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An Asian American Journalist Will Be One of the Moderators of the December Democratic Debate

Views From The Edge by Ed Dionko

It took five debates, but finally, an Asian American journalist will moderate a Presidential debate. Amna Nawaz, PBS NewsHour senior national correspondent, will join the four-member panel moderating the Dec. 19 debate among Democratic candidates.

Pakistani American Nawaz will join PBS NewsHour anchor and managing editor Judy Woodruff, Politico chief political correspondent Tim Alberta and PBS NewsHour White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor to question the candidates who qualify for the sixth Democratic debate at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Nawaz will make history by becoming the first Asian American to moderate a Presidential debate. She tweeted that she was “humbled and honored” to be a part of the debate.

After the first two debates that featured white, black and Latino moderators, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus began urging the media hosts of the series of Democratic debates to include an Asian American on one of the panels. The September, October and November debates occurred and it appeared that the mainstream media were deaf to the lobbying by AAPI politicians and community leaders.
This is the first debate being co-hosted by nonprofit Public Broadcasting Company and Politico, a publication and online newsite specializing on politics. 

At this point, only six candidates of the 16 Democratic hopefuls have qualified for December 19 debate, including Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and Tom Steyer. With Kamala Harris ending her campaign, this could be the first time there will be no candidates of color on the stage. Julian Castro, who missed the November debate, Cory Booker, Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang have not met the qualifications set by the Democratic National Committee.

Nawaz joined PBS NewsHour in April 2018 and serves as senior national correspondent and primary substitute anchor.

Prior to joining the NewsHour, Nawaz was an anchor and correspondent at ABC News. There she covered breaking news and lead the network in digital coverage of the 2016 presidential election.

Nawaz also served as a foreign correspondent at NBC News, reporting from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, and the broader region. While at NBC News, she also founded NBC’s Asian America platform.

At NewsHour, Nawaz has reported on everything from politics to sports. She has done a lot of reporting on immigration in America. Her immigration reporting has taken her to multiple border communities in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. She examines the impacts of the Trump administration’s immigration policy. One of her pieces followed the journey of a single toddler as she left her home in Mexico, was separated from her family at the U.S. border, and later reunited with her family several weeks later.

Her work as a journalist has won her numerous awards. In 2019, her reporting as part of a NewsHour series on the global plastic problem was the recipient of a Peabody Award. She has also received an Emmy Award for the NBC News Special “Inside the Obama White House,” a Society for Features Journalism Award, and was a recipient of the International Reporting Project fellowship in 2009.

Nawaz lives with her husband and two daughters in the Washington, D.C. area.

In an earlier interview with Jade Magazine, Nawaz spoke about her struggles in the industry as an Asian American woman.

“I’ve had people make assumptions about me – because I’m a woman, because I’m Asian, because my family’s from Pakistan, because I’m Muslim – but I can’t control what others think,” Nawaz said. “All I can do is bring my whole self to this job, to report the stories as I see them, and try to treat others’ stories with the same care and respect I’d want someone to treat mine.”

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