#nabj

Trump is a chauvinist abuser. He hates women. There will never be a situation where Trump has honest respect for a woman. He is incapable.

If you vote for Trump, you vote for the abuse of women. This is on you.

Karine Jean-Pierre's ability to keep her inner voice to herself is remarkable. An absolute queen.

"I came in, it was accidental. I wasn't aiming to be a news reporter or an anchor. But I became an anchorwoman. I started at the very top. Then I went back to being a secretary and then a news trainee."

One more pioneering journalist whose contributions should not be overlooked during Women's History Month, is Melba Tolliver, the first Black woman to anchor a regularly-scheduled news program on a major television network (in this case, New York's WABC-TV). Born in 1938 Rome, Georgia and raised in Akron, Ohio, Melba originally pursued a career as a nurse but pivoted to a secretarial job at ABC news in 1966. A year later the timing of a strike by the American Federation of Television and Radio, presented an opportunity for Melba to be able to occasionally fill in for anchor Marlene Sanders --who was herself the the first woman to anchor an evening news broadcast for a major network (also ABC).

A Black woman's face being a rarity on network television news at the time, Melba quickly proved her capability and competence in the role and projected an air of competent trustworthiness, even as she was completing her degree in journalism at SUNY Empire State College. In very short order she became a full-time anchor for WABC, a position she would hold for the next ten years --one of her earliest assignments was to cover the funeral of Robert Kennedy, Sr. Not insulated from racial stereotyping, Melba famously ran afoul of television standards in 1971 when she insisted on wearing her hair in a natural afro --disdaining the then-accepted practice of wearing a wig or a scarf-- when covering the White House wedding of Presidential daughter Tricia Nixon. In 1976 she took a job with competing WNBC, at one point becoming one half of television's first all-women co-anchor news team with Pia Lindstrom and Carol Jenkins. She later joined News 12 Long Island but was fired from that role in 1994, at a time when the realities of cable news were forcing the more traditional networks to rethink their entire models.

Trump is addressing the NABJ as I type this (July 31 2024 14:39 EST) and hoo boy is he bonkers. Right out of the gate he insulted the host as hostile & rude, then referred to Kamala Harris as "Indian before she turned Black".

There’s going to be so much media trying to rage bait Black People throughout the election and when Harris wins the Presidential election that it’s definitely time to make sure to take a break if you need to because the media is going to remain stuck on stupid and want Black People to engage in their obvious racist news reports about Vice President Harris.