By Ismail Sy
After former President Donald Trump attended the 2024 NABJ Convention and Career Fair for a Q&A panel where he discussed a number of topics, a former NABJ board member said the panel was a failure.
The topics Trump addressed included the killing of Sonya Massey, his selection of JD Vance as his running mate, and abortion. Despite the topics set to be addressed, Roland Martin called for NABJ to hold itself accountable.
“First and foremost, from an organizational standpoint, they have to admit they screwed up. They have to admit they screwed up with the panelists they chose, they have to admit they screwed up with this setup. This should not have been a nice sit down on a couch conversation,” Martin said.
The panelists included Rachel Scott of ABC News, Harris Faulkner of Fox News, and Kadia Goba of Semafor.
Additionally, Martin, also a former NABJ Journalist of the Year winner, recalled when former Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton came to the convention in 2016, that format she was given is the way a presidential candidate should be questioned.
“When Hillary Clinton was here in 2016, folks who were asking questions were standing and she was standing at a podium. So that’s how you question somebody who is a president or running for office,” Martin said.
As for what was gained during Trump’s panel, Martin believed that there was nothing that could be taken away.
“All we saw was exactly the kind of mean-spirited, nasty, narcissistic, lying individual that Donald Trump is, which we already knew,” he said.
NABJ faced criticism from members and non-members since it was announced that Trump accepted the invitation to be part of the panel. The organization, historically, has extended invitations to presidential candidates from both political parties in an election year dating back to 1976.
However, Martin said that the spotlight this year did more bad than good for the organization as a whole.
“What this [panel] did was embarrass NABJ. We gave a platform to that [Trump’s antics], which we know was a freak show and an absolute catastrophe. That’s what that was,” Martin said.
Listen to NABJ Monitor Podcast: Donald Trump at NABJ
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