CNN’s Abby Phillip talked with a small group of student journalists after hosting the 14th annual Amanpour Lecture. PHOTO CREDIT: Leila Cox
When Abby Phillip was invited to host this year’s edition of the University of Rhode Island’s annual Amanpour Lecture by Christiane Amanpour herself, she was floored.
Phillip, anchor and senior political correspondent at CNN, recalled Amanpour giving the commencement address at her graduation from Harvard University in 2010. She remembered the uncertainty she felt as a student journalist graduating college and entering the workforce, and how Amanpour’s career inspired her to go forward.
“I honestly thought that her career as a fearless war correspondent and journalist — I just wasn’t sure that was something that could be in my future,” Phillip said. “But she was then and is now someone who I admire and look up to, and I’m proud to call her a colleague.”
Phillip’s lecture, entitled “Honesty and Authenticity in Political Journalism,” focused on the themes of objectivity and authenticity and their place in journalism today.
“Everywhere I go, people ask me the same thing: ‘How do you maintain objectivity in journalism?’” Phillip said. “And so I’ll actually quote Christiane, she often says that ‘objectivity doesn’t mean treating all sides equally, it means giving each side a hearing.’”
When deciding to pursue a career in journalism after college, Phillip said she was inspired by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. It’s easy to look back on this era and see the evil associated with segregation and Jim Crow laws, Phillip said, but there were journalists in the field at the time that saw the evil then, too. These reporters “took up the call” to write and share the true violence and evil against Black people in America that was so evident.
Phillip highlighted the way that journalists have been, and still are, perceived as “megaphones,” just people that information passes through and they share in turn, as if they have no opinions at all.
“None of us are without our biases and our perspectives,” Phillip said. “And we really should be clear about them. It’s about honesty and objectivity. The two in my mind are very linked: you cannot be honest with your audience without being transparent with them about who you are, and how that might impact the lens with which you look at the world and report on the world.”
The old-school idea of “objective journalism” has never been realistic, Phillip said.
Before joining CNN in 2017, Phillip had a career in print journalism at the Washington Post. She said that during this time, she still believed she could disappear from a piece completely. However, upon reflection, she realized she was taught this by observing mostly white male journalists who can do this easily because the political world has been largely centered around their perspectives.
“Who you are as a person does affect how you relate to your stories; how you collect information, where you look and how you understand what you find out,” Phillip said. “As a Black woman on television, I simply cannot escape my identity. It’s obvious to my viewers, so I have to ask myself every day, am I relating to my audience authentically? Am I leveling with them the way that I would with people in my life that I care about?”
Phillip discussed her experiences covering the White House under former President Donald Trump and a time when he lashed out at her after asking him a question. She said that she got a lot of support from industry colleagues after the video of Trump telling her she asked “stupid questions” went viral.
After reflecting on the incident, however, Phillip said she didn’t take it too personally because of her experiences as a Black woman covering politics. She said that in political reporting in particular, she has become somewhat “numb” to people making assumptions about her based upon how she looks.
Phillip took questions from the audience at the end of her lecture, where she answered questions ranging from how working in print helped her become a TV journalist to the role of alternative media in modern journalism to handling accusations of bias as a woman of color.
When asked for advice she would give to aspiring young journalists, Phillip recalled working at Politico as an intern where she got her first big story published. She went through a printed database of congressional office spendings and searched for a story. Ultimately, she wrote about Senator Chuck Schumer’s exorbitant private flight expenses and made major headlines throughout the country.
“It was an important lesson in how sometimes these mundane tasks, just being the one to say ‘hey, yeah, I’ll do that,’ can land you on the front page of your newspaper,” Phillip said. “That is what I advise you to do: make yourself useful, raise your hand, volunteer to help and you would be surprised how far that gets you.”
The 14th annual Amanpour Lecture was held virtually this year on Nov. 10 by URI’s Harrington School of Communication and Media. It is endowed by alumna Amanpour and brings a prominent figure in journalism to the URI community each year. Past lectures have been hosted by The Atlantic’s Ed Yong, journalist and TV personality Carol Radziwill and Amanpour herself.
Before the lecture, Amanpour spoke briefly about Phillip’s work and experience in the field, and why she chose her to host this year.
“Abby’s extensive experience covering political campaigns, elections and the White House makes her an ideal candidate to talk about how journalism needs to sometimes move beyond strict objectivity to understand the responsibility that political journalists have to their audience and their communities,” Amanpour said in her introduction to Phillip’s lecture.
Phillip ended by discussing the importance of honest journalism and truth telling in the present day, especially as false information has become a bigger issue.
“At a time when it’s more difficult than ever to differentiate bad information from good information, we need to make it easier for people to understand that they can trust us,” Phillip said. “It will be a long road, and I think we need to take this challenge very seriously, if our democracy and if our journalistic institutions are going to survive.”
The recorded lecture can be viewed here.