Just The Facts, Ma’am: PBS NewsHour’s New Co-Anchor On Journalism In Today’s Digital Age

It’s difficult to comprehend in the age of instant news online, yet American broadcast journalism is less than 100 years old, having begun in the mid-1930s with the introduction and adoption of FM radio. Edward R. Murrow’s reports from war-torn London and on Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp, exposed Americans to the horrors of World War II, helping to sway public sentiment.

While Germany and England began television broadcasts around the same time, U.S. television set manufacturing halted during the war, which delayed adoption of television for broadcast journalism. By the 1950s, television replaced radio as the primary news source for much of America. Murrow still led the way with his weekly news show See it Now, which provided live simulcasts from across the country, and his televised reports on Senator Joseph McCarthy are credited with exposing unjust accusations of communism by the senator.

Fast forward to today. With the Pew Research Center finding that half of U.S. adults get their news at least sometimes from social media, what is the place of television broadcast journalism? Newly elevated PBS NewsHour co-anchor Amna Nawaz, who also happens to be the first Asian-American and Muslim-American to anchor a nationally broadcasted news program, shared her thoughts on the state and future of broadcast journalism in today’s digital age.

What do you feel are some of the biggest challenges facing American journalism right now, and how do you plan to address them as co-anchor of PBS NewsHour?

Amna Nawaz: Clearly one of the biggest challenges we face as an industry right now is misinformation and disinformation. And this is not new. It’s something we’ve been dealing with for many years, including at PBS NewsHour. I think we all recognize the landscape has changed dramatically. We have incredibly bad actors out there pushing disinformation. We have a lot of platforms that make it a lot easier to spread really dangerous or malicious misinformation. As we’re moving through year three of this pandemic, we see that misinformation has life and death consequences. Whether people are healthy. Whether our democracy is safe. We’ve very much seen the real-world consequences of how the movement of information can show up in our everyday lives.

The way we have approached it at PBS NewsHour – and the way I’ve approached it as a journalist – has always been the same: which is to say that a fact is a fact, and the facts guide our reporting. That has always been at the center of our mission. And I think the answer, to what is clearly a surge of misinformation and the growth of disinformation campaigns, is more good journalism. Regardless of your platform or outlet, the answer for bad information out there is more good information. That’s at the center of everything we do. It’s pointing out when a lie is spoken, pointing out when something is false, when it’s misleading, when it’s incorrect, and then countering that with the facts and what we know to be true based on our own reporting or analysis. Addressing this is chief on my mind because it’s not going away, it’s only been getting worse.

The other big challenge, which I think is a good challenge to have, is there are just so many stories that need to be told. The benefit of an hour-long, commercial-free program is that we do get to cover more stories than your average evening broadcast, and we get to cover them in a more thoughtful way. Which is really a blessing in this industry. It’s not unusual to find a five, seven, or ten-minute piece on PBS NewsHour, which is not something you’ll find most other places. That said, it’s still a battle for us every single day to prioritize what we believe as a team are the most important stories to get to our audience. We recognize there are so many things important to our viewers: the economy, politics, healthcare, immigration, education, climate change. It’s a challenge to whittle all those stories down into one coherent show. It’s tough, but it’s a very good problem to have.

The shift from Judy Woodruff to you and Geoff Bennett has been described as a generational change. PBS NewsHour has also tried to expand to younger viewers through social media accounts on TikTok, with more than a million unique viewers on YouTube each day. What innovations and shifts in journalism do you feel are occurring to attract younger audiences, and what more are needed?

Nawaz: It is our duty and responsibility to meet our audience where they are, and that long predates Geoff and me stepping into the co-anchor chairs. The way I think about it is this: I, as a news consumer, get my news from all different kinds of media and platforms. There’s no one single resource I go to, and I trust that our audience does the same. So, it is imperative that we are showing up in their social media feeds, making sure that our broadcast segments are accessible to them on a number of different platforms, that we are offering live streams where they can interact with us and with experts on topics important to them, and in a way that works for them. You see this across the industry, but it is more important now than ever, with so many disinformation and misinformation campaigns and efforts out there, to feed our content everywhere it can go. Because I believe the good stuff rises to the top. We’ve seen that with the number of people who turn to us in times of big news and then stay with us because they recognize we’re a credible, reliable source of information and news analysis.

We know there are a lot of people who rely on TikTok as their primary source of information. That’s an undeniable fact. It behooves us to show up where people are because at the very least, we’re able to add good, solid information and journalism. When I think about innovation and the news, I think it’s a willingness to experiment and recognize that you cannot rely on people coming to you, you have to show up where they are.

Journalists are critical to the public knowing what is going on in the world, and can bear witness to unspeakable tragedy, even risking their lives. Describe how you have raised awareness of the recognition and treatment of post-traumatic stress in the field.

Nawaz: Because I’ve been doing this 20 years, I will tell you that early on it was not something that was talked about: that you as a journalist will bear witness to some of the most unimaginable scenes and horrors and devastations, and need to take care of yourself. I’m an empath by nature. I tend to carry with me a lot of the stories and the experiences that I’ve reported on during the years. I am still in touch today with people whose stories I told 15, 20 years ago. That’s just the way I do my job.

But it takes a cumulative toll. And I don’t think I realized how much of a toll it was taking until I reached a few breaking points. I’ve always suffered from some level of anxiety. I rarely sought help for it. But it really wasn’t until after the Uvalde shooting that I realized something inside me had shifted and it just couldn’t be shifted back. And it was my husband, to his testament, who recognized it, and said, “you’re not ok, and you need help.” So, I went back into therapy for a really intense period and I’m still keeping up with it as regularly as I can.

I think in raising awareness, talking about it with young journalists I mentor, and making it acceptable conversation, I hope we’re building a generation of journalists who can learn how to take care of themselves. Because we cannot sprint every lap. We have to learn to sustain ourselves so we can run the marathon. It is necessary that we go out in the field, show up, and bear witness. And what we carry with us is nothing compared with what the communities who live through the horrors will carry for the rest of their lives. But we have to continue to show up.

Judy Woodruff is stepping down to pursue “America at a Crossroads,” a project reporting on the social and political divide in America. Some attribute that divide to biased journalism. What do you do to counter that bias?

Nawaz: First of all, I’ll say that I am among the many people who are very excited to see these reports from Judy. She is such an icon in our industry and to see her out in the field, in people’s homes and communities, is going to be really exciting for me as someone who looks up to her.

As for the issue of divided America, depending on who you talk to, you can talk to ten different people and get ten different reasons why they believe we are where we are as a nation. And sometimes this issue of divisions seems much more acute at the national level than it does when you get down into communities. People have long lived in communities where they may disagree politically or have religious diversity, where people from different backgrounds are perfectly cohabitating side by side. Sometimes the national politics or divisions end up filtering down and make the division seem a lot worse than it is. And often they’re not that bad on the ground in communities. But as a nation, I think it’s very clear to see that we’re at an inflection point. We’re at a point where more people are willing to believe information that has no factual or scientific basis. More people have a tendency to support anti-democratic or autocratic tendences or ideas. And that’s just plain dangerous for the country.

I have spoken first-hand with a number of people who attribute some of the division to journalists. And I welcome that feedback. I think one of the things we do really well at PBS NewsHour is respond to people who write to us to engage in real discourse, and who have really substantive questions about how we do our work. There has been mistrust growing in media and journalists. One of the things we as journalists need to do, in addition to putting our heads down and doing the work to put more good journalism out there, is to be more transparent about how we do our jobs, share our sources, be more explicit about how we know what we know. The connection between journalists and the audience we serve has never been tighter. People know more about the storytellers now than they ever did before about the people reporting the news, and it’s incumbent on us to be transparent, genuine, and authentic in return. I think that’s how you continue to build trust.

Geoff and I have the incredible advantage of inheriting seats at the most trusted and credible brand in news right now. And that’s something we don’t take lightly. It’s an incredible responsibility, especially given the landscape today.

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. Check out my other columns here.

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