National Association of Black Journalists faces backlash over Trump invitation

The National Association of Black Journalists leadership is under fire for inviting Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to their convention this year in Chicago, but reportedly bungling a similar invitation for Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s Democratic rival for the White House — and the first Black woman with a realistic shot at the presidency.

Roland Martin, a longtime NABJ member and host of Roland Martin Unfiltered, posted on X that the organization’s leadership had invited Harris to appear, but purportedly would not accommodate her request for a virtual rather than an in-person interview.

“BREAKING NEWS: Vice President @KamalaHarris will not be speaking at @NABJ in-person or virtually,” Martin wrote. “(Harris’ campaign) offered for her to take questions virtually, but was turned down by NABJ. That makes NO sense. We do interviews DAILY by satellite, Skype and Zoom, so this should have happened.”

Martin said Harris has a series of important political or campaign stops at the date and time NABJ offered for the interview. Although Harris’ campaign offered an alternative date, he wrote, the organization turned it down.

“Keep in mind that @KamalaHarris is in ATL today for a campaign rally with Meg The Stallion; speaks to @SGRho (Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc.) in Houston on Wednesday; attends Thursday’s funeral for (Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee); and goes dark on this weekend to make her VP selection,” Martin wrote. “I’m also told that @VP @KamalaHarris offered to speak to @NABJ at a later date but was denied.”

Martin also pointed out that Trump has not been friendly with NABJ until after Harris entered the race: “Also keep in mind that Donald Trump REFUSED to speak to NABJ in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.”

Martin’s bombshell posts capped a day of drama surrounding NABJ, an influential organization whose membership includes some of the nation’s leading Black journalists.

Shortly after word went out that Trump had accepted the invitation, Karen Attiah, a columnist for The Washington Post, abruptly resigned as co-chair of the convention organizing committee.

“I have decided to step down as co-chair from this year’s #NABJ24 convention in Chicago,” Attiah, a columnist for The Washington Post, wrote in a post. “While my decision was influenced by a variety of factors, I was not involved or consulted with in any way with the decision to platform Trump in such a format.”

Rather than take questions from all comers in a town hall-style event — and risk being subjected to pointed, hostile questions from a room full of Black professional journalists — the former president will participate in a Q-and-A format. He will take questions from just three journalists chosen from the group’s membership, including Harris Faulkner, a Fox News anchor and host.

“To the journalists interviewing Trump, I wish them the best of luck,” Attiah said. “For everyone else, I’m looking forward to meeting and reconnecting with all of you in the Windy City.”

Ken Lemon, NABJ’s president, defended the decision to invite Trump. He pointed to the organization’s long history of inviting presidential candidates — including former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders —  to discuss issues important to the Black community.

“While NABJ does not endorse political candidates as a journalism organization, we understand the serious work of our members, and welcome the opportunity for them to ask the tough questions that will provide the truthful answers Black Americans want and need to know,” he said in a statement posted on X.

The organization has invited Republican candidates, including Sens. Mitt Romney and John McCain, when they ran for president. But, like most GOP presidential contenders, they declined the invitation.

Along with Faulkner, the panel set to interview Trump includes Rachel Scott, who covers Congress for ABC News, and Kadia Goba, a political correspondent for Semafor, a politics news website. 

Most NABJ members who weighed in on X backed Attiah and criticized NABJ, suggesting Trump had played the organization’s leadership. Critics noted the former president’s penchant for lies, his bigotry, and his questionable relationship with the Black community — which usually veers from expedient to hostile.

“That racist, sexist agent of pure chaos is angling for a Negro penicillin shot to try to ward off the voting virus coming for his weakened electoral immune system,” Greg Carr, a historian who teaches at Howard University, wrote on X. “Let the self-serving note: We see.”

The criticism also had an important subtext: Since replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the Democrats’ ticket, Harris has electrified the campaign and energized Black voters. Twin fundraising calls exclusively for Black men and women on Sunday and Monday raised $3 million in small-dollar donations in 24 hours.

April Ryan, a longtime White House correspondent who covered Trump’s first term, noted the former president’s reputation as a sexist bully who engineered the end of a woman’s right to abortion — a move that is disproportionately harming Black women. Ryan, who writes for The Grio, has experienced Trump’s ire first-hand: he called her “nasty,” and “a loser” during a White House press conference in November 2018.

Given Trump’s history, Ryan said, she doubts an interview session format moderated by a Fox News primetime host will produce anything insightful.

“The reports of attacks on Black women White House correspondents by the then president of the United States are not myth or conjecture, but fact,” Ryan wrote. “To have a presumed orchestrated session with the former president is an affront to what this organization stands for and a slap in the face to the Black women journalists (NABJ journalists of the year) who had to protect themselves from the wrath of this Republican presidential nominee who is promoting an authoritarian agenda that plans to destroy this nation and her democracy with his Project 2025.”

Others argued that, like him or not, Trump is a consequential political figure who could very well become the next president. That alone, they argue, makes him newsworthy and the invitation appropriate.

“Some of y’all need to take a step back and ask why you’re questioning why a group of JOURNALISTS wants to ask former and possibly future President Trump questions,” Tia Mitchell, Washington correspondent for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and a member of the committee that invited him, wrote in an X post. “Do you hear yourselves?”

This story first appeared on Word in Black.