On the Trail with Philip Gourevitch
Ask Philip Gourevitch, a staff writer for The New Yorker covering the 2004 presidential election, what he thinks of the campaign coverage, and he may tell you it is more of a traveling circus than a traveling press corps. Criticizing both the candidates and the press, Gourevitch is looking for ways to get important issues back into the news. So step right up, ladies and gentleman, because the man who has seen it firsthand has something to say, and young reporters may want to listen.
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The three rows of chairs set up in the fifth floor atrium of New York University’s Journalism Department were not nearly enough to seat the throngs of students and professors who came to hear Gourevitch speak on Wednesday. Attending part of a weekly brown bag lunch series that invites journalists to share their experiences with budding reporters, people were happy to sit on the stairs or the floor, hover in doorways, and cram in so tightly that in between taking notes one audience member had to periodically brush away the crumbs from her neighbor’s turkey sandwich that were sprinkling her notepad with each bite.
“And where did Abu Ghraib go in the news?” Gourevitch asked the audience, throwing up his hands. “The administration’s excuse was that it was not as bad as Al Qaeda, which is now apparently the American standard for behavior abroad.” As Gourevitch answered his own question with biting wit, the audience came back at him with a wave of laughter, as heads nodded, acknowledging that he was only half-joking.
“The press has not kept it together,” Gourevitch said at one point, boiling his argument down to a seven-word problem.
A staff writer for The New Yorker since 1997, the 43-year-old Gourevitch’s dark, deep set eyes and pursed lips give him an air of perpetual grumpiness, but with a surprisingly well-slept appearance for someone suffering the long hours of the campaign trail. The tone of his lecture was jovial and good-humored, even as he set a serious challenge before reporters to step up to the plate when it comes to challenging political candidates to answer tough questions about important issues.
The problem with campaign coverage, according to Gourevitch, is a dearth of real debate at a time when Americans are extremely open to a voice of opposition politics. He said that a mistaken definition of objectivity in the news and a fear among the press of losing access to the well-oiled machine that is the U.S. government often prevent members of the media from taking adversarial roles in challenging political figures on issues that matter to the American public.
“The problem with the way we cover politics is we have political reporters covering it, whose job it is to know who has what job, the strategy, spin, marketing and management of the game, but not the issues,” Gourevitch said, fidgeting with the cap of his water bottle. “What you get is the campaign reporters who know horse race, so you end up with a story saying that a guy has a bad haircut and it’s going to ruin him.” Critical issue coverage, he said sadly, is missing.
Gourevitch added that the herd mentality of the press corps on the campaign trial, which he likened to a tourist bus, with people being herded onto and off by the secret service, all within the bubble of access created by the campaign teams, does not help either. When always-hungry members of the press corps are constantly kept an arms length away from the meat of the campaign, he said, they begin to make a meal of unsubstantiated stories or whatever meager scraps they are given in press releases, in order to have something to sell in their papers.
“We need to be a lot more savvy,” Gourevitch said. “Access is a really dangerous drug in the press. What do the press’ quotes really tell us? Absolutely nothing new. The press should not just describe whatever statement the well-oiled machine puts out. The missing element is an adversarial approach by the press.”
Gourevitch also touched upon the idea of objectivity in the press, saying that a misplaced definition has allowed what he calls stupidity to filter into the news under the defense that it is necessary to achieve objectivity. The example he gave during his lecture was the recent ad campaign created by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that criticizes John Kerry’s military record. According to Gourevitch, the media jumped on this story and gave it both column inches and air time under the claim of objectivity, when in fact they were giving undeserved attention to pure falsehoods.
“With the Swifties’ story, the press took it with a claim of objectivity, saying there are two sides to every story, and saying they have to give equal weight to both sides, he said. “It’s called stupidity. Our job is not to be merely objective, but to seek out the truth and leave out pure falsehoods.”
Gourevitch’s talk ultimately boiled down to one piece of advice for the next generation of reporters to take with them. “Our job is to keep the bastards honest,” he said.
“And on that note,” Gourevitch joked at the close of his remarks, as a flood of journalism students rushed the podium for a chance to speak with the writer one-on-one, “have fun with your careers in journalism.”
