WRAL-TV’s Basaran Shares Knowledge, Experience with Future Leaders

WRAL-TV Assistant News Director Aysu Basaran is known for her positive mentorship of others, and she recently proved that again by agreeing to share her experience and expertise on two different platforms.

Helping Celebrate the First Amendment
On Wednesday, September 21, 2022, Basaran participated in First Amendment Day at UNC Chapel Hill. She sat on the Get 1A Smart: Having Your Say & Staying Out of Court panel, which focused on libel cases in the courts and headlines.

Open to students, faculty and staff, the campus-wide daylong event was designed to celebrate the 1^st Amendment and explore its role in the lives of UNC students.

“We discussed everything from high-profile celebrity libel cases to cases that have impacted local media,” Basaran said of her panel.

“Over the years, I’ve worked closely with our attorneys from Stevens Martin Vaughn & Tadych during the script review process,” she said. “One of those attorneys, Amanda Martin, reached out and asked if I could attend on behalf of WRAL. She wanted local journalists on the panel to talk about the editorial process, what we decide to say, and how we say it.”

Martin, a senior lecturing fellow and supervising attorney at Duke Law’s First Amendment Clinic, co-moderated the panel with Ben Rossi, a First Amendment Clinic intern.

“We touched upon how to cover stories such as #MeToo allegations or when we decide a trending video on social media is newsworthy,” said Basaran. “We even talked about trickier stories which oftentimes aren’t supported by public documents. The purpose was to share our knowledge about how to protect journalists so they don’t end up in front of a jury.”

Basaran was joined on the panel by Erica Beshears Perel, Director of the UNC Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media; John Drescher, Contributing Editor at The Assembly; and Hugh Stevens, nationally-known media lawyer and experienced litigator.

Helping Celebrate Leadership Triangle
Basaran also shared some of her personal story and newsroom experience for a feature for Leadership Triangle (LT), a local nonprofit educating leaders and promoting regionalism across the Triangle.

To celebrate the organization’s 30^th anniversary, LT is telling the stories of 30 of its Goodmon Fellows from its 30 years of programs. LT interviewed Basaran to represent 2009, the year she became a Fellow through the Regional Program.

“The most important skill I’ve developed over time is the ability to listen,” Basaran told LT. “It allows me to make thoughtful decisions. I could have this huge voice and talk all the time, but in my opinion, that has little value if I haven’t truly heard from the people in the room.”