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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ย. 2024
- How Journalism Was Corrupted by the Power of Privilege
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Journalists were once outsiders looking in, says Gay Talese, but today their proximity to Washington makes them myopic; they'd be wiser to disperse and keep their eyes on the horizon.Journalists today don’t report like they used to, and they sure as hell don’t dress like they used to either. Gay Talese, a defining figure in literary journalism, here reconstructs the mentality of journalists in the 1950s, when his career began. Compared to now? It’s no wonder the media was shocked by the election results, Talese says. Today’s journalists are glued to Washington D.C, under the influence of the same potion that has seen the rise of celebrity: power, luxury, elitism. Talese suggests the Washington press corps disperse out to the 50 states and report on the end result of policies - how it affects people on the coast and the heartland - as much as they report on the formation of those policies the nation’s capital. Perhaps with an ear to the ground, the next election won’t take everyone for such a ride. Gay Talese's most recent book is High Notes: Selected Writings of Gay Talese.
Bill Nye's most recent book is High Notes: Selected Writings of Gay Talese.
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GAY TALESE :
Gay Talese is an American journalist and a nonfiction writer. He wrote for The New York Times in the 1960s after working for its copy and obituary sections. In the 1950s, he was one of the first writers to add minute details, use literary flairs, and begin articles in medias res.
His groundbreaking article "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" was named the "best story Esquire ever published," and he was credited by Tom Wolfe with the creation of an inventive form of nonfiction writing called "The New Journalism."
He has written many non-fiction books, beginning with 1964’s The Bridge: The Building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. His 2006 autobiography A Writer’s Life focuses on his trials and failures as a writer, such as having a profile piece rejected by The New Yorker, which ironically reviewed the book positively and said it had a “distinctly moving” quality.
Gay Talese was named the winner of a George Polk Award for career achievement. The awards, presented by Long Island University, are considered among the top prizes in U.S. journalism. His latest book is High Notes: Selected Writings of Gay Talese.
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TRANSCRIPT :
Gay Talese: It was alleged that the newspapers were not aware the large percentage of the population of American citizens were unhappy with the ruling establishment, did not feel their voices were being heard and they voted against what everybody thought was the leading candidate and instead voted for this rank outsider, a very unpredictable and generally unpopular person, this businessman, this egotist, this rakish character named Donald Trump.
I thought what was missing from the newspapers, and I think more than that from Americans in general who watch television, who read books, who teach in universities, who are among the educated classes, which almost includes everybody these days. The reason I say that, in my lifetime born in 1932 and becoming a journalist in the 1950s and at the time I became a journalist in the 1950s we journalists, whether we worked for the New York Times or the Philadelphian Inquirer or the Chicago Tribune were generally the first of our family to have gone to college. And when I say college I do not mean Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, I mean Brooklyn College or in my case the University of Alabama. We were not going to the elite colleges, if we went to college at all we were considered scholars in our family. But what we were, not true today, but what we in the mid 20th century America we were outsiders. We journalists were of the outsider class whether we were Italian heritage as me or Jewish or African-American or Spanish, whatever.
And we did have courage because most of us had come from parents or grandparents who had first-hand knowledge of persecution in foreign countries and who came to this country on the run and brought with them the spirit of unfairness. And we as the inheritors of their spirit in journalism we were the children of those people, we brought not cynicism but skepticism of power. And it was never our ambition to be part of power because we were chroniclers of power, we were critics of power, we were viewers of power, we were outsiders. Well those days are long, long, long gone.
Read the full transcript at bigthink.com/v...
Journalism = Wikileaks
ForceOfWizardry lmao
Yes!
Propaganda = CNN+Fox.
That's *True* journalism.
Privledge, as a word, is hard to take seriously anymore.
Right. If you have something I desire, say a certain social standing that I do not possess, I can accuse you, with impunity, of being privileged.
Frank Oarseeknee Especially if misspelt ;-)
PontificusPinion It's always the 2nd I
He is using privileged in the original sense. He doesn't mean it in the sense it is used in identity politics.
Agreed, the distortion of the concept of privilege is a big reason why there's been such a shift in attitudes in America.
Journalism isn't the problem. Journalists are.
"Guy with this old awful blonde hair"
I thought this guy was a journalist? Aren't they supposed to be.... I don't know... eloquent?
Sometimes crap is best described as crap.
Bite me.
It seems contradictory to in one breath describe the troubles of power and privilege, then in the next breath fall into pretention.
What hes on to might have something to do with it, hes probably more informed than I am on what goes on inside papers and publishers. But my money is still on market forces shaping everything we have.
Competition is driving all companies to maximize their turn overs in any way they can get away with. They have to or they will get replaced by those who are less scrupulous.
This is the bitter truth of market economies.
Serah Wint money talks/b.s. walks
You're ignoring the reality of market forces: corporations are becoming their own Autocratic nation states with no responsibility to the people and labor from which they've extracted their wealth (they have no constitution and no obligation to their citizens, if you will). Some of the corps have higher GDPs than countries and they're using their money to bolster the rights of their corporation over the rights of citizens paying taxes. They are stifling competition and creating virtual monopolies (not on industries but on wealth). This should concern you as you consider free market capitalism as it exists today.
Serah Wint While that may be true, I would like to point out that competition always exists. Markets are just one manifestation.
For example, in journalism there is competition for access. If you are consistently critical of power, will it be harder for you to get invited to events and interviews? What effect does that have on careers and companies? If you write things that offend your peers and society at large, how does that affect your social status?
The consequence of living in a relatively free society is that there will be competition, period. As long as there is some things that people desire more than others, (whether it's money, power esteem, or ideological goals), and as long as there are ways to get those goals more effectively than other people, there will always be competition.
Market forces are not the sole evil in this equation. It's an easy scapegoat ("money is the root of all evil" truisms), but that worldview does not stand up to scrutiny or empirical data. While the pursuit of profit has a tendency to perverse incentives, it has also been the single greatest force for good the world has ever known. While it is good to criticize the perversions when they occur, it is even more important to understand that they are the exceptions to a much larger trend.
+ninjafruitchilled At least one person got it :3
It's corporatization not privilege.
Yes journalism is largely corrupted as hell these days. Lost a huge amount of respect for the profession.
I hate the word privilege these days. I can't be the only one who thinks it's getting silly
I misread his name in the title and thought it said Gay Tease.
Really liked his message though. I think this guy has an amazing insight into the problems we have come into during this new century
I have to know: Where DID the Tesseract send you?
The current corporate main stream media needs to be dismantled.
Certainly, this was/is one factor in the current corruption run rampant throughout journalism.
His name is Gay. Let that sink in for a moment.
The fact that you felt that was comment-worthy reveals much about you.
Wow he's insightful. Always thought journalism was rubbish, but I never even thought to manage journalists that way.
Journalism isn't a profession in the strict sense. A profession is, by definition, a set of skills, standards, and body of knowledge that can only be practiced with training from the university level of education and in a case of malpractice would harm a member of the public.
Like this guy, journalism is a thing of the past.
This man should be tagged as the father of True Journalism
So this guy goes on a tirade of ad hominem attacks about the man "real Americans" voted for and then says people like him need to understand "real Americans"....good start mate!
mgigkgeg yes. His opinion of the president and his opinion on the role of journalists are not related. Having a degree in journalism doesn't turn someone into a mirror for their audience, nor should they pretend to be one.
Apparently women ad Black people don't qualify as real Americans, because both voted for Hillary in droves. Also, amazing how they manage to cast Trump as a homespun man of the people, even though he started with a million-dollar loan from his rich daddy, something few, if any, common folk get. That and of course, feel free to ignore how they reported on twice as many Hillary Clinton stories, even though all the investigations against her, turned up nothing, because for some reason, fair and balanced actually means repeating what two people said, without in any way, suggesting that one side has a better leg to stand on, truth-wise. And of course, tacitly ignore how the GOP spent eight years opposing Obama on everything, regardless of what he was actually proposing. That was their strategy for eight years: support whatever Obama opposes and oppose whatever Obama supports. Though to be fair, the fact that Obama never thought to use this glaringly obvious weakness to his advantage, is kind of stupid. I spent years going, "C'mon, Obama! Give an impassioned speech about how you shouldn't run your car inside a closed garage. Or that wearing cement booties while swimming is an incredibly dumb idea. Or say that all the stuff in the 'Dumb Ways to Die' song, really are dumb ways to die. It may be the only way to clear up gridlock and get stuff done. "That's something in general that annoys me about the Democratic Party; the way they keep trying Bipartisanship and Reaching Across the Aisle. Those strategies only work when both sides are made up of adults who, despite differing viewpoints, genuinely want to get stuff done. It doesn't work when one side is made up of adults and the other side is made up of shrieking toddlers who will throw a tantrum no matter what you do. The GOP has made it clear that they are not interested in making friends, that they don't like you and never will. So stop trying to befriend them and start trying to block them at every turn.
mgigkgeg Yes because his description of the President is OBJECTIFIABLY ACCURATE
SPDYellow look at the numbers trump has more black and Latino votes compared to other republicans candidate. Meaning he did excellently for a republican.
Chomsky and Herman have said this for years. This is nothing new. See Manufacturing Consent. See The Propaganda Model.
Very true, but it's so blatantly obvious now at this point that even the lowest common denominator sees through it.
Immigrants Made this country. Always remember
You forget to attach: with the magic of genocide.
Your point?
settler is not immigrants.
I was a free lance journalist for over 20 years
What Talese neglects to note is that journalism
Specifically the newspaper and TV arms
Went from being a business to a profession.
Thus the reporters became college educated professionals
As opposed to high schools grade and drop outs.
Newspapers varied years ago.
Some aimed at working class readerships
Others at middle class dealerships
It's a profession now that has a certain educated centrist don't make waves sort of mindset
But it's always reflected forms of so called privilege over many decades
It just seems more obvious these days.
I like this guy. He tells it like it is.
Shawn Ravenfire me too but that still doesn't mean I like trump just because he does the same. Trump is inappropriate and unprofessional. This guy isn't.
Yeah, making fun of someone's hair is REALLY professional.
This must be a call to arms for those of us that aren't privilege. We must rebel and treat power and the powerful with distaste. As outsiders we can really mess the system for those that try to control it all.
Finally, someone holding the liberal media accountable for Trump's popularity without coming off as a self righteous prick about it or lazily farting out the words "political correctness" and "millennials" a hundred times.
Some top level projecting in this one. Nonetheless, there is self acknowledgement
In my opinion, (and tacking-on to Mr. Talese's assessment) it is also the loss of "The Fairness Doctrine" and the responsibility We the Public bestowed on the broadcasters to provide truth in journalism - which they took seriously, or at least I believed them when they made their annual statement/promise to the public when renewing their FCC license - to perform their job as The Fourth Estate in an ethical manner. This was lost most profoundly under Reagan (attempts to chip at it's importance occured before him as well) until it was only a whisper of an Act on the books - when it would be completely removed by Obama.
What remained of our formerly powerful and brilliant Press has become simply another form of entertainment dependent on profit and shaping the privileged Mr. Talese spoke of into sycophants who no longer report the truth and instead provide a platform to the propaganda of the powerful in order to continue their own positions of privilege -- this very small number of over-paid, bubble-headed, bleached blondes delivering the dirty laundry of the out-going celebs while hiding the corpses of the poor and forgotten who no longer matter to the corporations and the masters of the universe.
Why does this only have 27 000 views?
He's correct but it's just one problem of many. The other main one (main one) being a lack of skepticism from the general public towards gathering information, especially 'alternative news sites', blogs and known propaganda machines such as Russia Today (i.e. the innocuously named RT).
What changed is journalism started to try to entertain. They began reporting for ratings, judging their success by how big their ratings were, how many viewers they got, how many clicks they get, how much traffic on their website. That's why we get stupid, worthless coverage of people like the Hiltons or Kardashians, or Taylor Swift, or that Beyonce is pregnant again with twins. Because who the hell cares? It doesn't do anything for our world. Energy is wasted there in the name of ratings and clicks with which to better generate advertising revenue.
Instead as this gentleman said so eloquently we see news organizations concerned almost wholly with just what's going on in Washington and trying to get in with the power elite so that they can join that group. We have "celebrity journalists" like Anderson Cooper or Robin Meade or Rachel Madow and even straight up comedians parading around as journalists like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who are doing this because they themselves are famous for it and cultivate their activities for their own fame and their own elevation. They don't do it to report the news anymore. They aren't the person speaking to us about events that are important to us. They're the entertainers telling us a story, and that is what's wrong with journalism.
The projection here is staggering
His tie/undershirt reminds me of Turtles... like the candy. It's quite nice actually.
Everyone get out of the echo chamber and form an opinion of your own...
...because nothing is original.
He makes a good point!
great video.
(Siebert, 1963) Four Theories of the Press
(Hallin, 2004) Comparing Media Systems
Yes, finally, someone is saying this
wow, Palin , was right. tears......
Journalism like most other professions are becoming too expensive to make a living at. Thus journalists have to do what it takes to make a "dirty dirty dollar" so they can eat supper. Thus the truth becomes secondary to the money needed to live. Our whole economy is going the same way. The gap between the rich and the rest of us is growing exponentially both in terms of magnitude and in terms of speed of change. Until we figure out how to make our failed economy work, then journalists like most of the other professions will just have to make up news to make a living.
I'm sure I could learn a lot from Mr. Talese, but if he writes at all like he speaks I won't be buying his book.
This guy's a great writer. Great talker, not so much. What he says is true, but took a lot of patience to listen to him get to it.
Based on the comments, I get a WAY different interpretation of this from reading the transcript than people are getting from listening to him. It doesn't read like he's insulting the president at all, just talking about journalistic cynicism.
I listened to it and I agree with you. I think a lot of people in the comments have some autism-spectrum disorder and lack the ability to perceive that kind of nuance in human communication.
Journalists across America, open ur mouths and take the shit this guy just did on you.
Journalism is us now.
Loved this guy in Rain Man.
a voice of wisdom.
good video!
I think this election has to do with how successful the satire shows have become, and how that generates for those networks. If Clinton had won, there wouldnt be much of any funny business to gain a crowd over. Not saying this is exactly what happened or if it's ethical, but the way security was handled in this elections by our two largest security agencies was as poor as prezzy elect. Thank you BT for great work.
Loved it.
Hindsight is 20/20...
Nobody could do (Gonzo) journalism like Hunter Thompson period. He had no time for bullshit.
He said it! He just said it! #whathesaid
Tig Bhink will be the name of my first born
This week on Old man yells at cloud.
(shakes head) this is so typical classic Gay...
what, I'm not being homophobic for once
smart man
I tell you what wont help.
Calling Trump "that guy with the yellow hair". By laughing at him, you laugh at all the disappointed under class, who voted for him, as well. And that will just make it worse.
Take Trump serious, take the disappointed people serious.
Amen
As if one group could be blamed as a whole. First of all, there are different kinds of journalism. Second, people are at fault too. Because people don´t buy newspapers or rather read negetive, sensational and big stories, instead of serious politics and economics. Journalists need to fullfill these needs to be able to sell newspapers at all. The sell of newspapers all over the world are declining since decades because most people don´t buy the printed version and don´t pay for the digital version. Besides, the yellowpress was born in his time. Still he is acting so arrogant as if back than everything was perfect.
This talk would have been better on the radio. the content for me was dead on.
This guy makes it seem like education is bad thing lmao
Legend
The Internet gave the power journalism to the people which all socialist say they love , till it's their turn to see amateurs do their jobs
Ignoring that Trump lost the popular vote invalidates the entirety of his analysis.
Well no it doesn't, that part is not surprising to journalists, most people live in the big cities where the journalists also live, and the urban vote was largely for Hillary. But journalists should know how the voting system works, and so know that the popular vote is not what wins elections. So focusing too much on certain regions was a big mistake.
Is this Bill Nye's dad?
Why am I listening to some old dude rambling for 6 minutes about an outdated form of media o.O
but...more people actually did vote for Hillary Clinton
Amanpreet Singh thank God for delegates or else we would have a criminal in office and we'd currently be at war with Russia
spanish is not the same as hispanic
TL;dr another rant on trump
ur my buddy Gay, but i don't agree with some of your ideas
he hates trump 😂 me too hun 👋
Thank you for your time sir. Excellent topic.
Clickbait killed journalism. This video may get 15,000 views. Tabloid fiction about someone's sex life will get 15,000,000. Follow the money.
Why are people so hateful? I just don't understand
This is true.
More Please!