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Scholar wrote book about ‘identity and belonging’ and media

President Donald Trump uses “coded” language about race according to a University of Colorado professor.

“Trump has dramatically shifted the narrative with his coded speech about race—and talent for inserting himself into stories about race to ensure all the attention goes to him,” Professor Angie Chuang said for a story on the University of Colorado – Boulder website.

The journalism professor has a book coming out on this topic, called “American Otherness in Journalism: News Media Constructions of Identity and Belonging.

Chuang offered her comments on Trump’s appearance this month at the National Association of Black Journalists. During the appearance, he criticized ABC News reporter Rachel Scott, a black female.

Trump, like former CNN anchor Don Lemon, questioned Kamala Harris’ racial identity. The vice president is part Asian and part black. Lemon has questioned if Harris is “African-American” – her dad is Jamaican.

These identity specific conferences helped Chuan, who is Asian, learn how to exist in the “white world.”

“Going to conferences like that as a young reporter was so important to my career development, my morale and my mental health,” Chuang said in the CU-Boulder story. “They became moments for me to say I existed in this white world, but I can be with a group that relates to this and can get help with things I may not be able to ask about in the newsroom. They were times of revitalization for me.”

Younger journalists are more likely to “challenge lies and hate speech,” whereas older ones are objective when it comes to politics, Chuang said, according to the university’s paraphrase of her remarks.

From the story:

Ironically—or perhaps not—Chuang said an issue worth discussing in a conference like this one is how to cover a candidate with a long history of making coded remarks that are racist or misogynistic. She said there’s a clear generational divide separating older journalists—who see their role as objectively reporting what newsmakers say—and younger ones who want to challenge lies and hate speech.

It is refreshing, she said, to see journalists thinking more critically about their place in writing that first draft of history, and while Trump is causing a lot of professional soul searching, much of that dates back to the 1990s and the establishment of the 24-hour news cycle. Suddenly, the ho-hum became headline news as broadcasters raced to fill airtime.

Chuang, a “scholar whose expertise is the role of culture in constructing identities,” said she is not sure if the news coverage of Trump is legitimate because it covers an important political figure or if it just “amplif[es]red meat for his base.”

“It is impossible to ignore these things, because they are racist and misogynistic, and they are emblematic of who he is,” she said. “And yet, it has this way of sucking the life out of all political discussion, crowding out more important issues and stories.”

MORE: Three Columbia administrators resign after ‘antisemitic’ text controversy

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