Over the last five months, I’ve spent a lot of time at Columbia U. working on an article about leftwing radicals for New York Magazine. Now it’s published, I’m struck by one of the prices of journalism: the use of people’s time.
People love to talk to journalists. I can never get over this fact. I like talking to them myself. We say that journalists are two notches above a used-car salesman, but in fact, we grant them power for a reason: they can quote us or print our names, and in the information age, there’s prestige in that. "The great mentioner," William Safire used to call it.
Anyway, I’ve talked to dozens of students in the last few months, and a few professors too. I’ve learned tons from these interviews. I don’t imagine these people were all selfless lovers of the First Amendment; a lot of them talked to me because they wanted their names in print. Then you get down to the ugly business of getting an article out and a lot of names don’t show up. For space reasons, or because they didn’t have much to say, or because you only figured out what you were writing in the last week, and the people you talked to then loomed in importance… It hardly matters, as a journalists you’ve relied on (translation: used) all these people, and been able to pay few of them in the coin they were expecting. You feel lousy.
The best piece written about modern journalism, Janet Malcolm’s book The Journalist and the Murderer (1990), began with a cutting take on the journalist-source relationship (amazingly, I can’t find this piece on the New Yorker website):
Every journalist who is not too stupid or
too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is
morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s
vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them
without remorse.
Malcolm said that tough journalists just tell themselves it’s part of the job. And tough journalists use sources mercilessly, not giving them credit, taking all the credit for ideas for themselves.
Nothing to say on topic, just glad to hear that New Yorker Mag is interested in your work.
In reference to the Massacre at Virginia Tech today I have recited, several times, the prayer I use when shooting tragedies like this and Columbine occur.
"Dear Lord,
Please let the children of the executives of the National Rifle Association be among the victims."
S.M.Gonzales
Phil, I just have to say thanks for that article. I've got an excellent clip file, and I'll make sure to do everything possible to ensure that those people's lives are miserable, their careers are destroyed, and hopefully get them prosecuted for their participation in crimes against humanity.
"Dear Lord,
Please let the children of the executives of AIPAC be among american troops killed in Iraq."
But of course, they won't be, because such people do the shouting, whilst others do the shooting.
Re: Phil's article in New York Magazine on the new student radicalism. It was quite good. I've always felt that one of the biggest prices we've paid in America for the pro-Israel lobby — and we've paid quite a lot — is the loss of an effective Left. Starting in the sixties, the movement became so infiltrated with Zionist gatekeepers with their great burdens of ethnic grievances, that issues of justice were gradually pushed off the agenda. Literally off the agenda, as we saw when "progressive" Jewish organizations sabotaged the anti-war demonstrations of recent years. But also off the agenda in the sense that the next generation instinctively grasped that something was rotten and stayed away. ("We're going to speak truth to power, EXCEPT for this one little truth over here which we'd appreciate no one mentioning.") Justice is an all-or-nothing kind of thing.
Pity this poor student in Phil's article who correctly senses the barriers that have been erected around her: "'Up until recently, I was very afraid to express an opinion either way,' says Olivia. 'It was a taboo subject. I didnât want to be anti-Semitic or anti-Arab.'"
(By the way, I'm too old to be very radical any longer myself, but I definitely appreciate how important it is to have that voice from the Left in the discussion.)
WHY IS THE PEACE MOVEMENT SILENT ABOUT AIPAC?
"'AIPAC!' was the forceful one-word answer of Congressman Michael Capuano when we asked him, 'Why was the Iran clause forbidding war on Iran without Congressional approval taken out of the recent supplemental for the Iraq war funding?'
…
"It is widely acknowledged that the reps and senators are ticked at AIPAC, and their hostility seems to be growing these days. With upwards of 60% of their campaign contributions coming directly or indirectly from the Israel Lobby, the Democratic congressmen are not free to respond to their antiwar base. And that could cost them their next election, a little thing which has them very worked up."
http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh04172007.html