Tiffany Cross is a Spring 2020 Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics and the co-founder of The Beat DC, a platform that provides critical analysis of national politics, policy, business, and media, highlighting their impact on and relationship with communities of color. She has worked at CNN as an associate producer for the network’s weekend shows covering Capitol Hill and spent five years as a senior adviser to the National Education Association. Tiffany frequently offers critical political analysis on MSNBC, CNN and SiriusXM. Her book, “Say It Louder!: Black Voters, White Narratives, and Saving Our Democracy” is set to be published in July 2020.
Harvard Political Review: Can you speak a little bit about your inspiration and process to create The Beat DC?
Tiffany Cross: In D.C., there are a lot of morning newsletters. They are everywhere now, but I think the whole concept originated in D.C. because we’re always overflowing with information. And so every morning, those of us who work in media and politics would get up and read [newsletters]. … Politico Playbook was probably the most popular [source], but there was so much [information] not reflected in some of these morning reads. And so my friends and colleagues and I would have conversations every day about what was in Politico and what was not in Politico. And this is back when Mike Allen ran it, so I don’t think they were intentionally not covering certain issues. I think they just covered issues and people [who] were in their network, and those were networks that were overwhelmingly white and belonged to cliques that a lot of people of color didn’t [belong to]. There were so many complaints about it, but it was something that we all just kind of accepted that would happen. I had connected with Robert Raven, who runs a progressive firm here in D.C., who had also wanted to create a more diverse platform. He was the first and only person to put money into the platform that I wanted to create. And so we partnered and, originally, it was supposed to be something that people in D.C. could read and see themselves reflected [in]. But very quickly, we expanded all across the country. Within maybe three months, we had tens of thousands of readers, everywhere from Arizona, to California, to New York, to Chicago, to Miami, and the correspondence and the reception was incredibly well received.
HPR: What are some of the greatest problems that you see now with the media landscape, and what do you think might be some steps towards a solution?
TC: Well, there are so many issues in the media landscape, but I’ll start with the lack of diversity because that’s really been my biggest issue. People love to point out that “No, newsrooms are diverse,” like we’re going in a newsroom and you see people from all these different backgrounds, and yes, that is true. There have been steps made, although I think we definitely can go a lot further. … When you have different editorial conflicts happening — and that happens in news — people are going to disagree. The people who are responsible for the content that lands in our newspapers or that lands on our television screens, 90% of those people do not look like the rising majority of America. So when all the people who are “diverse” are junior to you, they don’t really have the same agency or authority to speak up and say, “Hey, this is something that we should be covering,” or “Your perspective here is a little off.” It’s a really bold step for a subordinate to say something like this to an executive producer or to a vice president of content and so the power structure has to change, and power concedes nothing without demand. I think you will see people turn elsewhere; people will give their attention and their dollars to people who are speaking to them. That’s not always necessarily a good thing — we saw that happen in 2016. Nobody was talking about issues impacting large swaths of communities of color, the black community in particular. So what happened? The Internet Research Agency made black voters their specific target. And there were some people who listened and bought into some of the mistruths and lies spoken by the IRA. So that’s an example of how the media directly disrupted our democracy. It was an attack on our democracy. It wasn’t that black voters were the weakness in our democracy; it was systems of white supremacy that elevated certain voices over others that created that chasm.
A lot of people in the media start to get very defensive when you talk about [the media landscape]. And instead of being so defensive, people should say, “Well, wait, maybe you guys have a point. How can we collaborate? How can we work together?” But unfortunately, power doesn’t work that way. I would also say presently, one of the biggest problems I see, and it’s literally a life or death situation now, is the way that the White House press corps covers this president. There seems to be this very direct desire to normalize things that are abnormal, to make sense of things that are just nonsensical. And so I just wonder, if President Obama had handled COVID-19 the way this administration has, how many articles would you see praising him for his tone after he just said losing 200,000 American lives will be a victory? That’s an insult to every human being in this country, but there seems to be a desire for access and a fear to not upset this administration. And that’s not really the role of journalists. At this point, when you have the cable news networks broadcasting the president’s daily COVID-19 briefings, what we’re seeing is these [briefings] are just a rally by another name. We saw in 2016 how this helped elevate a reality TV star to the highest office in the land; his first job in government was as president of the United States, and the media certainly helped create that path for him. Four years later, we still have not learned our lesson. Now the media landscape is gifting him with hours upon hours of free, primetime advertising or pre-primetime space on the airwaves. And I just don’t understand [why the media] does that, appearing so eager to chase ratings and less interested in informing the public.
HPR: How do you think the media is responding to this pandemic? How do you respond to claims that the media has been overhyping this crisis?
TC: Yeah, I don’t think the media is overhyping it. I mean, if that were the case, I think a lot more people would have taken [the pandemic] seriously a lot earlier on. I think sometimes the [media] overcorrects itself and goes out of its way to not appear partisan. So if Trump says, “Well, you know, the coronavirus is a hoax,” then the media gets someone on the opposite side to say it isn’t a hoax, and they present these ideas as though they are equal and as though it’s just a disagreement. I think the media is so quick to turn “chicken s— into chicken salad”: they have to come out and just say this president lies. And that’s the truth. So I think that is a colossal failure by the media that’s literally costing lives every single day. I really just don’t even know at this point, what if this [administration] can be corrected anymore? I think a lot of the folks who cover the White House are members of the chattering class — they have very privileged upbringings and they continue to lead privileged lives. And so a lot of perspectives are frequently lost on them. Their jobs depend on having access and having conversations with members of the administration. And when you challenge this administration, they tend to lock you out, and there’s no solidarity in the press corps when the president completely disregards one person’s question or cuts their mic. When that happens, the very next reporter needs to say, “I would like to follow up on Jim Acosta’s question” or, “I would like to follow up on your Yamiche Alcindor’s question” or, “Hand that reporter back the mic.” And you just don’t see a lot of that. But I want to say there’s also some great work being done. We’ve got [reporters] like Vann Newkirk and Ed Yong at The Atlantic, Jelani Cobb at The New Yorker, and Errin Haines at The 19th. I think those folks are definitely out here doing the Lord’s work. So, it’s not that everybody’s bad, but I think everybody has to be better.
HPR: You have a book coming out titled “Say It Louder: Black Voters, Our Voices in the Shaping of American Democracy.” You were planning on collaborating with some of the students to help you work through your book. Have you changed anything about it since coming to Harvard?
TC: Yes, I changed the title! The title is now “Say It Louder!: Black Voters, White Narratives, and Saving Our Democracy.” And unfortunately because of the pandemic, our time at Harvard was cut very short, which I’m so disappointed about because I had a lot that I planned to do with the students. However, the conversations we had, in those few study groups, were so robust and fruitful, and it was just nice that I did not have to lead every conversation. I would say something, but the students were so eager to weigh in and give their thoughts and share their opinions. It was good and bad. It was definitely good in a way that the students had such strong views and wanted to share them. But it was disappointing because the students are young and it was painful to see them at such a young age already be so hopeless. At that age, I remember I couldn’t wait to get out and attack the world. And sometimes it felt like the students were saying, “This system is so screwed up; there is no fixing it.” That’s scary because everybody is depending on this generation to bring more change, and it takes time to make that change. I would always try to push back against the students that felt hopeless by saying, “You guys, think about where we were 40 years ago, where we were 100 years ago.” And they would respond with, “Yeah, but it took that long to move an inch.” So I completely understood where the students were coming from, I truly did. My heart aches that they felt that way already because I felt that way — I still feel that way. And I was depending on them to give me some hope. But I think that changing [our mindset] from shaping our democracy to saving our democracy helped, because through the course of our conversations, [we realized] that there were so many times throughout history that black people literally did save our democracy. A lot of the students came and testified about their role in our democracy and things that they would like to see happen. I think their frustration can turn to rage. And that rage can turn into action. Because as hopeless as they might be, they still showed up every week to have these conversations. They still spoke with passion and conviction. So I just think at some point that they’ll say, “You know what, I’m not tolerating this. And I’m going to create the things that I want to see.” I look forward to that happening, and I actually thank them in my book for it.
Image Source: Harvard Institute of Politics