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(Trends Wide) — A week after Trends Wide’s live forum with former US President Donald Trump, the ferocious fallout from the event still reverberates.
While accepting the prestigious Columbia University Journalism Award and giving the school’s commencement speech for the Class of 2023, Christiane Amanpour became the network’s first presenter on Wednesday to publicly express her disagreement with the management of the forum. live with Trump, sparking a storm of backlash.
Amanpour, Trends Wide’s chief international anchor, revealed that she met with Trends Wide chief Chris Licht this week and that the two “had a very robust exchange of views” on the matter. She said Licht “welcomed that exchange of views” but she stood by her decision to hold the forum. Licht told staff the morning after the Trends Wide live forum that he thought it was worth it because he woke people up to what’s at stake in the 2024 election.
After hearing from Licht, Amanpour told graduates of the Columbia School of Journalism that she had not been moved.
“I still respectfully disagree with allowing Donald Trump to appear in that particular format,” said the veteran presenter, saying that Americans have shown with their votes in the last three elections that they know his behavior very well.
“I would have thrown the microphone at that ‘nasty person,’ but this is me,” Amanpour added candidly, recalling the moment Trump lashed out at moderator Kaitlan Collins for asking a question he didn’t like.
Within Trends Wide, Amanpour is far from alone in taking this view. Privately, the forum has been heavily criticized by employees at all levels of the organization. Some of these staffers believe Trump was unworthy of a platform like a live forum after leading the riot at the US Capitol and continuing to spew dangerous lies about the 2020 election. Others believe it was a worthy effort to confront him. , but that the event was badly executed.
Before Amanpour’s speech, Licht sent a note to the network’s global workforce of more than 4,000 employees, praising the presenter for the “rare and exceptional honour” and encouraging them to tune in to her speech. A Trends Wide spokesperson said Licht knew she planned to talk about Trump’s forum in her speech.
During the speech, Amanpour acknowledged that the press has yet to figure out how to deal with Trump, who has abused media platforms to spread dangerous disinformation far and wide, often overwhelming fact-checkers who have struggled to keep up. with its rapid stream of lies and falsehoods.
“Perhaps we should go back to the newspaper editors and television chiefs of the 1950s, who in the end refused to allow McCarthyism to appear on their pages,” Amanpour suggested. “Unless his dirty lies, his witch hunts and his rants met the basic level of evidence required in a court of law. His influence gradually waned with all but his fervent and cultured colleagues.
“So maybe less is more,” he suggested. “Maybe going live isn’t always the right thing to do.”
“Some of the best and even the most gripping and compelling interviews are, in fact, recorded and edited, not to change the context or the content or the truth or the intent, but to edit the filibuster and a stream of misinformation,” he added. Amanpour.
The award-winning host also described Trump’s rowdy forum audience, which applauded the former president while mocking the sexual abuse claims, as part of the problem. It was Trends Wide’s place, she claimed, and she shouldn’t have allowed the jeers and cheers.
Licht conceded to Amanpour that “the execution” of the forum “failed a bit,” he said, assuring him that “we won’t see the same egregious behavior in future town halls.”
Amanpour defended Trends Wide as an institution and implored people to give the news organization another chance, though he acknowledged that “it doesn’t mean we always do everything right.”
“I can only hope that their trust in us has been shaken, but not destroyed,” he said. “Let them believe that we can survive and rebuild that trust.”
Amanpour also spoke about his decades-long career and how it has formed his belief that journalists should provide the public with clear coverage. She noted, for example, that newsrooms acknowledge that Ukraine “is the victim of illegal aggression by Russian imperialism,” rather than giving a false equivalence to each country’s claims.
“Be honest, but not neutral,” Amanpour urged. “(Reporting on) both sides is not always objectivity. It does not lead them to the truth. Extracting a false moral or factual equivalence is neither objective nor truthful. Objectivity is our golden rule and is to weigh all sides and listen to all the evidence, but not rushing to equate them when there is no equating.”
“There is a 100% connection,” he said, “between a robust, independent, free and fair press and a functioning democracy and the advancement of human rights and justice.”
Amanpour said the raging debates over Covid-19 vaccines and the 2020 election results are proof that Americans now have a hard time believing basic facts. He indicated that it is the job of the press to cut the noise, counter misinformation and summon the public to reality.
“I refuse to say or concede any more that we live in a world of posterity because that is lazy and ultimately a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Amanpour said. “We need to seek to provide and defend the truth.”
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