MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Covering American Politics

Dean Jelani Cobb and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow talk politics in front of a Columbia J School student audience

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“It's a very short leap from the press being the enemy of the people to the press being criminal. And that is not abstract…I mean, after the debate, Trump said that ABC should have its broadcast license taken away. The editor of The Federalist said that David Muir and Linsey Davis should be arrested. And they're not joking.”

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow joins the J School’s Dean Jelani Cobb for a student event to talk about some of their favorite subjects - politics and history - as we approach one of the nation’s most consequential and divisive presidential elections. As a journalist, Maddow says she gains perspective through history -  she won a duPont-Columbia Award in 2020 for her seven-part podcast series Bag Man, which revisits the early 1970s and then Vice President Spiro Agnew’s fall from office. 

By turns entertaining and sobering, Dean Cobb and Maddow go in depth on this year’s political coverage; Maddow’s very unconventional - and hilarious - career path; her take on journalistic “objectivity;” and her specific advice to the young journalists in the room, especially while covering this election.

Links: 

  • Watch The Rachel Maddow Show here 

  • Listen to her duPont-Columbia Award-winning podcast Bag Man here

  • Listen to our 2021 On Assignment episode with Rachel and producer Michael Yarvitz after they won the 2020 duPont here.

  • You can look out for Rachel’s new film From Russia With Lev here.