MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
You've seen this show before, by which I mean a media circus gearing up to cover Donald Trump, NPR included. We are leading an hour of today's show with two of our reporters on the ground in Manhattan. It is a huge, unprecedented story, the first time a former U.S. president will be arraigned on criminal charges. It is also true that since these media circuses began during the 2016 election, Trump has proven adept at using the attention to spread misinformation and lies. So how does our news organization plan to cover this story? Well, NPR vice president and executive editor Terry Samuel is in the studio with me now. Hey there, Terry.
TERENCE SAMUEL, BYLINE: Hey there.
KELLY: Start by laying out the thinking in terms of the resources that we're bringing to bear, what reporters we've put where on what is a historic story.
SAMUEL: It's historic, it's important, and it's consequential in any number of ways. And we, like any responsible news organization, must cover it. That much is clear. So we start there. And then, given all that we've learned about covering the Trump presidency and the Trump phenomenon, we are going to focus on the consequential and try to stay away from this showmanship that you reference.
KELLY: And I want to get into that. But first, just take me specifically to what that looks like. How are we thinking about just staffing it, how much time we give this on air?
SAMUEL: So there are a couple of things. The on-air look, in some ways, will come down to what this very show looks like tomorrow.
KELLY: How much other news is competing...
SAMUEL: Right.
KELLY: ...All the other factors. OK.
SAMUEL: But in terms of how we are approaching this, I used to be a court reporter for a long time. And what we have now is we have two reporters in the courtroom. We have two reporters outside the courtroom because the world is completely different now, and we will have to update that story as it's happening online in our newscast...
KELLY: Across our social media platforms, all those. Yeah.
SAMUEL: Across our social media platforms. It is constant and ongoing. We want to be authoritative. We want to be complete. And we're going to be relentless.
KELLY: Live coverage - we're a broadcast news organization, so let's talk about our live coverage. And I will allow that I'm not a neutral party here. I'll be anchoring NPR's live coverage tomorrow. We will not be airing any remarks the former president may make live.
SAMUEL: Right.
KELLY: Why not?
SAMUEL: I think it comes down to a single crucial question for us - how much value add do we deliver to an audience? Having learned a lot of lessons about how these events go, President Trump is a showman, as you mentioned, and he has been known to manipulate these events to his political advantage. And that's fine, except that's not what we owe our audience. And so what we will do is cover the events of tomorrow extensively. But devoting resources live says to the audience, this is a singularly important moment, and you should hear it. And we don't think that that necessarily rises to that threshold.
KELLY: With the benefit of hindsight, what lessons has NPR learned? What have you learned as one of our newsroom leaders, looking back on how we've covered this particular individual since 2016?
SAMUEL: I think it's fair to say there have been mistakes, and there have been missteps. I think they mostly fall into the category of us doing things the way they have always been done and not recognizing how different candidate Trump, President Trump, now former President Trump was on the political stage and how he essentially transformed our politics into something different. And so the biggest lesson is that we should not deliver information on the assumption that people know exactly how to make use of that information. Part of our jobs is fact-checking our politics and our politicians who have made it kind of a business model to be not just disingenuous but completely deceptive for political purposes.
KELLY: Is fact-checking enough? I mean, because we have been doing that. I've done plenty of live coverage of political events these last several years where we were fact-checking in real time, whether in the broadcast, whether on our website. Is that enough?
SAMUEL: Is that enough? A fair question. I think the answer to that question depends on what your aim is. If your aim is to help people understand what is going on in their politics and their life, it is an essential part of it, and we have to keep at it. If it is to deter politicians from doing this again, then no, it's not enough. The question becomes what else do we need to do? And I think that is one of the things that we continue to work on.
KELLY: NPR vice president and executive editor Terry Samuel, walking us through how NPR is preparing to cover the arraignment of Donald Trump. Terry, thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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