NABJ Leader Defends Inviting Trump To Black Journalists Convention Amid Growing Outrage

Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Herb Brooks National Hockey Center on July 27, 2024, in St Cloud, Minnesota. | Source: Stephen Maturen / Getty

A reporter and leader with the National Association of Black Journalists ( NABJ ) is defending the organization’s decision to invite Donald Trump to appear at its annual convention in the face of growing outrage from members.

NABJ announced late Monday night in a press release that it would host Trump on its convention’s opening day on Wednesday in Chicago.

“Trump will engage in a Q&A with political journalists before an audience of registered convention attendees that will concentrate on the most pressing issues facing the Black community,” the press release said in part.

Trump’s appearance is set to be moderated by ABC News senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, Semafor politics reporter Kadia Goba and, controversially, Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner.

The outrage was swift and spread quickly, particularly among some of its more influential dues-paying members who said on social media in no uncertain terms that the decision to provide Trump with a platform to speak directly to Black journalists – a group he has long maligned – was not a good idea.

That is nothing to speak for the open disdain Trump has generally demonstrated toward Black women for years.

Journalist Carron J. Phillips notably called out NABJ as being “idiotic” in a series of social media posts.

“Y’all just made the only safe haven that Black journalists have, potentially unsafe, all because y’all want to look ‘smarter than everybody else,’ when this is….idiotic at best,” Phillips posted on X, formerly Twitter.

That post followed another from Phillips in which he claimed inviting Trump is “the single dumbest and worst decision in NABJ history. Whoever made this call is an idiot. And I’ll say it to their face this week.”

Tia Mitchell, the Washington correspondent for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the chairperson of NABJ’s Political Task Force, responded to Phillips’ first post by identifying herself as someone who “helped make this call.”

Mitchell went on to defend the decision to invite Trump to address Black journalists as a standing precedent that is “in line with invitations NABJ has sent to every presidential candidate for decades.”

NABJ’s invitation to Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is still pending, the group said.

Mitchell, who also addressed other posts critical of NABJ’s decision to host Trump, vowed to “continue to work to create opportunities for journalists to interview the potential next president.”

That was likely no solace for Jim Trotter, NABJ’s 2023 Journalist of the Year who called it such “a poor decision by @NABJ that it’s difficult to put into words.”

The Grio’s April Ryan, who was named NABJ’s 2017 Journalist of the Year, fully condemned the group hosting Trump.

“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,” Ryan wrote Tuesday in a statement posted to X, formerly Twitter. “I object to this NABJ session with Donald Trump in Chicago.”

Roland Martin, a former winner of NABJ’s coveted Journalist of the Year Award who has been active within the organization for years, called out the organization for not choosing a Black male journalist to help moderate the event; what with the myriad reports suggesting Trump has made notable inroads with Black male voters.

It also can’t be ignored that NABJ decided against any Black-owned and operated media participating in the event.

An email seeking comment from NABJ was not immediately returned.

Adding to the outrage was NABJ President Ken Lemon’s statement that predicted Trump — a proven and habitual unabashed liar — “will provide the truthful answers Black Americans want and need to know.”

Mitchell and Lemon were not alone in their defense of NABJ.

Jemele Hill, NABJ’s 2018 Journalist of the Year, suggested she understood NABJ’s invitation to Trump – with whom she clashed in 2017 about the topic of white supremacy – and said she’s “not mad about him being there. If there is any room I’d want to see how he operates in, it’s in the company of 3,000 Black journalists.”

Hill suggested there could be a reaction similar to when NABJ hosted then-Trump aide Omarosa Manigault-Newman at its convention in New Orleans in 2017.

That was when s everal activists and journalists turned their backs on Manigault-Newman as she spoke during a panel discussion moderated by journalist Ed Gordon. T he panel ended when Manigault-Newman walked off of the stage as then-NABJ President Sarah Glover explained why she was invited to speak.

Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign has already seized on the opportunity of the optics of him being surrounded by Black professionals by boasting about the NABJ invitation in a late-night email on Monday that was — surprise! — replete with lies.

“President Trump accomplished more for Black Americans than any other president in recent history,” a campaign press release says in part without substantiating such a claim with any quantifiable data. Instead, the press release goes on to state without proof that “ Black voters know that President Trump is the only presidential candidate who can deliver results on day one because he already has, including landmark unemployment rates for Black Americans, increased median income for Black households, historic permanent funding for HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), comprehensive bipartisan criminal justice reform, and nearly $50 billion in funds to revitalize Opportunity Zones.”

(To be sure, President Joe Biden has delivered the lowest Black unemployment rate on record; the Associated Press reported that “Trump is exaggerating economic gains for African Americans during his administration;” records show that Trump never requested increased funding for HBCUs during his presidency; the so-called First Step Act criminal justice reform bill signed by Trump “never produced the spike in support from Black voters that he expected,” Politico reported ; and Trump’s 2017 tax plan that created Opportunity Zones — efforts meant to revitalize urban neighborhoods — never achieved the desired economic growth in low-income communities and were exploited by investors, PBS reported .)

But as Trump has repeatedly demonstrated, facts don’t matter when it comes to his rhetoric, which is in direct conflict with the foundation of journalism and its mission to report the truth.

Considering that coming collision of circumstances in Chicago, something’s likely got to give on Wednesday.

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