The heart of a reporter
One of the allures of great writers is that they get things right -- they find the essential truth. Richard Price in "Freedomland" gets it right in his description of reporters, a description as loud and as true as any I've read. I say this with affection because, at heart, I'm a reporter before anything else. If the occasional coarse language bothers you, read no further or avert your eyes when you come upon it.
She thought of all reporters, but especially street reporters, as junkies. And although there was a universal undercurrent of adrenaline running through each of them, the true drug of choice varied from writer to writer. There were those addicted to the information race, the desire to get there first -- some of her colleagues lived crouched in the blocks round the clock, the pagers on their hips nothing more than starter's pistols.
For others, it was a compulsive craving for the truth, not in any abstract or philosophical way or in any noble or public-minded sense either. These reporters suffered from an unquenchable desire to know what the hell happened, what really fucking happened here -- why did it happen, when did it happen; who said what to whom and what was said in return; how did this blood truly get here on this stoop, on this bed -- the information most often serving no higher purpose than to relay the specifics with reasonable accuracy to the public and, more personally, to scratch that unappeasable itch.
There were those who got off on being around cops, around violence, around death, those who enjoyed living dangerously and getting paid for it.
And then there were those, and in this group Jesse included herself, who were addicted to something she though of as Infilling -- the compulsive hankering to witness, to absorb, to taste human behavior in extremis' the desire to embrace, to be filled with, no matter how fleetingly, the power of human grief, human rage; to experience it over and over; to absorb the madness of others, the commitment of others, the killers, the killed, the bereaved, the stunned, the liars, the fuckers, the heroes, the clownish, and the helpless.
And much as I hate to say it, Price gets the media right. But you'll have to read the book.
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"These reporters suffered from an unquenchable desire to know what the hell happened, what really fucking happened here -- why did it happen, when did it happen; who said what to whom and what was said in return . . ."
Ah, yes, for such reporters from the halcyon days of yore! Unlike those who penned the two articles in today's paper whose logic was "to hell with the facts, let's get to the symbolism."
Let's not worry that the facts are unclear in the Duke rape, nor that the woman in question is definitely a stripper and quite likely lying; instead, let's begin with black female graduate students who are sexually molested "every time they go out" by white men. Every single time? All of them? Do black men ever molest them? Any evidence for any of this? Fact checking? But let's not get bogged down by the facts, let's get to the symbolism of white men and their sexualized stereotypes of black women. Perhaps toss in a few complicating factors along the way. . . that BET offers the worst examples on TV, that there are "complexities" that muddle the gist of the story, that the incident driving the story has no hard facts associated with it . . . but not enough to seriously compromise the story, which doesn't need facts at all (and, in fact, has none).
And then there is the Mexican-American "martyr" who may have been just skipping school. If, in fact, he was, then the story isn't news: it's just another sad teen suicide. But no need to investigate: all the story requires is the symbolism of an idealistic young man beaten down by The Man. Feed the mythology. We're short on actual news today on the immigration debate front, so let's find a symbol. Let's not split hairs on his actual actions or the difference between a martyr and a suicide.
The decline of American journalism can be witnessed in the fact that these two articles pass as "news" nowadays.
Posted on April 16, 2006 1:33 AM