Chris Hayes, the anchor of the MSNBC primetime show “All In with Chris Hayes” and the “Why Is This Happening?” podcast, headlined the 16th annual Edward R. Murrow Forum on Issues in Journalism on Nov. 18. Tufts alumnus Neal Shapiro, the former president of NBC News and CEO of WNET, moderated the conversation.
Hayes, who has hosted his point-of-view show since 2013, spoke for nearly an hour in front of an audience of roughly 200 in Barnum Hall. The event — named after the influential broadcaster and war correspondent Edward Murrow, whose son was in attendance — was sponsored by the Tisch College Solomont Speaker Series.
Shapiro first asked Hayes about the outcome of the 2024 election and its consequences, focusing on how young people can cope with the result. Hayes encouraged a sense of optimism for those disappointed by President-elect Donald Trump’s victory. He mentioned his own feelings of panic following the re-election of former President George W. Bush in 2004, and his subsequent relief when former President Barack Obama became president in 2008.
“We have no idea what’s coming after what happened a few weeks ago, both in good and bad directions. But I think that thinking about that morning after George W. Bush and what happened so soon after gives me a little bit of both comfort and perspective,” he said.
One of Hayes’ main takeaways from Trump’s victory is what he calls the “class realignment,” wherein working-class voters of all races are shifting to the political right.
“If the class realignment continues working the way it is now, the Democrats are in very serious electoral trouble,” he said.
Hayes cautioned the audience against trusting exit poll data too much, reminding them that it does not represent exact data. He also encouraged audience members not to jump to conclusions about why different racial groups’ voting tendencies shifted.
“I think it’s wildly counterproductive and also a little obscene to go headhunting for the demographic that caused this,” Hayes said. “It’s a big country; … every person counts an equal amount — at least in the swing states.”
Both Shapiro and Hayes acknowledged the weight of covering four more years of Trump, who Hayes called a “chauvinist pig” and “male supremacist.” Hayes said that emotional regulation is an important life skill, which is something he has worked on throughout his career.
“Was it my favorite day of my life to go to work the day after … Trump was elected? No, but it’s my job,” he said.
Shapiro also asked Hayes about the potential threats of retribution against the media in a second Trump term. “I’m not scared of these people,” he asserted, garnering applause.
When asked about his role as a journalist during a time of increased disinformation, Hayes let
out a notably loud sigh.
“Let’s take a break. We’ll be right back after this,” Shapiro quipped.
Hayes said he is careful on his show not to restate lies, such as Vice President-elect JD Vance’s repeatedly debunked claims about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, because of how these lies can become ingrained in viewers’ attention. He attributes this to the competitiveness of the attention market.
“A lurid lie is almost always more attentionally compelling than a banal truth or a sophisticated and nuanced truth. So, our job is to tell the truth. Our job is to combat lies,” he said. “How to do that is much, much, much, much trickier, and gets trickier by the day.”
Speaking about the role of technology in media, Hayes criticized “disintermediated” and obscure social media algorithms.
“There’s no relationship of reputation or trust between the person getting you the information and the information you’re getting,” he said.
Shapiro then asked whether institutions like MSNBC and reporters with personal brands like Hayes can still be the foils of unsubstantiated information on social media. Hayes embraced his role.
“I want to get things right … as a moral principle and as a professional and ethical duty, but also out of ego and vanity,” he said. “I don’t want people to think I’m a dumba--.” He later stated that his job only works if people trust he is “not doing a schtick” or “playing a character.”
Hayes, who majored in philosophy at Brown University, asked the audience to indulge him in a philosophical argument. “Trust is the foundational relationship that produces knowledge,” he said.
A lack of trust, he added, could be detrimental to U.S. democracy. “The U.S. has a sort of secular decline in trust. We’re attempting to run this very, very high-wire experiment, which is trying to run a low-trust democracy. It’s very, very hard to run a low-trust democracy, and I think we’re seeing the results of it,” he said.
Shapiro later asked Hayes about the process of preparing his show. He said being ready to challenge his guests and fact-check requires him to be constantly reading. In that regard, he advised students to always be gathering information.
