ABC’s Rachel Scott gets it. Reporters have to demand answers to their questions.
As Scott did with Trump at NABJ, journalists must be ready to ask the question, ask it again and then keep asking until the answer is clear.
Rushing through a laundry list of questions with little attention to the actual answers is not good journalism. It’s more like cocktail party chatter. It might build some social capital for the reporter, but it makes truth irrelevant, and it breaks what ought to be a sacred bond between the journalist and the news consumer.
Some questions actually do need answers. When the stakes are high, a journalist must be ready to ask the question, ask it again and then keep asking until the answer is clear. If you don’t know that, you probably shouldn’t be in journalism.
That’s the advice I always gave to aspiring journalists in class and to young reporters working in newsrooms. It’s not that hard if you remember why you are asking the questions in the first place. A journalist is there to seek the truth and to share it with the news-consuming public.
That broken bond between journalism and the public was evident earlier this week when longtime ABC News anchor Martha Raddatz interviewed New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu about Donald Trump telling supporters “you won’t have to vote again” in four years. Raddatz laughed off Sununu’s ‘that’s Trump being Trump’ answer and moved on.
I’m sorry, but when the former president — the man who led an insurrection to overturn an election — says if he wins no one will have to vote ever again, that isn’t just the biggest story of the day. It is one of those transcendently important stories that require journalists to do their jobs. Instead, ABC viewers saw Ms. Raddatz abandon the topic when she got the slightest push back.
RADDATZ: What the heck did Trump mean in saying his supporters won't have to vote again in four years?
CHRIS SUNUNU: Haha. I think that was a classic Trumpism, if you will.
RADDATZ: Ok. Let's turn to President Biden and Kamala Harris.
WATCH: https://x.com/atrupar/status/1817561721243931117
Just days after that broke faith with her audience, one of Raddatz’s colleagues kept it in a far more difficult interview. ABC correspondent Rachel Scott was the lead questioner when Donald Trump sat for a controversial interview at the annual National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago on Wednesday. It was a remarkable — and sometimes jaw dropping — event, with Trump spewing racist dreck and disinformation. But Scott held her own. She led with facts, asked hard and important questions and did not falter in the face of Trump’s demeaning attacks.
I do think it would have been better to have her serve as the sole questioner. The three-person panel was not nearly as effective, especially when one of three was a Fox anchor, not a journalist. Watch:
https://x.com/jeffstorobinsky/status/1818722254542590012
Some argued the interview should never have happened, given the former president’s long history of attacking Black women journalists. Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia Journalism School, noted:
“The trade-off for this style of engagement, whether conscious or unwitting, is that a journalist’s ability to pose these questions to a figure of Trump’s temperament and mendacity in no way correlates to the likelihood of getting serious answers. Moreover, the very pursuit of this information grants him the ability to spread great volumes of disinformation.”
Cobb is correct about Trump using the opportunity to spread disinformation, but I disagree that the interview was a bad idea. Because Scott cared more about her audience than about building her own social capital, the interview proved to be an important one. Yes, Trump tried to dominate the conversation. Yes, he lied. Yes, he questioned the racial identity of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. And yet, those of us who saw the interview came away with important truths.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump shakes hands with ABC's Rachel Scott, at the National Association of Black Journalists, NABJ, convention, Wednesday, July 31, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
So, apparently, did Trump’s handlers, who cut the interview short when Project 2025 was raised. In that case, the journalists were unable to get answers to their questions. But since it was Mr. Trump who walked away, not the questioner, the bond between journalist and the public was not broken.
Kyle Clark, who is another smart interviewer as well as debate moderator, responded to Scott’s work this way: “Here’s @rachelvscott showing journalists how it’s done. Direct, fair, unafraid questions based on the candidate’s own words and actions. Journalists, we can make this the standard, not the exception!”
MSNBC’s Katy Kay added: “That is a master class in interviewing. You ask the question. You ask it politely. If you don’t get the answer, you ask the question again and you keep asking the question. Persistent and polite. Exactly what journalists are meant to do.”
It sounds simple: Just keep asking questions and demand answers to those questions. If a politician won’t answer key questions, end the interview instead of moving on. Rachel Scott gets it. Many others do, too. But we really need to see a greater effort especially from legacy media reporters who regularly interview leading politicians in high-profile settings like the Sunday shows.
What these journalists fail to understand is that they are breaking faith with the public. And when the public no longer trusts journalists, then autocrats win.
Jennifer Schulze is a Chicago journalist reporting on journalism. You can read her columns here and at Heartland Signal. Follow Jennifer on Threads @newsjennifer_schulze or Twitter/X @NewsJennifer.