Trymaine Lee is a Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award-winning journalist originally from New Jersey. His career launched after his Pulitzer win for his coverage of Hurricane Katrina with The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. He then went on to write for the New York Times, contributing to The 1619 Project, and then covered stories primarily relating to the black community for The Huffington Post. He currently reports for MSNBC and hosts the podcast “Into America,” which explores the relationships between politics, race, and justice in America.
This interview, conducted by Miles Herszenhorn and Shira Hoffer, has been edited for clarity.
Harvard Political Review: A lot of your journalism centers around telling the stories of real, everyday people, but right now, power in this country is concentrated in the hands of a very few powerful people in Washington, DC. Why do you believe that it is so important to shine a light on the lives of everyday people?
Trymaine Lee: There is a cliche in journalism, that we are the voices of the voiceless. I do not necessarily believe that we are their voices, but I think it is important to amplify and elevate their voices. It has always been important to me to center the experiences, the voices, and the narratives of those who experience the worst of what America is. I think those communities need eyes on them; they need amplification. For me, whether I am a thousand miles away from DC, or telling a story from Southwest DC, it is important to center the human side of the story. I hate the fact that we still have to humanize humans, to put a face on somebody’s struggles. But we have to. Growing up, often I would be dismayed at the portrayals of people from communities like mine — black communities — or other marginalized communities. There seemed something a bit off about it. So, it is important for me to give a more authentic, honest portrayal of people in communities.
Harvard Political Review: You earned a Pulitzer Prize as part of the team that covered Hurricane Katrina with the New Orleans Times Picayune. Where do you draw the line between shining a light on underreported stories and intruding on other people’s experience or suffering? Did you ever feel like being in Katrina may have crossed that line? Or do you see a different line elsewhere?
Trymaine Lee: First of all, I lived there. I did not just pop in on other peoples’ lives. But this is something that I struggle with every single day as a journalist: at what point am I just exploiting a situation, exploiting a family? There is something exploitative about journalism, by nature, because I am coming to get something from you, which is your story, and you might not get anything out of it. This is why I have always tried to approach my journalism with the softest hands possible, centering the humanity in people first.
Locally [during Hurricane Katrina], it was different — I lived in the community; I worked there. But once I became a national correspondent, I started literally just flying to places, dropping in for a few days. It tugged at me a little more, because I am going to leave, and I am taking the camera with me. I am an emotional person; I attach to the emotions of the people, and then I leave. Sometimes I wonder what we are doing this for. I always just try to go with the right intentions, the right feelings, and connect to the humanity in people. Hopefully, the people will see that.
It took a while to really feel good about what I did, as a journalist. We told their story, and I told their story with as much humanity as I possibly could. But our industry is very self-congratulatory. There is a lot of great work and I do not begrudge our craft; it is crucial to American democracy. But as journalists, our egos are a part of us. We must be very careful that we do not try to center ourselves.
Harvard Political Review: There are so many people who believe that journalism is about getting the objective truth, like there has to be this glass barrier between you and the story. Do you believe that there is a future for journalism where journalists are allowed — and told — to lean in with their identities while storytelling?
Trymaine Lee: I think this idea of pure objective truth has always been a fallacy. There is this silliness now where, in some schools, they are battling over critical race theory — which is not being taught anyway — or that you need to have the “other side” of the Holocaust. Is there another side to subjugation, oppression and forced labor? I think it is important for us to realize that our identities and lived experiences tap into our understanding of the world and those are valid. If we want to have an actual, rich understanding of the world in which we live, I think it is important that we rely on some of our identities. My goal and agenda are the people — comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable and hold truth to power.
I do not think that there needs to be a separation [between identity and reporting]. As a Black man in America, my lived experience informs some of how I see things, or how I connect with sources, or the stories that I would tell. Are you trying to tell me that someone who grew up on a Native American reservation would not have a completely different take on democracy, or citizenship than you would or I would or anyone else would? Or that a child of immigrants who is reporting on issues at the border would not have a different take that is equally as valid? The problem is if they are going to be in the business of validating or not validating bias, what about whiteness? Whiteness functions as a race too and we do not ever question how that informs anything else. It is not that whiteness is devoid of race. It is just in the majority. I think that is the heart of the problem because of that centering of whiteness that we just invalidate our experiences as bias.
Harvard Political Review: What reform do you think is necessary inside the newsroom to properly tackle these issues?
Trymaine Lee: More diversity. We need to be intentional about creating pipelines from all kinds of communities. I think sometimes people make easy excuses, like “Where are they? We cannot find any XYZ, whatever.” But you can also create your own pipelines. There is a lot of money in these organizations. I work for NBC. We have billions of dollars. I think we do a better job than most. But I think we need to be intentional about diversifying the newsroom. Cesar Conde has this fifty-fifty [hiring] plan: 50% women, 50% people of color, and he is actually working on that. That is a big bold statement. Because he sees the value in having different perspectives, different skill sets, different lived experiences.
Harvard Political Review: You were one of the first to cover the murder of Trayvon Martin. Why was it that so many other news outlets chose to ignore, or just simply did not pay attention to, the murder of a 17-year-old child?
Trymaine Lee: I have been a police reporter for a very long time. I have to deal with the police every single day — there are days I literally call every hour. They are the ones with the information, but they also lie to you. They are also sloppy and lazy sometimes. Sometimes they do not care about the victims, [especially] when the victims are black, brown, or other marginalized people.
Some folks take police officers at their word that they are operating in good faith. I never think the police are operating in good faith. Not that they are sometimes, but I have to be skeptical because I have seen this play out too many times. They often abuse their power. So, when I arrive at a story, I actually talk to the family first.
I was on the Trayvon Martin story early because I had a source who happened to be connected to the family that called me and said, “Hey, this thing happened: this kid, all he had on him was a pack of Skittles and an Arizona iced tea. I have the father here; do you want to talk to the father?” As I hear this story, I am like, “Oh, this doesn’t sound right.” There is zero way that I could not see myself in the young Trayvon Martin. This kid who was walking through his neighborhood, staying with his father, going to halftime of the NBA All Star game. He goes to get some snacks and he is walking, and he has a hoodie. Someone is following him. The person calls 911 and says, “hey I got this black kid with a hoodie.” He is already criminalized.
I saw things that maybe some other journalists would not have seen. I listened to the family with my skepticism of the police. I understand how our flesh, our build, and our literal bodies as black men are often weaponized, criminalized. I was the right journalist at the right time to do that. It is not like Trayvon Martin tried to rob an innocent neighbor, and the neighbor defended himself, like the story they told. Just like they initially told George Floyd’s death: initially was some sort of druggie, died of some drug overdose. They omitted the part about some guy’s knee on his neck for 10 minutes, right? It is our job as journalists to arrive at these systems and institutions with great skepticism, go and see what their interest is — it is not always an interest of the people. The interest of the people is the truth. How are these systems functioning? How is power being used and abused?
Harvard Political Review: In your experience as a journalist, what would you say is the most pressing issue affecting everyday Americans that is being ignored by politicians?
Trymaine Lee: I could say five things, but I think hunger is a big one. There are people in our communities every single day that are literally hungry. I have been reporting in places and they literally open the pantry and there is nothing in there. Child hunger — it has never gone away. It is like the environmental stuff; it is not sexy.
The level of poverty that we have in this country is ridiculous. The more money you have, the cleaner your air. The whiter you are, the cleaner your air. If you are poor, and black or brown, you are literally living in places where the air purity is lesser. If you are in places like Cancer Alley, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where there are all the refineries and you wake up with soot on your windshield every morning, and you cannot eat any of the fish that you catch. It is hard to cover [stories like these] because people feel like they have heard the story before, but I think we should cover these every day.
