Award-winning
writer, Chimamanda Adichie has expressed disgust with the BBC after it
set her up with a Trump supporter on live television.
Chimamanda Adichie
Chimamanda Adichie has hit out at the way she found herself pitched
into an adversarial encounter on Newsnight with American Spectator
editor, The Guardian UK reports.
The author accused the BBC Newsnight producers of “sneakily
pitting” her against a Trump supporter in a live TV interview. Although
she held her own, she slammed the producer's decision to set her up.
The BBC has now been forced to apologize to her. Footage of
Adichie’s appearance on the TV programme two weeks ago was shared widely
online, particularly because of her comments. When R Emmett Tyrrell,
Jr, the editor of the American Spectator, claimed president-elect Donald
Trump wasn’t racist, Adichie retorted: “I’m sorry, but as a white man, you don’t get to define what racism is. You really don’t.”
The author took to Facebook on Friday to accuse the show’s
producers of not telling her manager that she would be appearing with
someone else, or that she would be asked so much about the US election,
leaving her feeling “upset and ambushed” when she found out after
arriving at the BBC studio.
The author wrote: “When I arrived at their studio in Washington
DC, the show’s producer casually said, ‘You’ll be on a panel with a
Trump supporter. A magazine editor who has supported Donald Trump from
the beginning.’
“At no time had I been told that there would be anyone else in
the interview, never mind being pitted against a Trump supporter. I felt
upset and ambushed.”
Adichie said she wanted to leave at that point, but did not as she was feeling emotional about the election result. “I
wanted to walk away, but decided not to. I was already there. And I did
want to talk about the election, which I had experienced in a deeply
personal way. I was still stunned and angry and sad. I still woke up
feeling heavy. Not only because I am an enthusiastic supporter of
Hillary Clinton but also because, with Donald Trump’s win, America just
didn’t feel like America any more. The country that grew from an idea of
freedom was now to be governed by an authoritarian demagogue.”
A producer told her that Tyrrell had been invited on the show alongside her to maintain balance. “But sneakily pitting me against a Trump supporter was not about balance – we could have easily been interviewed separately,” she said.
“It is a deliberately adversarial strategy that news organisations use
in the pursuit of what is often called ‘good television’. It is about
entertainment.”
The author said she did not feel adversarial towards Tyrrell until he said “I do not respond emotionally like this lady.”
“To say that I responded ‘emotionally’ to the election was to say that I had not engaged my intellect,” wrote Adichie. “‘Emotional’ is
a word that has been used to dismiss many necessary conversations,
especially about gender or race. ‘Emotional’ is a way of discounting
what you have said without engaging with it.
“No way was I going to ignore that. Which, predictably, led to
an interview in which I found myself, rather than talking about misogyny
and populism, responding to a man who claimed that an anti-Nafta,
China-bashing, America-First Donald Trump would be an internationalist
rather than an isolationist.
“Who presumed that he, a white man, could decide what was
racist and what was not. And who insisted that Donald Trump is not a
racist, even though the evidence is glaring, even though the House
majority leader of Donald Trump’s own Republican party condemned Donald
Trump’s racism. So much for responding ‘emotionally’ to the election.”
She said she left the interview “still feeling upset. But it made me better see why America no longer feels like America.”
The BBC later issued an apology to Adichie on her Facebook page, saying:
"Dear Chimamanda,
We hugely appreciated you coming on BBC Newsnight for our Trump
special and are terribly sorry you felt ambushed by the encounter.
We plainly should have done a better job of making it clear
that we wanted to put you on with a Trump supporter but it was an honest
mistake: somewhere between London, where the producer who booked your
interview was based, and the Washington team running the show, we
dropped the ball.
We sincerely apologize for that.
It’s simply not the case, though, that the casting was part of
an “adversarial strategy” as you suggest. It would have been bizarre not
to reflect the views of the half of America which had just voted for
Donald Trump in the live segments of the programme. And as a general
rule we think it seems odd to viewers when live guests do not engage
with each other’s arguments.
We’d always rather have light than heat, but we think a lot of
people will have found your encounter with R Emmett Tyrell Jr quite
revealing. More than anything, we’re sad and sorry you had a bad
experience with us. We hope you’ll come back for a one to one interview
some time."
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