|
|
New
York Times bestselling author Jerry Bledsoe asks and answers
questions
about his new book Death
by Journalism?
Q:
This book is different from your usual true-crime fare, isn't it?
A:
Not really. It's about crimes, too. Just crimes that can't be
prosecuted. In this case, a couple of dozen people in my home county had
their First Amendment rights stolen from them. I can't imagine theft
more grand. An honorable and innocent man also had his good reputation
destroyed, and many people close to him believe the stress from that
killed him. He certainly thought that a crime had been committed against
him, and death left him no recourse to it.
Q:
Why did you write this book?
A:
I can sum up the reason in
two words. Truth matters. This book shows just
how much it does matter. Alter truth even slightly, and it can have
drastic effect. In
this case, truth was savaged. Journalism isn't supposed to be about
lying. It isn't supposed to be about destroying innocent people. It
isn't supposed to be about depriving people of basic constitutional
rights. All of that happened in this story, and I realized if I didn't
tell it,
nobody would. The lie would live. I felt a deep obligation to my county,
as well to my profession, to see that didn't happen.
Q:
Why would a newspaper do these things?
A:
I wish I could answer that. Unfortunately, some of the people involved
in
this story weren't willing to talk about it. One was the reporter who
started it. He
said his editors instructed him not to talk, but he still declined to be
questioned after
leaving the newspaper. Others who weren't willing to talk were the
editors involved in the coverage, as well the newspaper's publisher, who
personally defended the false stories as being completely true, even
though his editors knew otherwise. This reaction is rather ironic
considering that the newspaper expects public officials to be open with
the press. A newspaper, while privately owned, is also a public trust,
with great power for good or bad. Public officials who fail to cooperate
with the press can count on being pilloried in the news, portrayed as
"stonewalling" and having something to hide. Why would a
newspaper, which should be completely open and honest, refuse to talk
about its own actions? Is a newspaper above accountability? The
management of this newspaper, the News & Record, of
Greensboro, seems to think so. Could it have something to hide? Sadly,
this book shows that it did.
Q:
The news media recently have come under attack in several books. Have
you
read former CBS news correspondent Bernard Goldberg's book, Bias?
A:
I have.
Q:
What did you think?
A.
I thought his apparent bitterness undercut his case in parts, but he
presented persuasive evidence of liberal bias in the news. That was
nothing new to a great many people, maybe most people. The amazing
aspect of this is that so many in the news media simply can't, or won't,
recognize the bias that has been so transparent to so many of their
viewers and readers for so long. That was more or less Goldberg's
position. The way the media reacted to his book, though, is quite
telling. They either ignored it, dismissing it out of hand, as they do
most claims of bias, or they responded with ridicule and vicious
personal attacks instead of addressing the legitimate issues he raised. Bias
didn't become number one on the New York Times bestsellers list
because people love and trust the news media. The media's refusal to
recognize obvious partiality causes people to wonder how reporters and
editors can view anything with honesty and fairness. Over and over, the
news industries' own surveys show that most people no longer trust them.
The reason is obvious. Fewer and fewer people believe them, because they
see and hear so many things that they know are biased or untrue. More
and more people see journalists as arrogant, smug, and out of touch with
reality. People who are involved in events that are reported in the news
often see that a reporter's view of the event is completely different
from their experience. My book offers the perfect example. This story
shows exactly why people don't trust the news media--and shouldn't. One
newspaper's fabrications become fabrications for all.
Q:
What do you think lies behind this bias?
A:
The obvious answer is that the great majority of reporters and editors
are
liberal. That doesn't mean that they can't be objective and fair. Most
are honest and work hard to get facts right. But others don't have those
scruples. They see their roles as proponents of hard and fast political
and social agendas. Truth is not their mission, and all too frequently
not their result. They infest every news operation, and newspapers are
particularly vulnerable to them. I saw this happening before I left the
business in 1991, and it has become far worse since. I also saw that
nothing would be allowed to combat these excesses because political
correctness prevents honest reporters and editors from standing up to
them. Political correctness has become so firmly entrenched in newsrooms
that those who dare even to raise questions about such matters are apt
to find themselves ostracized, their careers ruined, as happened to
Bernard Goldberg.
Q:
Since you brought up political correctness, how do you define it?
A:
Political correctness allows truth to be altered and denied to prevent
pre-conceived offense and to promote certain political and social
agendas. The two institutions in this country that are the primary
caretakers of truth are the news media and the educational systems.
These also are the institutions that are grasped most firmly in the
talons of political correctness. Political correctness devours truth,
and it is turning the news media and educational institutions,
particularly the universities, into agents of the lie. It is
the gravest threat to the free speech, and when the First Amendment goes
so will go individual freedom. It's astounding that the institutions
most dependent on free speech are the ones working hardest to negate it.
This book shows just how easy it is for citizens to be denied the
protections of the First Amendment, and a newspaper brought it about.
Q:
How did political correctness assume such a powerful role in the news
media?
A:
Let me speak to the part of the business that I know about. Newspapers
and
their editors are far different than when I became a reporter nearly
forty years ago. In
the past twenty-five years, the news media became completely corporate
and that brought a new kind of editor. In my early years, I was
fortunate to work for some great editors. They were people of the word,
people of passion. They had vision and imagination. They truly cared
about others, and they were open and fair to all. Perhaps most
importantly, they were courageous. All were eased out as corporate
control progressed. The editors I encountered in the second half of my
newspaper career were just the opposite from those editors I adored.
They were corporate climbers, bureaucrats, people who depended on vapid
and ever-changing consultants to tell them what to do. Diogenes never
would have hung his lantern on the office door of any corporate editor I
encountered. And I have no doubt that I would have had a far better
chance of spotting an ivory-billed woodpecker at my bird feeder than I
ever would have had of uncovering even a hint of courage in any of them.
I suspect that's why political correctness has consumed newspapers.
Q:
Would you regard it as a courageous act if the editor and publisher of
the
News & Record admitted that the articles you write about in
your book were false, if they acknowledged that they knowingly misled
their readers, if they apologized for all the damage done?
A:
I wouldn't call it courageous. It's too late for that. But I would
consider it a first step toward decency. In the meantime, I'll be out in
the yard waiting for that ivory-billed
woodpecker to show up.
about
the author
Jerry
Bledsoe, who lives in Randolph County, N.C., where the controversy took
place, is the author of the bestselling true-crime books Bitter
Blood, Blood Games, Before He Wakes and Death
Sentence, as well as the bestselling fictional memoir, The Angel Doll, and its
sequel, A Gift of Angels.
He has been a contributing editor of Esquire
and a reporter and columnist for the Greensboro News
& Record, the Charlotte
Observer and the Louisville
Times. He won two Ernie Pyle Memorial Awards and two National
Headliner Awards for his reporting, as well as numerous N.C. Press
Association Awards. Two of his books were finalists for the Edgar Allen
Poe Award.
about
the book
Death by Journalism? One Teacher's Fateful
Encounter with Political Correctness is
available for $24.95 in hardcover. Its ISBN is
1-878086-93-6. To order, or to learn more about this book and
others by Jerry Bledsoe and Down Home Press, please return to the Death
by Journalism? main page.
|
