While accepting one of this year’s Walter Cronkite Awards for Excellence in Political Journalism from the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center earlier this month, Rachel Maddow issued something of a challenge in the form of advice to American media: cover the people, not those in power.

At the December 12 ceremony at the National Press Club in Washington, Maddow accepted the award for a segment on her MSNOW (formerly MSNBC) show on this spring’s massive, nationwide protests against the Trump administration’s policies. Her speech centered around both the awards’ 2025 theme — “How a Free Press Defends Democracy” — and the subject of her show’s segment.

“In national news, when we cover people who aren’t technically in power, it is… often as people who are affected by the decisions of the people who are in power,” Maddow said. “But if we are serious about doing this work in a democracy and for a democracy, that categorization is backwards. Because in a democracy, the controlling force, the real power, ultimately is with the people. And when the people are expressing themselves politically — which means peacefully — they are telling power what it can do and what it cannot do.”

The Peabody and Emmy-winning out journalist asked those gathered to imagine “a faraway country with its democracy at risk.”

“It’s under pressure from a leader having his friends buy up and domesticate previously independent media, doing his best to intimidate or shut down the rest. He has the intent to rule by force, to consolidate all power in himself and rule indefinitely without being constrained by election results,” she said.

Maddow went on to explain that American media’s foreign correspondents would not judge whether this hypothetical country’s democracy would survive by scrutinizing the words and actions of its despotic leader, but would instead focus on the people’s reaction to that leader’s actions.

“The story of our age, I really believe, the story of our democracy right now is not a Washington story, and it is not easy to cover, but right now it is the most important story in the world,” Maddow went on. “I want to encourage all of you to look to the response of the people and not just the way they are victimized and affected by those in power, because it is the response of the people that will decide whether or not we’re here next year doing awards like this again.”

Alongside Maddow and other national and local journalists, comedian and actor Jon Stewart accepted the first-ever Cronkite Award for “Comedic News and Commentary” for hosting Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.

Ahead of the ceremony, the Norman Lear Center’s founding director, Martin Kaplan, said in a statement that “The message sent by honoring these winners is that the press isn’t ‘the enemy of the people’ — it’s the firewall between the public and disinformation, abuse of power, and corruption.”

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