- Pritzker Fellows
- Former Fellows
- Mark Murray
Mark Murray
Senior Political Editor at NBC News
Spring 2018 Pritzker Fellow
Seminar Series: “What the Media Missed in 2016 & What Must Change in 2020”
Biography
Mark Murray is the Senior Political Editor at NBC News, where he covers politics for the network, writes and edits its popular First Read blog, and appears daily on MSNBC and Washington DC’s NBC affiliate to discuss the latest political news. He also serves as a key manager of NBC’s political coverage, giving direction to the network’s reporters and producers.
Before joining NBC News in 2003, Murray spent five years as a reporter at National Journal. And he has written freelance articles published in the New York Times (Sunday op-ed page), the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Monthly, Washingtonian magazine, and Washington City Paper.
Murray is a 1996 graduate of the University of Texas at Austin (B.A.), and he lives in Washington DC with his wife Sasha and son Caleb.
Seminars
“What the Media Missed in 2016 & What Must Change in 2020”
The 2016 presidential election was a triumph for many journalists and news organizations. Higher ratings. More clicks. Must-see debates and candidate forums. Captivated audiences. More stories and information than ever. And a Pulitzer Prize (by the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold). But it also was a failure. Very few political observers - including me - saw Donald Trump’s victory coming. The most-covered issue in the election was Hillary Clinton’s email server, according to a Harvard study. And many Americans continue to be surprised by Trump’s governing choices and style, suggesting that the news media didn’t convey to voters what kind of president Trump would be. So what happened? How can we learn from our mistakes? And how should we cover the next presidential contest? These are the questions I’ve pondered over the past year as a political journalist who covered the last four presidential elections - 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 - and who is looking to cover my fifth in 2020. And in these seminars, we’ll work through some of the answers together.
One ironclad rule of political journalism is that the candidate who’s leading in the polls usually gets the bulk of the scrutiny and tough press. That dynamic, which has played out in ever presidential contest I’ve covered since 2004, is arguably the most powerful bias in political journalism - more so than any bias in favor of a political party or ideology. But what was fundamentally different about 2016 was a different kind of frontrunner bias: almost everyone assumed Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton was going to win, while Republican frontrunner Donald Trump was going to lose. And that assumption drove important decisions - by the press, by FBI Director James Comey, and even by the Obama administration (when it came to Russia’s interference) - that ended up shaping the race. Has the political press learned their lesson from 2016? Or is it already repeating the mistake as we head into the midterms?
In this seminar we’ll look at political journalism from the campaign’s perspective. Democratic strategist Brian Fallon (who was Hillary Clinton’s national press secretary) and Republican strategist Alex Conant (communications director for Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign) will share their opinions on what the political press got right in 2016, what it got wrong, and how it can get better for 2020. What needs fixing? What doesn’t? Can we see evidence of a better job being done now that indicates progress toward 2020?
Special Guests: Brian Fallon, National Press Secretary for Hillary Clinton’s Campaign; Alex Conant, Communications Director for Marco Rubio’s Campaign
Special Guest: Harry Enten, Political Polling Expert from CNN (formerly from FiveThirtyEight)
In this seminar we’ll look at political journalism from the campaign’s perspective. Democratic strategist Brian Fallon (who was Hillary Clinton’s national press secretary) and Republican strategist Alex Conant (communications director for Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign) will share their opinions on what the political press got right in 2016, what it got wrong, and how it can get better for 2020. What needs fixing? What doesn’t? Can we see evidence of a better job being done now that indicates progress toward 2020?