Linsey Davis, right, was a special guest at the third annual National Trauma Journalism Symposium at Franklin College Friday. The ABC national anchor described her recent experience moderating the debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. John Krull, left, director of the Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, led a Q&A with the audience.
Photo by DeMarion Newell, TheStatehouseFile.com
By DeMarion Newell, TheStatehouseFile.com
Linsey Davis, only the second woman of color to moderate a presidential debate after Carole Simpson did so in 1992, was a special guest at the third annual National Trauma Journalism Symposium, hosted on the campus of Franklin College by the Pulliam School of Journalism and the Trust for Trauma Journalism on Friday.
Davis is national anchor for “ABC News Live Prime,” ABC News’ award-winning streaming evening newscast, and weekend “World News Tonight.” She advocates for trauma-informed journalism and resources for journalists suffering from work-related trauma. (She also teaches in Franklin’s journalism school as a professional in residence.)
Davis and David Muir co-moderated the presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris on Sept. 10.
She learned she had been tapped for the job on May 17 while preparing to record a news segment, and she had a hard time concentrating on camera.
“I was like, wait, we gotta start again. I just couldn’t get through because in my mind I wasn’t able to process this,” she said.
Davis knew it was going to be a big moment in what she referred to as the “Super Bowl of the news industry.”
“I was feeling incredibly excited and feeling the weight of the magnitude of the moment at the same time,” she said.
It was a big moment, but she couldn’t start preparing for the debate right away. She didn’t start until after the CNN debate between Trump and President Joe Biden on June 27.
“Because you never know what they’re going to ask, and you don’t want to have already done all this research and then you come up with the same questions that they’ve now asked and answered,” Davis said.
ABC had July and August to prepare, but there was uncertainty if the debate was going to happen. Biden withdrawing from the presidential race and Harris stepping in caused a problem between the two campaigns. Also Trump didn’t want to debate against Harris at first.
Davis and Muir had a team that would come together to figure out which topics they wanted to cover during the debate. Then they came up with several questions for each topic.
“You have 10 questions to whittle down as you get closer to the debate because they’re no longer relevant or something else is now hopped into the news cycle,” Davis said.
She spoke on the importance of having a list of questions, but what’s more important than the question is the listening and being able to ask follow-up questions, she said. That’s why her preparation leading up to the debate was so important.
“We wanted to know the information so well that when you’re listening to the answer, … we can decide how accurate something is,” Davis said. “We can decide at that moment.”
Even though Davis was prepared for the moment, while she was sitting in the office with her co-workers hours before the debate, the nerves started to kick in. A middle-school friend sent a message saying, “I think democracy is in your hands tonight.” After that, Davis turned her phone off.
“I just didn’t want to be nervous about it because I felt like the nerves are going to take away from everything, and so I was just really trying to be in the moment,” she said.
Davis talked about how an hour and a half seems like a long time, but that’s not enough time to cover everything.
“You’ve got to give equal time to each person, and you’ve got to allow them time to debate,” she said.
“I love what we do. I love the idea of being able to ask questions, and at this particular level, I feel like we are servants of the American people. We are trying to understand and develop questions, and that’s partially why the process takes so long. We’re trying to get as many thoughtful questions that we really think that the American people want answered.”
Davis did receive criticism and threats on social media after the debate, but she had advice prior to the debate not to pay attention to anything written about her. She felt confident in her performance.
“I was waiting to see how it was going to be perceived in the moment. … We happened to have gotten really good feedback in that moment from many of the news outlets, so that was really reaffirming,” she said. “That was some good affirmation that we had done a good job.
“It’s so subjective, right? I mean, I felt we did.”
DeMarion Newell is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
