Joy-Ann Reid, an MSNBC political analyst, discussed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting and President Donald Trump’s election during Syracuse University’s second University Lecture of the spring semester on Tuesday night.

Reid is the host of “AM Joy,” a weekly talk show on MSNBC. Her show has been nominated for two NAACP Image Awards.

Lorraine Branham, dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, kicked off the event in Hendricks Chapel by asking Reid about her thoughts on how the media has covered the student movement for gun control in following the violent school shooting in February that left 17 people dead in Parkland, Florida.

Reid said she was impressed by the Parkland students’ activism and their bravery in standing up to the National Rifle Association, and she believes they have changed the tide on the gun debate.

“The NRA runs Florida. The NRA owns Florida,” Reid said.

Reid, though, added that the country has embraced Parkland students in a way they haven’t embraced young people participating in Black Lives Matter protests.

Reid also discussed media bias and the struggle for balance during the lecture.

“I don’t think it’s the quest for objectivity that is the fallacy in our coverage of the Black Lives Matter versus Parkland kids,” Reid said. “It is the failure to recognize tribalism. It’s the failure to recognize our own biases in ourselves toward people who are not like us.”

Reid and Branham discussed gun lobbying and what Reid called the cycle of outrage and inaction following mass shootings. She predicted that broad gun control will be established nationally in coming years.

Reid is a columnist for The Daily Beast and frequently talks politics on Twitter. She has more than 1 million Twitter followers. She’s the author of “Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons and the Racial Divide.”

She also teaches a course for Newhouse in New York City at SU’s Fisher Center and graduated from Harvard University in 1991.

The conversation shifted to President Donald Trump and his campaign promises on immigration. Reid blasted Trump’s stances on immigration and said his Florida country club Mar-a-Lago employs many immigrants. Trump married two immigrant women, Reid said.

Reid said the media failed by making the 2016 election about economics, and said his election was characterized and made successful by demographic panic among white middle class Americans. Trump’s campaign was built on nostalgia of a past that was seemingly better, Reid said, while Hillary Clinton’s campaign lambasted Trump’s crass language without securing key votes.

“A lot of political analysts give him too much credit for being this analytical chess player,” Reid said. “He’s not.”

A member of the audience asked Reid for her opinion on the recent controversial video of local news reporters across the country, employed by Sinclair Broadcast Group, repeating a message mandated by the corporation.

Reid said local news is the most trusted form of news, as local news anchors have a stake in their communities, as citizens.

“For Sinclair to use and pervert their credibility to deliver their blatantly propagandist message … it’s very dangerous. This is what happened in Turkey, what happens in Venezuela, what happens in Putin’s Russia. This is not the way the American system is meant to work.”

Published on April 3, 2018 at 10:29 pm

Contact Kennedy: krose100@syr.edu | @KennedyRose001