During an interview in the Nov. 17 edition of the New York Times Magazine, Cable News Network anchor Don Lemon stated that if he wasn't a journalist, he'd probably be an activist” like Malcolm X, who was considered an advocate for the rights of blacks during the early 1960s.
The self-proclaimed “black gay” reporter made the comment after Anna Marie Cox asked him: “Do you have any idea what you would be doing if you weren’t a journalist?”
Lemon replied: “I’d probably be a writer like James Baldwin. Or I would probably be an activist. But not like Dr. [Martin Luther] King Jr., even though I admire him” as a man who advanced black civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs.
Instead, “I’d probably be more of a Malcolm X,” the CNN anchor added before noting oddly: “I believe the best way to improve yourself is to improve yourself.”
Cox began the interview by stating: “You have asked some of the most memorable questions in cable news history, I would say. So what would you ask yourself?”
“I would ask: 'Why on earth would anyone want to do this job?'” Lemon responded.
“Famously, you once asked a panel on CNN about the possibility of a black hole swallowing up” Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, an international passenger flight that disappeared on March 8, 2014, while traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, China,” she indicated. “What do you think happened to the plane?”
“That was a viewer question from social media,” Lemon responded, “and it was part of a segment on preposterous conspiracy theories.”
Nevertheless, “you do seem to keep your mind open to unorthodox explanations,” Cox continued.
Lemon then stated:
I think something perfectly logical happened to the plane. But I think it’s legitimate to talk about other theories. It’s not that we’re saying it’s true.
“Let me ask you a question,” he noted. “You’ve heard of the Bermuda Triangle. Do you think people are interested in hearing about it?”
“Yes. if you did a CNN special on it, I would watch that,” the interviewer responded before Lemon said: “You just answered my question.”
The conversation then turned to politics as Cox noted: “You have a track record of upsetting people on the left. What would you say was the worst episode?”
“I don’t know,” the black anchor responded. “No one asks Jake Tapper [chief Washington correspondent and anchor of the CNN weekday news show The Lead] or Wolf Blitzer [a CNN reporter since 1990 who is now the host of the daytime program Wolf] to be the spokesperson for any particular group.”
“I’m not an advocate or an activist,” Lemon asserted. “I’m a journalist.”
“The latest controversy was over your comments on the police brutality video from Spring Valley High School in South Carolina,” Cox stated. “You said you wanted to see more context."
“Did you see the whole segment?” the guest asked.
“No. I watched a clip online,” Cox replied.
Lemon stated:
If you look at the segment, I said it was horrible and that there does not seem to be any justification for what the police officer is doing. I said that I wanted more information.
“I want to know about his history, I want to know what precipitated it, I want to know what the school is like, I want to know if he’s done it before. That’s what a journalist does.
“You’ve said that liberals are actually intolerant,” the interviewer indicated. “What do you mean by that?”
“If you don’t make room for the possibility that you can be intolerant, then there is a fairly good chance that you are,” Lemon asserted.
“It doesn’t seem to me that you get offended very much,” Cox then said.
'I don’t,” Lemon responded. “Instead of being offended or defensive or whatever, I try to be curious about why that person feels that way, why someone has that particular opinion.”
He added: “I understand people being offended and hurt, but as a journalist, I gotta move beyond that. I can’t do that.”
“You seem to dislike politically correct culture, but it has raised your profile in a way,” Cox stated. “Do you think your success is in spite of or because of these controversies?”
“I am not setting out to be a provocateur,” Lemon replied. “I am setting out to inform people and to get people to think. I do think my career has been helped because part of my job is to get people to have discussions.”
“How does someone get to be as self-accepting as you?” the interviewer asked.
“What’s the alternative?” her guest responded.
“To live in constant self-doubt, which a lot of people do,” Cox stated.
Lemon concluded the interview by stating: “I don’t want to live that way.”
