself, get counseling if it's counseling, get spots,
Speaker 1: get your nails done, do whatever, Like yeah, you do
Speaker 1: the work, but don't. But also there's nat ministry. I
Speaker 1: love this, and there's a thing called Nap Ministry where
Speaker 1: literally the revolution is take a nap. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what with that, because I think black people have,
Speaker 1: like we talked about being black and media black people
Speaker 1: were denied rest, So give yourself some rest um between gigs.
Speaker 1: I took two months off. I never take that much
Speaker 1: time off, and I was like, now I'm taking two
Speaker 1: months off, like I need I need the time, and
Speaker 1: I needed the time. And to me, I think I'm
Speaker 1: not shy about the fact that I think we should
Speaker 1: all be taking care of ourselves because you can grind,
Speaker 1: and you can grind and you'll get to where you're going,
Speaker 1: But you don't want to have a heart attack or
Speaker 1: kill yourself because you haven't really been able to take
Speaker 1: care of yourself or take care of the people that
Speaker 1: you love. You don't want to look up. And then
Speaker 1: your mother passed away because you were but you didn't
Speaker 1: even realize that she was sick because you were running
Speaker 1: after internships. So I think when I counsel my mentees,
Speaker 1: I used to say, oh, move whereever, do whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should say all that stuff. But also I told them,
Speaker 1: if you have a job and you really love your
Speaker 1: mom and the New York Times is offering you a
Speaker 1: job and your mom's hometown, don't feel bad taking that
Speaker 1: job and not taking go not running off to Ukraine
Speaker 1: and being on the biggest story right now. It's okay.
Speaker 1: If you want to love your mom and work, it's
Speaker 1: it's okay. So I would say that that's definitely something
Speaker 1: that I that I that I definitely took away, and
Speaker 1: that I that I learned the hard way in these
Speaker 1: last two years. Let mean, don't be coming up to Yeah,
Speaker 1: you see her out at dinner for her husband, you
Speaker 1: just say hey, you walk over, you ask for yourself,
Speaker 1: and you keep it moving. Don't ask her about that
Speaker 1: story she did yesterday or well you know what the
Speaker 1: president is talking about. Get that lady her rest, let
Speaker 1: her eat her dinner. Don't come up to me at
Speaker 1: the nail shop. This's is good a place to end
Speaker 1: as any Thank you so much to this wonderful, wonderful panel.
Speaker 1: Give me shall sender Vladimer Do t A Simone D. Sanders,
Speaker 1: and thank you to you, the wonderful, wonderful audience of
Speaker 1: south By Southwest here in Austin, Texas. I'm Roy Wood Jr.
Speaker 1: And hopefully I've taken you beyond the scenes. All right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: good times. Listen to the Daily Show Beyond the Scenes
Speaker 1: on Apple podcast, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. This podcast is supported by f X.
Speaker 1: IS Atlanta returns March FX stream on Hulu. Europe. HiT's
Speaker 1: Different Atlanta Season three takes paper Boy, Earn Van, and
Speaker 1: Darius across the pond and they diving deep with new success,
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Speaker 1: on f X stream on Hulu. I am Eva Longoria
Speaker 1: and I am so excited to share my new podcast
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Speaker 1: goal of this show is to learn, get inspired, and
Speaker 1: get connected. How should we connect with our partners, our kids, money, politics, food, jobs, news, spirituality, sex?
Speaker 1: How can we connect better with ourselves? Listen to Connections
Speaker 1: with Eva Longoria starting March thirty first on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,