Covering the U.S. Elections

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my name is vivian schiller i am theexecutive director of aspen digitala program of the aspen institute we’reso thrilled todayto welcome uh participants to this panelto this program from all over the worldthe u.s presidential elections arealways global news but it’s probablyfair to say that this electionwas the most closely watched ingenerationswith a pandemic ranging the economycollapsingand an incumbent president who tends todemand attention for his rhetorichis norm busting and his unevenrelationship with the factsall of this is combined to make thiselection not just geopoliticallyimportant but well prettyriveting for all of us so today we’regoing to take a look at howthat story was covered and franklycontinues to be coveredacross four continents it’s particularlynotable astrump has displayed some of the sameautocratic tendencies as we’ve seen inother countriesso what does that say about how wereport on him in relation to the way wereport on other electionsand how do u.s news organizations handleitso we are thrilled today that ourprogram isco-presented with uh the africanleadership institutewith the african digital media instituteandour aspen colleagues at the ananta aspencenter in delhi the plan is um i’m goingto have a conversation with our fourpanelists for about oh 20 30 minutesprobablyand then we’re going to take yourquestions so you probably all know thedrill by now but if you look at thebottom of the screen you’ll see there’sa q a buttonat any time starting right now you canclick on thatyou can add your question if you feelcomfortable doing so it’s really helpfulif you can add your nameyour affiliation and also uh where inthe worlduh you are currently situated just givesome context when we cometo your questions so again you can addthose at any time and they will be therewaiting for me when we get to that partof the program okay so let’smove on now and i’m really excited to umuhto welcome and introduce our panelistswe have with us uh promit chowdhuryhe is the foreign editor of thehindustan times and distinguished fellowand head of strategic affairs for theananta aspen centerhe writes on political security andeconomicissues we have also with us from africapatrick guthra he is a kenyan journalistbloggerauthor and cartoonist he is a regularlypublished commentator on african andinternational affairs whose work hasappeared in multiple publicationsincluding the washingtonpost al jazeera east african star he iscurrently a curatorfor the kenya news and analysis sitethe elephant daphne lindser ismanaging editor for politics uh for nbcnews and msnbcwhich is a role that spans bothbroadcast and digital coveragefor both networks um and she’s beendoing that since the 2016 electionand campaign and doing it again thisyear she is formally managing editor ofmsnbcshe was senior reporter publica foreigncorrespondent for theassociated press and national securityreporter for the washington postand finally um and we’re going to i’mgonna begin with uhmy conversation here i’d love to welcomerazatkins he is a bbc news presenter whohosts the programoutside source for bbc world news andbbc news channelhe previously hosted world have your sayon bbc world news and bbc world serviceradioand he has hosted and covered manystoriesuh from uh around the world uhfor bbc news um forfor many many years so um welcome to allof you i can’t wait touh hear from uh hear from you all andi’ve gotmy questions ready and i can’t wait tohear what our our uhparticipants and viewers have to ask aswell soroz i’m going to start with you so firstof all welcome thank you forjoining us thanks for being thanks foradvising mebig thrill yeah great so roz your showon the bbcairs of course all over the world and inthe uk andrecently your explainer videos about theelections and the aftermathhave gone intensely viral i mean theyarewatched during the show but then theyare spread millions and millions oftimesacross social media um whatis it about and this is particular imean this is the case for all yourexplainer videos but particularly it’sbeen the caseyou know when the counting was going onfor the elections and alsoall of the uh the nuances of what’s uhhappening now uh in the united statesaround uhthe march towards january 20th so you’vededicated a lot of attention to thiswhy is there so much interest do youthink in the usand i mean in the uk sorry and also ofcourse elsewherewell i think we’ve got a few factorsgoing on as you alluded toin your introduction the u.s election isalways the most followedelection in the world you know the bbcsinks lots of resources into the indianelection for example the uk electionthe french election the german electionand there’sbig audience interest in that butnothing compares really with the globalinterest inuh american politics in part that’sbecause of thethe obvious point which is that americais the most powerful country in theworld and so the person in charge ofamerica has a huge influence on all ofour lives and we’ve seen thatwhether it’s donald trump trying to takethe u.sout of the world health organizationduring a pandemic or withdrawing fromthe iran nuclear deal or withdrawingfrom the paris climate agreementthe actions american presidents takeinfluence all of us and so there’s ahuge interest generally inwho’s in charge of america but of coursethere’s there’s something else going onhere as welldonald trump’s presidency for better orfor worse is as you’ve alluded tovery very unusual and i think i wouldsum up our audience’sresponse to the trump presidency iswhat’s going on in america there’s ahugecuriosity about how america first cameto choose this man as their presidentand also how they’ve reactedto his to his presidency and so theaudience interest that we’ve seensurging through our coverage in the lastfew weeks has really been all aroundwell do americans want more of thiswe’ve spent four years observing thisvery unusual presidencynow they have the chance to choosewhether they would like anotherfour years and there’s been an intensefascination aroundthe decision that they would make andyou know we shouldn’tunderplay the scale of the interest ihosted thebbc’s radio coverage global radiocoverage on theon the night of the election and theexecutive in charge of it just beforethe program said you know we can’t besure but we’re pretty confident thiswill be the most listened to radioprogram bbc news has ever madebecause of the the vast interestglobally and in theand in the uk and you know that’s downto donald trump in the very unusual wayhe’s done thingsyeah i wonder if that’s uh i also wonderhowhow it is for you to cover a electionprocess and system that is arguablyunlikeany in the world and is really reallyreally complicatedincluding for most americans i meanlet’s not kid ourselves i feel likeyou know the the the days after theelection was a geography lesson foramericans and i i’ve laughed to seein some ways as i do scan foreigncoverage theyou know discussion about the dynamicsof fulton county georgia versus cobbcounty georgia and what those ships sayaboutyou know our american political system imean how do youexplain something so ridiculouslycomplicatedso it is very complicated i mean justthis week i’ve been explaining theelectoral college all over againand explaining why this stage in theprocess matters and of course there havebeen a number of other points along thealong the way i guess the the questioni’m always applying when i’m thinkingabout how much detail do i go into isdoes this help our audience understandhow americans have responded to thetrump presidency and whether they wantmore of it if it doesn’t then i’m notinclined to get into it if it does thenthen i am and there is a constant risk ithink asas political journalists to get suckedinto detail which doesn’t necessarilyhelpour audience understand what’s happeningand you know we’re always all of us whenwe’re putting stories together aren’t wewe’re deciding not just what to includebut what not to include and theamerican electoral system offers us lotsof opportunities to notinclude things and the the challenge forme especially on election night and onthe daysthat followed when we were pouring overyou know which way will arizona go whichway will georgia gouh why did florida go for trump what’sgoing to happen in pennsylvania and soonwas to try and frame those state-leveldynamicsin the context of the national pictureand soyou know for example one clip that didvery well online i just simply saidyou know there are three routes here forjoe biden to the presidency he goes thiswayinvolving these states he goes this wayinvolving these states and he goes thisway involvingthose states and trying to break it downand make it consumable for our audiencesimportant well i think we can go wrongis if we gowow miami miami dade is really importantthere was a pointthere was a point in the middle ofelection night where i found myselftalking about miami-dade more than iever thought i would do toall around the world and there is agrave risk that unless we connectthat very local analysis to the outcomeand to the national conclusions that wecan draw that you potentially losepeople who don’t follow americanpolitics in the detail that perhaps allof us on this panel doyeah yeah that’s true i think it’s fairto say that more people around the worldare now aware of maricopa county thanfor the elections all right i want tocome back to you but i’m going toactually um nowum uh patrick um i’ve been reading someof your coverage and it is uhreally the uh it’s really brilliantlysubversive actuallyi enjoyed reading uh i i’ve reallyenjoyed reading uhyour stories i just have to read acouple of quotes uh because they’rethey really i i your language is uh issomething that really can’t beparaphrasedin uh in al jazeera you wrotestrategically located between betweentwo of the world’s largest economiesmexico and canada america is a countryof deep contrastsof breathtaking natural beauty naturalresources and friendly peoplebut also of ethnic divisions and massiveinequality and povertyyou know what struck me which obviouslyuh was exactly your purposeis you are speaking about americanot in the terms that america usuallycovers itself but in the way americacovers other countries as if america isdiscovering those countriesuh and sort of you know conquering themfor the first timeso uh i have to read one more i’m sorryit’s just for the audience i can justspend the next rest of the hour readingsome of your tweets and yourcoverage this isn’t from from materiait’s a series of tweetshashtag breaking businesses in the uscapital washington are boarded up as theapproaching presidential electionsparks widespread tension and fear thefirst africanjournalists to travel deep into theheart of the troubled countryreport armed and militia roaming thestreetsagain what’s what’s you know this isboth shocking but alsovery true so why did you take thisapproachand um and tell us about the impact uhthat it’s hadum right thanks for having me umpurpose of of method was essentially todo away withamerican exceptionalism i think there’sthis idea thatamerica and i think i could expand thisto say the west in generalkind of stands apart from the rest ofthe world you know there are things thathappenum in countries like kenya in places umin the so-called third world that umessentially don’t happenin the west and in the u.s and my pointwas to demonstrateactually it’s not it’s just a lens thatthat is usedto cover um countries differently youknow umso that if some of the things that arehappening in the u.s election wereactually happening elsewhere how wouldthey be coveredwhat would they be called you know whenyou’ve got people riding on pickups withmachine guns you know um on the screenhow would that be describedby the international press you know umif it was happening in somaliayou know or if it was happening in yemenyou know umand so if we turn that lens around andthen we askum i mean uh that doesn’t put the ussort ofin its focus i think we start tounderstand that there are many moresimilarities i thinkum an important thing would be for theus itselfto start seeing some of the things thatit mightokay in its own backyard really lookweirdyou know when they are put in other inother contexts and that the world mightnot see itum as the u.s likes to kind of portrayitselfhave i lost your sound okay sorrythere’s a certain quality i think insome ways here in the us that you knowsome haveum some have you know used the uh theolduh comparison of a frog boiling in thewater which isuh there are you know yes seeing ourmilitias in the streetsis shocking but it’s been sort ofdeveloping so slowly over the last fouryears in a way that you be it becomessomewhat normalized which i think iswhat makes yourum reporting so powerful umwhat what do you what do you make of theway the u.s uh coversuh uh uh covers the u.s election haveyou seen any of the u.s coverage andi’m curious what you think about uhwhether or not uhwe in the u.s uh have pulled our punchesum well we are inundated with umu.s coverage of the u.s election we’requite honestso yes we do see quite a lot about howthe u.s speaksabout itself and to be quite honest evenour local media tends to reflectum the language employed by uh by the uswhether it’s in covering itself orcovering the rest of the worldum one of the things that i think is adanger for the u.sis that um there isuh how do i put it um it iswhen you do not see some of the problemsthat mightcome up uh with your books there is asense in which you might think somethings are okayso i find it quite crazy when americansspeak of their system as democraticyou know um when it is you knowgerrymandered to death to be quitehonestum when people are routinely preventedfrom uhfrom voting you know so you really haveto askin what sense is that democratic is thatreally something that carries the willof the peopleyou know um it’s when it’s happeningelsewhere it’s easy to see and it’s aand easy to point out butwithin the u.s there’s this sort ofideali would say faith um in inin the honesty of its elections i mean ifind itone last example umi know donald trump has been raisingsome really ridiculous uhuh allegations and stuff and quiterightly they’re dismissedbut i find it strange that it is to thegovernment officials who are actuallyaccusedof wrongdoing that the media goes todebunk these thingsyou know um when they report in kenyayoudon’t the position says the election wasstolen you don’t go to the governmentto find out whether it was stolen or notyou know they will lie to youyou know but there is this kind of faiththat americans have in their system thati think many times blind you to the factthat officialscan do wrong things you know that thesystems you have canactually be subverted and i think umyour analogy of the frog in the water isis is very up that if you land kind ofsimplyaccept things uh uh or what i call theofficial truth for a long timeit it it kind of ignores you tothe emergence of wrongdoing theemergence of umeven with the trump authoritarianismthose sorts of strandsthat um then lead you down the road toa subverted democracy yeah well thatthat’s um those are excellent points weneed to put you on uh americantelevision more oftenum patrick daphne you and i will bespeaking about that laterbut i’m going to come to prominent nextum promit yourcoverage for the hindu hindustan timesalsopulls no punches i’m just reading thelead of one of your recent stories umyou wrote if trump returns therepublican party will be fully redrawnas a caricatureprotectionist isolationistanti-immigrantblue collar and deeply racist you knowwhat what strikes me about this is thatmany american news organizationsum at least most of them at least untilrecently reallyhave been reluctant touh to speak to write sobluntly um i’m curious if youuh e if you uhhow you thought about when you werecovering the story how you thought aboutthe how america sees itself and howamerican democracy hasyou know heretofore before donald trumpconducted itself and how that playedintothe way that you framed the story well ithink one of the reasons i wrote thatbecome a caricature of what it used tobeum as a as a sort of genuineconservative mainstream partywas simply because i talked to a lot ofmy republican friends in the unitedstateswhen i go to washington i visit thinktanks like the heritage or the hudson ortheatlantic council which are consideredconservativerepublican mainstream think tanks and alot of them i noticed were just holdingtheir headtrump did not represent what theybelievedthe republican party the grand old partyof americauh represented and free trade is one ofthe morestriking examples the republicans havealways beenhave prided themselves as the party offree tradeum or even fiscal conservatism and trumpwas did not represent that point of viewat allit’s even more extreme if you look atsome of the libertarian elementsuh in the republican party so when ilooked at i talked to them i came outand i said wellwhat’s going to be interesting for therepublicans is that you’re seeing apartythat has been captured it’s it’s it’sleadershipum has effectively succumbed to a manwho’s capturedthe working-class base of his of thatpartyand they simply have no idea how torespond uhrespond to him um and therefore youcould see the decay if you wish of theamerican right winginto something closer to what perhapsi think one one american historian saidit’s very similar to what americanright wing was uh you may remember inamerican history there was a partycalled the know-nothing partyuh in america and it was actually calleda native american party in its originalnameand it was exactly this a party that wasviolently anti-immigrant aboutmaintaining white privilege and so on itwas a party that was eventuallydestroyed by the right wing itself theyturned on this partybut this is a party that comes back fromsome really dark parts of americanhistoryand this is what trump in many waysrepresentedum and so that i i really just drew onmy conversations with the americanright-wing friends of mineuh and they said this is this is whatwe’re looking atso uh two things strike me from what youjust said first of alli think it’s fair to say that uh you allknow much more about american historythan most americans let alone whatamericans know about uhthe history of your country so uh that’sthat’s just an observation number oneum but also i you know i was gonna ireally was gonna wait until later in theconversationto talk to get into what’s happening inthe united states right now butyou you teed this up so perfectly so ijust want to you knowask you what you see as a journalist nowand how you are coveringuh the continuing denial of uhof the president of the united statesand whilea a shrinking a still substantialuh base of both his supporters andmembers of congressand other um very influential figures inthe united states touh their the denial that uh that uhjoe biden is going to be the nextpresident of the united statesand how how you are coaching coveringthat story well i thinki’ll echo patrick in here and sayingthat i think for a lot of indians whoare used to a very raucousand highly competitive democracy uhdemocratic tradition where we also haveour politicians who denythat they have lost an election whoclaim thatthey have the elections have been stolenthis is a standard thing especially instate elections more less so nationalelectionsuh so a lot of indians are now lookingat it so oh look the americans are justlike usbut they also assume as happens at leastin indiais that eventually the system will willeventually overridethese politicians and normally we in themediain india when we hear an indianpolitician saying we just happenedrecently about a state election in biharand the fellow who lost it i lost onlyby a few hundred thousand votes clearlyit was stolenand everybody in india was like yawn andput it on page 13and said forget it it’s not goingnothing’s going to happen and sureenoughwithin 24 hours the indian electioncommission which is aseparated constitutional body just saidyou’ve losthe’s won it’s over and then hedisappeared off the newsum so to some degree i think there’s anassumption that that’sthat an assumption among most indiansbecause our electionswhatever else because it’s a they saidthe election commission is a verypowerfulindependent body that nobody in theindian system can controlum we just assume that that’s going tohappen in the united statesum and there is still a sense again echopatrick here that the institutions ofamerica remainso immensely powerful um when i talkedto my father who’s a political historiana retiredprofessor for his generation theyremember watergateand he says you know there was apresident of the united states americawas riveninternally and he just couldn’t fight ithe fought like crazy to stop the senatethe congress the judiciary his ownattorney generalshe did everything he could andeventually he had to resignhe said it will happen americans simplythe institutions will eventually overoverride thisit’s also true of course that we’ve seenthe institutions in americareally be racked especially at the statelevelum and added a number of differentpointsi think i think what striking for as youmentioned that thethis hardcore of roughly 40 of theamericanswho still basically take the viewthat this election was stolen take theline that trumpuh was was somehow cheated and that thedemocratic institutions of america arefundamentally flawedthat is something that i think yes i iat least have beenquite surprised at um and and troubledbutit also reflects i think and this isanother observation that i’ve made aboutthis electionwhen i’ve looked at the numbers thati’ve actually had a chance to put itdown in any concrete formis the return of class in americanpoliticsand from roughly the post-world warperiod class was never really an issuein american politics it was aboutethnicity it was about regionuh it was about many other things butnot classand it was always a source ofconsiderable agony among american leftwings especially marxists who complainthat you know yeahamericans just don’t get class theirtheir classchristopher lash is a famous americanhistorian who marxist historianwho said the american working class hasbeen subdued byjust too much wealth effectively ceaseto be working classthat has now returned and you can seeuh the division on the basis ofeducation which is now what class isbeing defined working in middle class inamericaas this one of the most prominent meansby which to measuresupport for trump and non-support fortrump evencutting across ethnicitiesmore black white working class morelatino working-class americansvoting for trump uh than in thiselection than they did in the last onethat’s been a real revolution i think inamerican politicsdefinitely a major revelation for meyeah and it’s certainly a subject ofmuch discussion and hand-wringing in theunited states as well asas obviously as you as as everybodyknowsdaphna i’m going to come to you as ourrepresentative ofall american mediaso uh uh i you know you’ve beendaphne you’ve been at this for a longtime you have been covering politics fora long timeand there have been until now or untiltrump i should say certain norms for theway that we coverpresidents always tough of course butgenerallyrespectful um you know usually notusing the kind of language that uh uhyou know that uh that that we heard umyou know prominent use uh in thatexcerpt that ithat i that i read um howhas how do you find that balance how hastrumpbroken those norms and how do you finda new balance for reporting not only ontrump and the elections but on trumpismthose are such good questions um vivianthanks for convening this it’s sointeresting and so great to hear um fromcolleagues everywhere onon their views on the election um yeah ithink trump you know trump presentedchallengesright right from the beginning rightfrom umhis views that uh uh americanamerican reporters were were enemiesenemies of of the public enemies of thestateum that you know quicklyuh you know changes the dynamic in termsof howhe messages the first amendment how hesees the role of a free media andcoveringhis administration his presidency him umthose werethose were things that happened rightright from the beginning and you knowtrumpwon the election in 16even though he lost the popular vote soeveryone remembers this was an electionwhere there wassignificant russian interference andinvestigations that werelaunched from the justice departmentthat kind of hung over his presidencyandhim um you know through the muellerinvestigation then eventuallyan impeachment uh for uhhis interference with with ukraine andtrying to get them toum interfere with against his uhlikeliest opponent who turned out to bein fact his opponent in the electionjoe biden beginning those thosechallenges werewere significant and um i would say acouple things one isum the president is is a conspiracytheoristhe his his life and politicswhen it came to president obama wasyou know was lighting a fire with thisidea thatpresident obama was not a legitimatepresident that he wasn’t in factborn in the united states that he hadperpetrated this massivefraud against the american people umthat’s how it began so to your point youknow a whole cottage industrykind of erupted in american journalismfact checkers andlong looks that um you know where he wasuh where he was uh telling the truth ornot telling the truth or being dishonestit’svery hard to know what somebody’s motiveis and deciding they’re a liarrather than just deciding their you knowthe information they’re providing isclearly falseum because it’s hard to know with himwhat the what the motive is or to guessat anyone’s motivereally um so the fact checkers and thenum you know i would say the other thingthat really happenedum is just the rise of thedisinformationbeat um i have two fantastic colleaguesum who’s work you know welluh ben collins and um brandi zaratsnyand she and he um have done so muchreporting on thisworld of conspiracy theories politicaldisinformation first seated online andhow it growsum that ended up being part of politicalcoverage hereum which never used to be yeahi you know it’s interesting that um thatthat thethe rise in this or this cottageindustry frankly of umof fact checking that i guess you knowlook therepoliticians have lied for millennia butthe degree and the volume ofyou know lies falsehoods whatever youknow let’s not let’s not quibble aboutintention or not is pretty unprecedentedas and hasrequired it um it’s interesting becauseyou you point out too those twofantastic fact checkers have also comeunder attackum by trump and his umsupporters so we’re going to come backin a minute i want to spend ask uhour other uh panelists and you as wellin a minute about uhthe uh the impact on on free pressum but but one more question about uhfor you about your coverage atnbc and msnbc to what extent do youreport or do you think it’s important toreporthow those outside of america are seeingthe electioni mean listening to roz and patrick andpromit i’m i’m you knowit’s fascinating to hear the perspectiveof how thethe changing view of the way americandemocracysuch as it is is uh is is perceived andi’m curious how much youinterest you have and how much youreport on that yeah i think that’s beena big part actually the story line ofthis presidency generally and i thinkum ross kind of hit on it right at thetop talking aboutmoves that the trump administration madeand pulling out of the world healthorganization during a pandemicpulling out of the paris climate accordsi think that thoseviews and how america was seen in thoseparticular moveshad a really big impact here and i thinkthe publichas been very engaged in the unitedstates on politics i knowone of our colleagues mentioned surprisein how manypeople think the election wasn’t fairum i i don’t find it surprising becausethat’s what the president saysevery single day and he’s the presidentand he has the largest microphone andthose moves that he makes um you knowearly on in the presidency there wasum you know there was real talk about umwould would the united states leave natouh would they walk away froman alliance like that and what would theconsequences beglobally um and i think there was a lotof very important reporting aroundall of those moments that had a hugeimpact hereon voters and the electorate and theirsense ofthe power of the presidency how it couldimpact umthe lives of americans and and thoseabroadhow will you how do you think about asyou’re planning how will you bereporting on trumpafter he leaves office on january 20thobviously his mother separate is toattract as muchattention as possible which requires uhthe press to cover himyeah i think you know that’s a reallygood question there was aa great piece about it this morning froma colleague of ours on the washingtonpost uh margaret sullivan writing abouthow they should how how um how newsorganizations should handle trumpi would say right now trump is clearlyand i know others have mentioned thistoo it is clearly the leader of therepublican partyand uh he he won manymillions more votes uh this cycle thanhe did when he was electeduh he didn’t win the popular vote and hedidn’t win the total number of votesobviously joe biden didbut you know when 70 70 millionplus americans um even in theseconditions even with the economy the wayit iseven in the midst of a global pandemicanda brutal pandemic here in the unitedstatesum you know went went to the ballot boxandmailed in their votes uh for trump andright now he’s the leader of that partyand i think we need to see what happenswithin that party i thinkboth main political parties in theunited states are sort of sortingthemselves out at the momentand i think it will be really importantto see what happenson the republican side and that dynamicsoum go ahead patrick go ahead yeahum one of the things that i find curiousabouthow um trump is covered and even thediscussion you’re having abouta post from uh uh i mean a postpost-presidency coverageum what i’m wondering is how is thereany sense that trumptrump has highlighted problems with howthe u.s system worksthat he has shown that the presidency isessentiallyunaccountable it’s very difficult umfor them to hold him to account that onepersoncan take them to war you know one personcan causeso much damage you know and that even aconsensus amongstpoliticians that this is not a good wayto to to do thingsdoes not seem somehow to beenough to stop him so is there anydiscussion about reforming the systemabout changing itum and and this is sort of the sort ofdiscussions that the us encourageselsewhere in the world you know it tellsus umfor example in kenya and elsewhere youknow rediscuss reform you know have uhcommissions to look into problems youknow and i’m wondering whether there’sany push for this to happen within theus itself in the wake of trumpuh is that is that for me vivian do youwant me to i think that you can throw itopen and it looks like roz has somethingto say as wellgreat um yeah i’ll have happily tossed ii wouldi would just say i think in it for alongerview before trump and certainly after umyou know american presidents have takenthe country to war umsometimes with congressionalauthorization and sometimes withoutum and that’s you know that’s been asmuch of a test for this systemyou know as anything and and you know ithink weyou know we do have real separation ofpowers here and i do think there havebeenlots of moments along the way in thesefour years presidencywhere congress even a republicancongress has taken kind of extraordinaryaction toscale back some things that that thepresident and his administration havetried to dobut i’ll i’ll toss up to someone elsebecause i know this is an issueeverywherego ahead well i was just gonna i thinkwhat you know both daphneand patrick are saying is reallyrelevant to how we’re trying to coverthe story because if you imagine runninginto the election the bigquestion for our audience was you knoware americans having seen this for fouryears gonna ask for four more years oncewe got beyond election day in thatextraordinary moment in the middle ofthe night when trump stood up and saidi’m going to try and get the supremecourt to help me prove this was stolenandsuddenly it turned into a test of theamerican system and to patrick’s pointi think there’s a real risk that we tellthe wrong story because the story hereat first glance is the system withstoodthis incredible pressure from thepresident you know joe biden is going tobecome presidentin january that’s going to happen thesystem worked to some degreebut i keep hearing from colleaguesinside the bbc and outside in americaand daphne will be able totell us in greater detail but actuallyif this had been closerin a fewer number of states this couldhave gotreally really complicated and actuallythe entire process rested on arelatively small number of relativelyjuniorofficials some of whom were republicansholding the lineunder extreme pressure and it looks likethey did in this case but we shouldn’tnecessarily tell our audience around theworldtherefore america’s democratic systemcan withstand thisbecause the more i look at it the more ithink well there may have beencircumstances in whichit wouldn’t have withstood thisi i completely agree with what you justsaid ross yeah yeahand there are two things happening atonce i mean on the one hand andinterestingly i mean the electionsdespite largely went as as smooth asthey possibly could have we couldget into a debate about votersuppression and and unavailability ofvotingin for particularly for underrepresentedcommunitiesbut generally speaking it meant it wentmuch better than it could have expectedthat said two of the highest levelofficials who declared that won kriskrebs ahead of thesecurity uh uh the cyber securitydivision for the united statesand bill barr the attorney general aftersaying that either we’re fired or pushedout souh you know this story is is is stillbeing writtenum i want to remind everybody please umto drop your questions into the q awe’re going to come to themin just a minute but but before we doactuallyin looking at the questions one of thequestioners uh hasasked the very thing i was going to goto next so let melet me um let melet her let her word speak so we have aquestion from umlucy wescott she is with the committeeto protect journalistsuh she asked this question to daphne butfrankly i’m going to broaden it out toeverybodythe question to daphne how do youprepare your journalists to safely coverthe election this year giventhe summer protests that were dangerousfor journalists increased onlineharassmentand the risk of coven 19 pandemici’ll let you answer that daphna but ireally also want to hearuh then from our other panelists arelated question which isthe president of the united states hasdeclared the free press the enemy of thepeople we we all know thisum he he’s then you know he is now partof a pantheon ofof leaders uh would be autocrats orwould be autocrats all over the worldwho are trying to bend the will of themedia to their ownuh purposes or to undermine the media sothat people won’t listen to themso i want to hear about how you coverthat story definitely i’ll start withthe direct question to youand then um let’s hear from you hearfrom the others about the free pressissuesure um so the the the main thing for usand i i echo i’ll use this just to echowhat vivian said which isum leaving aside some of the otherissues i do thinkit’s extraordinary with what the unitedstates pulled off in terms of successfulelection during a pandemicthat more people voted than ever beforethat poll workers showed up in themiddle of a pandemic that people countedmail and ballots for days in statesum in you know inside in masksum i do think that was that was reallyextraordinary andso for us you know like you know likeevery news organization i think hereum safety during a pandemic has beenum the most important uh thing for usand trying to keep our folks safe and inthe fieldand able to able to report in a momentlike thison the issue of um protests like we sawum in the spring and the summer umcalls for uh you know racial justice inthis countryum you know with there were some youknow there were some harrowing momentsfor usand for other journalists um who endedup being in thein the line of fire who ended up um wehadreporters who were uh you know hit byuh projected you know by rubber bulletsand otherum other things that were that werefired into the crowd tear gasum it’s terrible if you’re wearing amask and there’s tear gas because youreally can’t breatheum you know those are all things that wecontendedwith and we train our our folks in thefieldvery carefully as i’m sure vivianremembers from our time there too i knowthe bbc has done this for yearseverywhere all over the globeright so i mean what i was going to sayis that vivian when we’re covering anystory whether it’s americaor india or kenya or wherever weessentially have the same process whichis wewe go through a series of steps where weassess the risk from a number ofdifferentperspectives now the calculation inamerica has certainlychanged because of the rhetoric thatwe’ve heard from some politiciansincluding thethe president i wouldn’t say it’sfundamentally changed our approachbecause we report and broadcast in arange ofevery country has certain risks andcertain dangers and you startafresh every time you begin thatreporting mission sowhile the calculations change thefundamental processof covering this election didn’t didn’treally differ to how he would cover manyother electionsbut there’s an enabling uh uh uh forcehere too though asyou know if the president united statescan canyou know deny uh the rights of a freepressdoes that not enable um otherleaders to put pressure on the pressthemselvesyou know prom and i’d love to hear yourperspective uhon this and whether you’ve seen a anincrease or a change in the rhetoric asa resultof trump or maybe that’s my americancentrismspeaking yeah i mean i don’t think uhthe the freedom of press or freedom ofexpression in india tends to be acyclicalthing and partly depends on if you wishthe strengthof the political executive or the degreeof divisionum between the press and and uhand and the people in power umso i don’t i’ve never seen it actuallytie itself to anything that happens inthe united states it has it’s reallydriven by completely locallocal dynamics um so you hadthe complete suspension of freedom ofexpressionunder indira gandhi when she declaredthe emergencyi began my career as a journalist in anewspaper that was under attack fromrajiv gandhi the prime minister becausehe was caught in a defensekickback scandal and my paper wasleading up my then newspaperuh was leading the campaign against himand so i literally weliterally had the paper was was lost allof its advertising its finance itsinsuranceand so on so forth and we had to run anentire structurethat was effectively under undergroundto make sure that the paper was bothprintedand kept free todayyes we have a government moviegovernment which is extremely powerfulbecause modi has enormouspopularity he has but what’s what is ithinkdifferent now is that print medianewspapers are just so much weakerin the sense that we are financiallyweaker because of the digital revolutionwe are weaker because we don’t have asmuch uh cloutas we used to um tell both televisionbut really social mediaand and the internet have taken over somuch of the media spacenow that to some degree the governmentdoesn’t actuallycare what the print media says anymoreas it is we’re highly fragmented and 90000 registered newspapers and magazinesin indiaand that you don’t have to be registeredto print in india the supreme court isruled you can print if you feel like itand you don’t have to do anyregistration just go out andstick a printing press in your garageand start printing what does it matterso we actually don’t know how manymagazines in newspapers there are in thecountrybut that result and then we have 400 tv24-hour tv news channelsuh and the number of websites there’s somany that are just people forgotten butthey’ve given up trying to count thembut that results in that the biggestnews english news channel in the countryhas two percent of the nationalviewershipum so you you you have this enormousfragmentationso i often talk to the governmentofficialsabout this are you are you going to goafter us if we do x y and z they saidwhy becauseit’s pointless we can’t go after so manydamn institutions it’s just not possiblethere’s so many of them and then thefederal structure of india is a furtherbufferbecause if the state government if anewspaper is built around onecity let’s say calcutta which is ruledby an opposition party that oppositionparty is hey you stay out of ourbackyard you know you’re not the centralgovernment cannot come inand and and harass journalists we willharass our journalists but you don’ttouch our journalists let’s get out ofhereso what i’ve often been asked aboutfreedom of the press in india i said thefreedom of the press in india reallylies more than anything else in itssheer sizenobody is able to control the press youcan come down and you can say oh you 20newspapers we’re squeezing you becausewe’llpull all the government ads a lot of usstill depend on government ad revenuebut what are you going to do about theother 9 88000 newspapers out there which come inover 120 different languages which youcan’t even read themsometimes the press office pressofficers and in the government say wecan’t even read all these papers how thehell do we know what’s going on outthereum let alone what’s happening on the tvchannels soi’m normally not overly concerned aboutprayer freedom to press in india becausei know even if my newspaper is underpressurethe newspaper down the road is going toprint and say what the hell are yougoing to do about itum um go aheadgo ahead just pick up on that i might imight look at this from a differentangle rather than a freedom of pressissueor a freedom of information the factthat the internet has created a forum inwhich anyone can sayanything makes me think that makes methink back to 2008 actually i remembercovering that election andeveryone in the previous years had beenobsessed with george w bush and sayinghe was such a divisive president forbetter or for worse andthey hoped that with mccain and obamaperhaps those divisions would go awayand thenlo and behold george w bush exited thestage and those divisions just appear tobecome deeper within american societyi think something similar is happeningwith uh attitudes towards the press andour consumption of information which isthat we are looking at it often throughthe prism of trump because he’s such ahigh profile figureoften sharing information that’s notaccurate but i am absolutely convincedthat the core issue here is that theinternet has completely ripped apart howwe produce information andconsume information and that actuallythat is the bigger story here and thebiggerlong-term trend that will go well beyondany influenceconsiderable though it is that donaldtrump has overattitudes towards the press or attitudestowards the reality reliability ofinformationum if i may i think in kenya things areslightly differentbut bigly different fromuh uh uh from india and also asi mean in canada you only have like whatfour or five uhum national newspapers and pretty muchnothing else um at the lower levels whenit comes to print uma bunch of uh tv stations mostly ownedby the sameuh companies that own these four or fivenewspapers so the point is in kenya itreally does matterwhat trump says about uhuh press freedom but very long timethere’s beena um adversarial relationshipbetween um the independent pressand the government you know um andfor much of that time the us was areally important buffer you know sort ofstanding behind the free press andkind of many times carrying offgovernment from doingum uh taking extreme actions againstthemyou know there’s always the fear thatthe u.s would impose sanctions or stufflike thatyou know so when he is seen to go afterthe press it pretty muchgives license to um politiciansalso in countries such as ours you knoware to do the sameum and and they are quite willingto go after uh the presshere in kenya we’ve seen it withpresident kenyatta in fact saying thatnewspapers are for wrapping meat thatthey’re not really seriousuh uh uh sources of information it ishe’s been employing much of the samelanguageof donald trump and we’ve seen evenattacks by governmenton journalists you know um harassment ofbloggers atcum has all tended to tick up and becauseum the us haskinda undermined its own uh moralauthority to speak out against it umit means that there’s really not muchwhereor people aren’t it’s it’s uhit’s a shield pretty much that’s beentaken away you knowanother i would say isgood and bad so there is a sense inwhichyes the loss of the shield is baba alsoi think people are learning now thatwe’ve got to really rely on ourselvesum if we want to defend the media we’vegot to do itourselves using our internal resourcesbecause essentially the external worldis not reliablelike a reliable partner it comes to thiswe have so many good questions that arecoming in and we’re not gonna we onlyhave a few minutes left so i’m gonnaum there are two questions that are arerelated i’m gonna ask themuh both and then i’ll ask the paneliststo address itum so the first of the two that i’mgonna read now is from tom rosenstielwho’s thehead of the american press institute whosayssome folks worry that cable newsincluding msnbc one of youruh the networks that you support daphnahave become part of the polarization comuh problem we’d like to hear both fromyou and from everyoneto the degree to which the pressreinforces polarization by the nature ofwhat we coverand a related question is from uh leslierantz umwith the african leadership initiativein east africawho asks is there such a thing as truththis is quite a big uhuh topic to cover in um in six minutesby the way anduh and your truth and what what what andand we and our chosen media decide tolive in our respective truths souh these are related questions obviouslythat has to do withhow well i’m just going to i’m not goingto interpret them i’m just going toput them out there and uh and let youuh adjust them daphna do you want totake you want to startyeah sure i actually want to hear whattom thinks ofthe answers to these questions becauseum he’s been in it for so long and hisviews are socritical to the rest of us understandingumi think you know we’ve obviously seenespecially in the last few yearshow that that media landscape is isbroadeningum tremendously so and especiallywith the president i think pushingnetworks that helikes or thinks are favorable to himagainst others and interferingum you know with with all kinds ofdeals and and media relationships umdriving viewers i think from you knowawayfrom fox i i think is his hope in in inmoments where he’s frustrated to othernews organizationsplaces like newsmax and oan that hethinks are morefavorable uh to him in terms ofperceptionum i think there’s a lot of room outtherefor um for different points of view andum and for news i i don’t know if umthe fascination with with with cablenews shouldbe seen any differently than um anewspaper havingeditorial pages with with point of viewon on subject matterum i think one of the things we try tocover very much so now toois is that sense of polarization how itimpacts votersum how they’re feeling um aboutlife and their choices um when it comestovoting so i think for us that thatthat’s as much a topicof uh of reporting as as anything elsebutum hopefully tom will tell us what hethinks tooi will learn from that we’ll do that inanother session rozi think one of the things i’ve beentrying to experiment with a lot coveringthis election and the fallout from it isfast i can make my reporting so we hadthree videos which in particular wentvery viral one was on the republicanparty’s response to trump’s claims onewas on four seasons total landscapingand one was on just one particular daywhen there were a series ofextraordinary eventsinternational observers had expressedconcern of what was happening donaldtrump had said something his son hadshared a video ofthat turned out to be fake and in all ofthese different very different stories iessentiallylisted what had happened with the mostsparse language i could i didn’t applyany adjectivesi didn’t really try and interpret it ijust said this is what’s happening inamericaand they just when they were just soheavily sharedand i think proved to me that there isstill anappetite for news organizations who arejust laying out what’s happened into thequestion that’s come from kenya i sayyes there is a truth we haven’t got tothe stage wherethings have become so debased that everysingle thing is debatable we can saywith confidence certain thingsare true and my experience is the moreconcisely and more precisely i canlay out the things i know havedefinitely happenedwithout applying any judgment withoutapplying any adjectivesthe more people’s appetite for ourreporting has increased and that’s beenan interestingoutcome covering this election though nodoubt you will still begreat uh still be accused of bias i wantto hear very quickly because we’rerunning out of time from prominent andthen patrick and then we’reunfortunately going to have to wrap itupum prominent well you know the the nobeleconomistum daniel kahneman and i paraphraseduh said once that people don’t changetheir opinions because of facts theychange them because of the storyand what we call narratives and whatbasically i see what’s happening inwhat i felt happened in the unitedstates definitely was you sawan enormous split in the in the in thenationyou taught two very different narrativesdevelopinguh and you know you’ve seen the chartsso that certain peoplewatch only certain types of tv channelswatch only certain types of newspapersor they will notknow or even care about the othersi would argue that hasn’t happened yetcompletely in india partly because ofthe fragmentation i’ve talked aboutbut what i do as an individualis that when i pretend to be a publicintellectual i make it a point that italk to let’s say think tanksacross the political spectrum and ifa right wing or a left-wing magazine innewspaperor even a party journal asks me to writesomething for themi’ll go to the editor and i’ll say can iwrite for them and you’ll be likethey’re crazy i said yeah but it doesn’tmatter they need to be able to feel thati still talk to them that people in mygrouptalk to them one time i remember oneextreme hindu right-wingorganization asked me to write an op-edon foreign policy i wrote it to themlater on their editor told me he sayswhy did you write that i just said i hadan opinion i felt you should know whatit washe says no no no i want to know why youwrote it because you are part of anintellectual elite that despises peoplelike mei come from a different class i comefrom a small towni don’t speak english very well why didyou write for us i said that doesn’tmatter to me i just wanted you to knowwhat i think after that he’s been agreat friend he’s like oh wow this guy’sstrange he’s not part of the normalelite of indiaand i find the same thing is true on theleft so i make that a point but i thinka lot of us a lot of definitely in my inmyclass uh don’t do that enough yeahgreat patrick i’ll give you that i justlike tojust make two very quick points um ithink one is just to what ross has justsaidum uh i think it’s going to be difficultto simply presentthe facts if you will um part of the thejob ofuh of journalists is to explain whythese facts are importantyou know why do you need to know thisand what does it meanyou know and i think that’s where you’realways going to run into trouble you’realways going to runproblems i think the expectation thatthe news can presenta sanitaryof what’s going on something that’s noteitherthat can’t be seen as biased or swayedone way or the other i think that isridiculous it’s likethe whole idea that we can be objectiveyou know we really can’tyou know um it’s a myth and i think themedia need to own this and we need toexplainmore to the audience how we come aboutdoing the news and i’ve seen quite a lotof that happening which i’m quiteencouraged bythe second thing i want to talk to topoint outas a fear is this ability for everythingto be branded as fake news andusing the language of it music issomething trump has really sort ofum enlivened you know it’s become ahammer to beat upanything that you disagree with so thatumin our politics you know if apolitician doesn’t like what’s what’ssaid about him he brands it fake news ifwe’re having argumentssomebody says oh i don’t like the factyou’ve given me because it’s fake news ithink that is one of the things that wereally need tofind ways to roll back on because wereally cannot havea decent public debate if one side orboth sides simply cannot agree on a setof facts and it would be sayingwhat we don’t like is simply must befake yeahwell that’s trump’s gift to the worldthe expression fake news we’rewe’re so grateful unfortunately we haveso many great questions but we’re goingto have to wrap it upand for our um for our goodbye i’m goingto turn it over toum the executive uhthe executive uh director of the africanuh digital media institute um lilamachariaand uh before i go and turn it over ijust wannasay big thank you to patrick and promitand daphna androz i this was fascinating could havegone on for another hourthank you hi everybodyum it’s been such a wonderfulconversation i just want to thank youallso much for taking part in this pramitand daphna ross and gabara this waswonderfuli think we’ve all learned a lot andyou’ve really challenged usi also want to uh thank vivian and theaspen digital teamwho are our conspirators as the africaleadership initiative and the africadigital media instituteso i just wanted to say a very quickthank you but also to issueto all participants an invitation whenwe conceptualize this together withvivian and the teamour vision is that we would give seniormedia leadersa space to just step back a little bithave some time to reflect and to refreshand to think aboutthe issues that are facing our industrywe have learned this year thatuh we’re so important as a sectoruh for and and that our leadership isneeded that it’s literally a matter oflife and deathand so we would like to provide thisplatform and we’ll be asking you foryour feedbackon what conversations you’d like us tohave in the future we want to tackleissues like social media the socialdilemma uh fake newsuh how to cover humanitarian disastersas is happening in the us right nowand also to really tackle questions wehave around our businessmodels and there’s any topic that youfeeluh could be tackled within this platformat a global levelat the executive level we’d love to hearfrom you so that we make this somethingthat we co-create and makereally really useful to you as you leadour worlduh over the next decades thank you verymuch and we hope to see you soon at ournext conversation

The 2020 U.S. election and its aftermath have been some of the most closely followed stories in the world. All eyes are on an America torn by unprecedented levels of partisan division, an onslaught of mis- and disinformation, and a president asserting victory without evidence.

How has the media covered this story? And what does it say about covering politics in a world increasingly at odds over facts?

Speakers

• Ros Atkins, Presenter & Host, BBC News
• Pramit Chaudhuri, Foreign Editor, Hindustan Times
• Patrick Gathara, Global Affairs Journalist & Curator, The Elephant; Award-winning Cartoonist
• Dafna Linzer, Managing Editor for Politics, NBC News & MSNBC
• Vivian Schiller, Executive Director, Aspen Digital

Ros Atkins

Presenter & Host, BBC News

Ros Atkins is a BBC News presenter who hosts the programme Outside Source which broadcasts at 1900 GMT, Monday-Thursday on BBC World News and BBC News Channel. Previously he hosted World Have Your Say on BBC World News and BBC World Service radio. Atkins began his career in South Africa where he researched crime prevention and human rights for the Centre for Policy Studies. He also wrote for the Sunday Independent in South Africa and worked as a DJ in Johannesburg and at the Oppikoppi festival. On returning to the UK, Atkins became editor of timeout.com. He also contributed to British Airways in-flight radio. Atkins has hosted coverage of many major stories around the world for BBC News, including both of Barack Obama’s election victories and his first inauguration, the swine flu outbreak in Mexico, the football World Cups in Germany and South Africa, the Charles Taylor verdict, the London Olympic Games and Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. He was also a lead presenter for the BBC World Service coverage of the death of Nelson Mandela that won a Radio Academy Gold Award in 2014

Pramit Chaudhuri

Foreign Editor, Hindustan Times

Pramit Pal Chaudhuri is the Foreign Editor at Hindustan Times and Distinguished Fellow & Head, Strategic Affairs, Ananta Aspen Centre. He writes on political, security, and economic issues. He previously wrote for the Statesman and the Telegraph in Calcutta. He served on the National Security Advisory Board of the Indian government from 2011-2015. Among other affiliations, he is a member of the Asia Society Global Council, the Aspen Institute Italia, the International Institute of Strategic Studies, and the Mont Pelerin Society. Pramit is also a senior associate of Rhodium Group, New York City, and advisor to the Bower Group Asia in India, a member of the Council on Emerging Markets, Washington, DC, and a delegate for the Confederation of Indian Industry-Aspen Strategy Group Indo-U.S. Strategic Dialogue and the Ananta Aspen Strategic Dialogues with Japan, China and Israel. Born in 1964, he has visited over fifty countries on five continents.

Patrick Gathara

Global Affairs Journalist & Curator, The Elephant; Award-winning Cartoonist

Patrick Gathara is a Kenyan journalist, author, blogger and cartoonist. A regularly published commentator on African and international affairs, his work has appeared in multiple publications, including The Washington Post, Al Jazeera and the East African Star. Gathara is currently a curator for the news and analysis site, The Elephant. An award-winning illustrator, he is the author of Gathara Will Draw for Food, a collection of cartoons focused on the East African political scene. A keen observer of the 2020 US presidential election, Gathara has produced witty and thought-provoking satire examining global media narratives around this topical issue.

Dafna Linzer

Managing Editor for Politics, NBC News & MSNBC

Dafna Linzer is a Managing Editor for Politics in the NBC News and MSNBC, with a role spanning broadcast and digital coverage on both networks for the 2016 election campaign. Linzer was formerly managing editor of MSNBC; senior reporter at ProPublica; foreign correspondent for the Associated Press; and national security reporter for the Washington Post. In her time at the Washington Post, she covered intelligence and non-proliferation, and reported on the futile search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. At ProPublica, Linzer wrote the “Shades of Mercy”, a series on racial bias in presidential pardons. The series was a finalist for the Harvard Shorenstein Center’s Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. Linzer also conducted work on the Guantanamo Bay detention camp under the Obama presidency, which won a 2010 Overseas Press Club Award and an honorable mention for the Silver Gavel Awards of the American Bar Association.

Vivian Schiller

Executive Director, Aspen Digital

Vivian Schiller is the Executive Director of Aspen Digital. A longtime executive at the intersection of journalism, media and technology, Schiller has held executive roles at some of the most respected media organizations in the world. Those include: President and CEO of NPR; Global Chair of News at Twitter; General Manager of NYTimes.com; Chief Digital Officer of NBC News; Chief of the Discovery Times Channel, a joint venture of The New York Times and Discovery Communications; and Head of CNN documentary and long form divisions. Documentaries and series produced under her auspices earned multiple honors, including three Peabody Awards, four Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Awards, and dozens of Emmys. Schiller is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; and a Director of the Scott Trust, which owns The Guardian.