Why we think it’s important to run Q&As from Trump supporters (and other things that might not win me friends)
Traditionally, if a journalist undercuts a candidate in a story, it’s seen as showing bias. But what about when you’re undercutting something that’s not true?
This election has a lot of media folks asking that question.
On Sunday night we published a Q&A with Jessica Fernandez, the leader of Miami Young Republicans, on how she went from being an ardent supporter of Marco Rubio to casting a ballot for Trump at the Republican National Convention, something she said a few months ago she never could have pictured herself doing.
Delegates aren’t required to vote for the party’s candidate. She could have still cast a protest vote for Rubio. She could have gone all Ted Cruz if she wanted to. And yet, she found herself doing the same thing her former presidential pick did: backing Trump for the sake of her party. (This election has us doing all kinds of things we never thought we would do, like saying to a coworker “Lance Bass will be calling your cell at 2 p.m.”)
Jessica’s perspective on this is interesting, and it’s local. Her path from Rubio to Trump grounds a national conversation in Miami. We think she is a worthy subject for a Q&A because she is a Miami native introducing us to a viewpoint we don’t often hear.
But many of you did not agree.
We got a lot of frustrated comments. Some were about featuring a Trump supporter on The New Tropic, but others were about specific statements she made that readers said were factually inaccurate. On Instagram, a couple of you said you were going to unfollow us. It seemed many of you felt betrayed by The New Tropic featuring her viewpoint.
Last week we published an interview with Lance Bass about why he supports Clinton, and we interviewed this lucky local lady about what it was like to meet Clinton. We also published a video from Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine’s rally at FIU. We thought it was about time we gave space to a conservative view.
We’ve got a rep for skewing to the progressive side of things. We’re OK with that. First and foremost, we care about the future of this city, and helping it move toward being a better place to (obligatory) #livelikeyoulivehere.
But Trump supporters exist in our community. So do Latino Trump supporters, despite the vitriol their candidate has spewed toward Latino immigrants throughout his campaign. Fernandez isn’t the only one and many more like her will be voting in November. One of the questions asked a lot here in Miami is “Who are the Latinos voting for Trump, and what are they thinking?” The Q&A is at least a partial answer.
We aren’t afraid to come down on a side in a debate, like we did when we published how much legislators got from the gun lobby and how they voted on gun reform. We’re proud of that work. But we also think it’s important to bring in new points of view we might not have considered in a digital landscape of filter bubbles.
A lot of you had a criticism that journalists across the country are struggling with: How to cover a candidate and a campaign that is rife with distortions of the truth, blatant inaccuracies, and even hateful ideas.
With Fernandez’s Q&A, we were left mulling the same question, because of some suspect figures she cited as evidence of why she supports Trump’s immigration policies. You called her out for it — and us for publishing it without a fact check.
(FWIW, this is the source that Fernandez cited on Twitter when asked.)
Your concerns sparked a serious debate in the office about how we handle inaccuracies, especially during an election season rife with exaggerations, half-truths and full lies. We’re still figuring it out. We’ll probably be figuring it out long after the November vote. Thanks for pushing us to do better by you, and by Miami.
You can always reach us by e-mail at hello@thenewtropic.com (real humans see those e-mails, usually me) or on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
