Dr. Douglas Lake, from Iowa, left, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Candace Fowler, from Missouri, and Seema Verma, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, listen as Omarosa Manigault, Office of Public Lieason, speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Wednesday, June 21, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
By:
August 11, 2017

Journalists at this week’s National Association of Black Journalists conference turned their backs on White House aide Omarosa Manigault during a panel on police brutality Friday.

The panel discussion, which saw Manigault spar with Bounce TV’s Ed Gordon, at times ran afield of the topic at hand, drawing exclamations and applause from the audience. Some journalists walked out before it concluded.

The hours leading up to Manigault’s appearance at this week’s NABJ conference were fraught.

Manigault, the director of communications for the White House office of public liaison, was added to a panel on police brutality amid confusion about her role in the discussion, according to a New York Post article published Thursday.

New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, who was originally scheduled to moderate the panel, backed out, along with New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb, who cited general disorganization and a lack of clarity about whether the panel “would be able to discuss substantive issues regarding the administration and its policing policies” with Manigault.

Then the panel began, and it quickly went off the rails:

https://twitter.com/WesleyLowery/status/896131651092086784

https://twitter.com/WesleyLowery/status/896105324595171329

In a statement, NABJ said it appreciated that Manigault was participating this year.

“As an organization of professional journalists, NABJ seeks to have candid and frank conversations with newsmakers. For years, the NABJ has invited the White House administration to partake in the annual convention. We appreciate that the Director of Communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison Omarosa Newman is participating this year and has come to share her perspective on issues that are critical to our members, and moreover, critical to the communities that we serve.”

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Benjamin Mullin
Benjamin Mullin was formerly the managing editor of Poynter.org. He also previously reported for Poynter as a staff writer, Google Journalism Fellow and Naughton Fellow,…
Benjamin Mullin

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