Joy-Ann Reid
Joy-Ann Reid
Joy Reid | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 8, 1968 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Education | Harvard University (BA) |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Television |
|
| Political party | Democratic[1] |
| Spouse(s) | Jason Reid |
| Children | 3 |
Joy-Ann M. Lomena-Reid (born December 8, 1968), known professionally as Joy Reid, is an American cable television host and a national correspondent at MSNBC. In 2016, The Hollywood Reporter described her as one of the political pundits "who have been at the forefront of the cable-news conversations this election season."[1] That same year, she wrote a book on the recent history of the Democratic Party, called Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide.[2] She currently hosts the weekly MSNBC morning show AM Joy, and in 2019 published the book, The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story.[3]
Joy Reid | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 8, 1968 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Education | Harvard University (BA) |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Television |
|
| Political party | Democratic[1] |
| Spouse(s) | Jason Reid |
| Children | 3 |
Early life
Reid was born Joy-Ann Lomena in Brooklyn, New York.[4] Her father was from the Democratic Republic of Congo,[5] and her mother a college professor and nutritionist from British Guiana;[5] the two met in graduate school at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.[4] Reid was raised Methodist and has one sister and one brother.[4] Her father was an engineer who was mostly absent from the family; her parents eventually divorced and her father returned to the Congo .[4] She was raised mostly in Denver, Colorado, until the age of 17, when her mother died of breast cancer[5] and she moved to Flatbush, New York, to live with an aunt.[4] Reid graduated from Harvard University in 1991 with a concentration in film.[6]
In a 2013 interview on MSNBC, Reid recalled that her college experience was a quick immersion into a demographically opposite place from where she lived, from a community that was 80 percent African-American to a community that was six percent African-American. She had to learn to live with roommates and people who were not her family. She paid her own bills and tuition while at Harvard, and said it was a good learning and growing experience overall.[7]
Career
In 2016, The Hollywood Reporter said that she had the "ability to break down complex issues in a way that makes them digestible and accessible," and speak to both policy wonks and ordinary viewers. She left journalism in 2003 to oppose the war in Iraq and President George W. Bush, but returned to broadcasting as a talk radio host, and then worked in the Barack Obama presidential campaign.[1] In 2018, the New York Times stated that "Ms. Reid, the daughter of immigrants, has emerged as a "heroine" of the anti-Trump "resistance".[5]
Reid began her journalism career in 1997, leaving New York and her job at a business consulting firm to begin working in southern Florida for a WSVN Channel 7 morning show.[8]
Reid was a 2003 Knight Center for Specialized Journalism fellow.
From 2006 to 2007, Reid was the co-host of Wake Up South Florida, a morning radio talk show broadcast from Radio One's then-Miami affiliate WTPS, alongside "James T" Thomas.[5] She served as managing editor of The Grio[9] (2011–2014), a political columnist for Miami Herald (2003–2015), and the editor of The Reid Report political blog (2000–2014).[10]
Since May 2016, Reid has hosted AM Joy, a political weekend-morning talk show on MSNBC, and is a frequent substitute for other MSNBC hosts, including Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow. As of 2018, Reid's morning show on Saturday averages nearly 1 million weekly viewers.[5]
In 2015, Reid gave the inaugural Ida B. Wells lecture at Wake Forest University's Anna Julia Cooper Center.[9] In 2016, she received the Women's Media Center's Carol Jenkins Visible and Powerful Media Award.[17] Reid also teaches a Syracuse University class in Manhattan exploring race, gender and the media.[5]
In 2018, Reid was nominated for three NABJ Salute to Excellence Awards. One for her ground-breaking segment where a Pastor is pulled to safety at Charlottesville white nationalists march, for Reid's reporting on the damaged caused by the hurricanes to the U.S. Virgin Islands and lastly for the segment that won her an award Tragedy of ‘Time: The Kalief Browder Story’ where Reid sat down with Kalief's brother Deion Browder and filmmaker Julia Mason.
Controversial blog posts
In late 2017[19] and again in April 2018, a Twitter user @Jamie_maz[20] reproduced posts written between 2007 and 2009 on Reid's former blog "Reid Report" which, as The Nation described it, "us[ed] the trope of gay sex to mock politicians and journalists."[21] Following criticism, Reid apologized, calling the posts "insensitive, tone deaf and dumb."[22] After reviewing more posts from her old blog, which she said she did not remember making, Reid asked lawyers to investigate if her blog or its archives might have been hacked,[20] though Wayback Machine, where the posts had been found, said it detected no evidence of hacking in the archived versions of her site.[20] The second batch of posts prompted LGBT advocacy group PFLAG to rescind its plan to give Reid an award,[23] and The Daily Beast to suspend future columns from her.[24][25] Reid opened the April 28, 2018, edition of AM Joy with an apology.[26] Responses to her apology tended to be divided along party lines.[27]
In April 2018, blog posts from 2005 through 2007 were brought to public attention. According to the Washington Post, Reid encouraged her readers to watch the now-debunked 9/11 conspiracy film Loose Change and appeared to promote the decolonisation of Israel.[28] Another controversial post, this one from 2007, used a photoshopped image of Senator John McCain superimposed on the body of 2007 Virginia Tech University gunman.[29] In June 2018, Reid formally apologized, saying she had evolved in the years since she wrote the posts: "I’m a better person today than I was over a decade ago. There are things I deeply regret and am embarrassed by, things I would have said differently and issues where my position has changed. Today I’m sincerely apologizing again."[30] The MSNBC network expressed its continued support, saying in a statement that some of the blog posts were "obviously hateful and hurtful", but that they were "not reflective of the colleague and friend we have known at MSNBC for the past seven years"[30] and that "Joy has apologized publicly and privately and said she has grown and evolved in the many years since, and we know this to be true."[28]
Personal life
Reid is married to Jason Reid, a documentary film editor for the Discovery Channel. They have three children together.[4]