A panel of world-class journalists from the New York Times, the Washington Post (a 2018 Pulitzer Prize winner), HuffPost, WGBH, and ThinkProgress talked about what it’s like to cover Washington in the current political climate.
Washington members of the media covering the White House are beset with challenges seldom experienced in any other presidential era. To be sure, this is a digital era marked by vitriol and bombast, as well as a President’s addiction to social media. For news outlets with shrinking news staffs and desperate to find ways to maintain or increase their audience, Trump’s 24-hour news presence may seem like a godsend: His unerring instinct for how to attract attention has been helpful to the bottom line of many of those in the Fourth Estate. But this is also an era marked by a growing and dangerous disconnect between voters and established news media, a situation fed by the administration’s use of terms like “fake news” and “alternative facts.” Is this a passing phase brought about by the cult of presidential personality? Or, have we forever lost the trust in those who bring us the news? We brought together some of the nation’s most prominent members of the Washington media to give their take from a rare, insider’s perspective.
Panel Moderator: Jill Agostino is Deputy Editor, Special Sections of the New York Times. Her career at the NYT spans over twenty years and, prior to her current position, she was the day editor for the NYT’s Washington bureau, serving as the Liaison between the Times’ New York and Washington, D.C. offices. She also served as the NYT’s Assistant National News Editor, Daily News Editor and Night Editor.
Panelists: Jennifer Bendery is a Senior Politics Reporter for HuffPost. She has covered the White House and Congress for HuffPost since April 2011. Prior to joining HuffPost, she reported on Congress for four years for Roll Call, a Capitol Hill Newspaper, and spent four years covering the Texas Legislature for Gallery Watch in Austin, TX. She also worked in book publishing for three years in San Francisco and was a health care policy reporter for two years in Providence, RI.
Josh Israel has been the Senior Investigative Reporter for ThinkProgress since 2012. Previously, he was a reporter and oversaw money-in-politics reporting at the Center for Public Integrity and was chief researcher for Nick Kotz’s acclaimed 2005 book, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America.
Ron Nixon is the New York Times Homeland Security Correspondent. He is based in the Washington bureau, where he covers border and aviation security, immigration, cybercrime and cyber security, transnational crime, and violent extremism. Previously at the NYT, he reported from Rwanda, Uganda, Belgium, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He is also the author of Selling Apartheid: Apartheid South Africa’s Global Propaganda War.
Ashley Parker is a White House reporter for the Washington Post and winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for her coverage of Russian Interference. She joined the Post in 2017 after eleven years at the New York Times where she covered the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns and Congress.
Paul Singer became Investigations Editor at WGBH in Boston and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting in March 2018. Prior to this year, he spent six years serving as the Washington Correspondent and Politics Editor at USA Today. And before that, he designed and ran the investigations unit for Roll Call.