Ari Shapiro to discuss 'assault on media,' more during Henderson lecture

Chuck Stinnett
Special to The Gleaner
Ari Shapiro, one of the four hosts of National Public Radio’s flagship afternoon news program All Things Considered, will speak in Henderson at the Preston Arts Center at 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 27. The appearance is part of the Raymond B. Preston Lecture Series. Tickets start at $25 and are available at PrestonCenter.org.

HENDERSON, Ky. - There has perhaps never been so chaotic a time for news, especially U.S. political news.

Allegations of “fake news,” claims of “alternative facts” and the dismissive tweets from an American president who is openly contemptuous of reporters or news organizations that don’t fall in line with him swirl through the 24-hour news cycle.

“People can be overloaded by the daily grind of political news, including me,” national radio journalist Ari Shapiro said.

This Saturday evening, Oct. 27, the co-host of National Public Radio’s flagship afternoon news program “All Things “,” will be in Henderson to provide some perspective.

Shapiro will be the debut speaker in the 2018-19 season of the Raymond B. Preston Lecture Series at the Preston Arts Center on the Henderson Community College campus.

“It’s great timing, in the middle of this mid-term election season” when Democrats are striving to wrest control of the U.S. House of Representatives from Republicans, Shapiro said in a recent phone interview.

In his Henderson appearance, he intends “to look at the context of how we got where we are. Right now is a crucial moment in our democracy” and he hopes to shed light on “who we believe, what we believe and how we got here.”

“There is an assault on media” fueled by “conspiracy theories, hoaxes and claims of fake news,” Shapiro said.

“I want to pull back the curtain on some of that,” he said.

Even veteran journalists like Shapiro can feel buffeted by the bewildering rush of political news and spin.

Such matters are regularly reviewed by panelists on “All Things Considered” during its live “Week in Politics” segment that airs at about 3:10 p.m. each Friday on public radio stations such as WNIN (88.3 FM) and WKYU (89.5 FM) that are heard in the Henderson area.

“It used to be, on Thursday afternoon we could put our heads together and say, ‘Here are things we can cover on Friday,’” Shapiro said. “Now, if you work out a plan at 10 a.m. on Friday, you have to change it by 2 p.m.”

But what concerns him is not the pace of news, but the way Americans are dividing into rival camps and turning only to news sources that confirm their fiercely held worldview — what observers refer to as tribalism.

“If they see something they disagree with, they change the channel, turn the page or delete someone from their social media feed,” Shapiro said.

The 40-year-old comes to Henderson as one of the fastest-rising national radio journalists in the business, with experience ranging from war zones to the White House.

Born in Fargo, North Dakota, he grew up in the Portland, Oregon, before graduating magna cum laude from Yale University.

Shapiro began his career with NPR as an intern to iconic legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg in 2001. He raced up the ranks, becoming NPR’s White House correspondent in 2010 before becoming embedded in the presidential campaign of Republican Mitt Romney in 2012, then heading to London as a foreign correspondent in 2014. He covered wars in Iraq, Ukraine and Israel, and has filed stories from five continents and Air Force One.

Along the way, he earned a host of awards for his reporting from organizations ranging from the Columbia Journalism Review to the American Bar Association, among others.

In 2015, he joined “All Things Considered” as one of four co-hosts.

“What I love is the mix; that’s the great thing,” Shapiro said. On a given day, “I can interview a politician, a business executive, a film director and a person who has just been a witness to something incredible and is just a civilian.”

Though based in Washington, D.C., he’s on the road one to two weeks per month.

“There are two hosts during any given week,” Shapiro said. So he could be traveling for stories from anywhere from Michigan to the Mexican border — or spending two weeks in June reporting in Zimbabwe, where he left a presidential campaign rally shortly before a bomb exploded.

If all that weren’t enough, he occasionally sings with Pink Martini, the so-called “little orchestra” from his hometown of Portland that blends classical music, jazz, Latin music and whatever else is close at hand. (He once performed with them in Lexington.)

Eric Kerchner, director of the Preston Arts Center, said bringing Shapiro to Henderson was a strategic move.

“We wanted to be able to connect with the local NPR stations (in Evansville, Bowling Green and Murray) to be able to promote an event for the lecture series, and Ari Shapiro was a natural fit. He’s well known and had kind of a meteoric rise” to become a host of “All Things Considered” at age 37, Kerchner said.

“And NPR is special because it is not a corporate-owned news agency, so therefore, not only is there great respect for their journalism and objectivity and so forth, but we thought that he would be good fit to further the academic mission of the college.”

When Shapiro was being scheduled a year ago to come to Henderson ahead of the Congressional mid-term elections, Kirchner said he “had no idea that it would be the crazy train that it is. Maybe that’s why it’s much more important to have someone with that much of a respected voice to help us interpret what going on” and ask questions afterward.

“Regardless of your political spectrum, people want to hear a voice they can trust and break through all that noise, and not necessarily spin” the news. Kirchner said. “That’s why we thought NPR would be a good fit … They’re about as balanced as you’re going to find.”

Shapiro also intends Saturday to meet with journalism students from the University of Evansville and the University of Southern Indiana.

“I’m most interested to hear their questions,” he said.

“Things have changed so much since I got into journalism. The biggest difference is you have to have multiple platforms. If you’re in radio, you need to also be able to write for the web and hopefully take photos. If you’re at a newspaper, you need to be able to do podcasts” — all while keeping pace with the blizzard of today’s news.

If you go:

What: Lecture by NPR co-host Ari Shapiro

When: 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 27

Where: Preston Arts Center at Henderson Community College

Tickets: Start at $25 and are available at PrestonCenter.org (click “Get Tickets”)