On Thursday [April 5], CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta returned to James Madison University as the final Madison Vision Series Speaker this year. WMRA’s Calvin Pynn reports.
Jim Acosta is usually one of the first reporters asking questions when news breaks at the White House, but long before covering the Trump Administration for CNN, he studied journalism at James Madison University.
(Applause)
JIM ACOSTA: I was part of the student radio station here, WXJM, did a student TV show here at Harrison Hall, I wrote opinion articles for The Breeze, I ran for student government president at one point, which probably wasn’t the best idea I ever had.
(Crowd laughs)
Acosta addressed around 600 people, many of them journalism and political science students, at JMU’s Forbes Center Thursday. His lecture – titled Real News: The Fight For Truth in the 21st Century -- emphasized the importance of a free press in the current political climate, as Acosta himself has been on the receiving end of President Donald Trump’s “fake news” accusations on several occasions.
ACOSTA: It’s uncomfortable to bring it up and it’s uncomfortable to talk about it, but we’ve gotta talk about it because there are journalists out there everyday who are doing it for the right reasons, their heart is in the right place, they may not be perfect every day of the week but their heart is in the right place because they got into this with a passion, the same passion I came into this with, which is I want to get the news and I want to get the truth to you, so you can make informed decisions as part of our democracy.
