Journalism Is Not Sexy
By: John Devore
Tags: Cinema, Culture, Film, Journalism, Movies

I was born inside the Beltway in 1974 a few days before Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency, a direct result of reporters exposing a vast government coverup. My dad had moved our family to Virginia from Texas to work for Senator Lloyd Bentsen, his first job as a press secretary. Previously, he had been a journalist. A broadcast journalist, actually. He hosted the evening news in El Paso, Texas, for many years.

Once, I asked him why he gave up the news and without missing a beat, he told me one Christmas Day he became depressed because he had to go to work and there was no news to report. He told me he wished for a murder or a horrible accident to help fill the hour.

Other than that, he never really talked about his time in front of the camera or reporting for various local newspapers. He had a bunch of Time magazine bylines if I remember correctly. This would have been the ‘60s? Anyway, he did tell me when he was first starting out when he got out of the army, he lived in his car for a while and ate nothing but donuts. I think his very first job was as a radio DJ, and he used to dedicate songs to my mom when they were dating.

He wanted me to know these jobs — radio, TV, newspaperman — weren’t reputable professions. If you were born to a good family you were likely encouraged to become a doctor or a lawyer. No one wants their kid to grow up to be a metro reporter with a drinking problem who's really good at annoying apparatchiks at City Hall. Let me say for the record: God bless metro reporters.

But the job is strictly for maniacs who love punctuation and sensitive souls with authority problems. Journalism is not sexy. Necessary, but not sexy. It’s like being a sanitation worker only you’re up to your waist in lies.

When I finally got a job at a national magazine I met small armies of unpaid interns. I didn’t understand how unpaid interns could survive in New York City without an income until I learned most of them came from privilege. I wondered why they weren’t, you know, lawyers. The truth is, they wanted to fight for truth and justice and take down the powerful. The job was sexy. It was powerful. Exciting. Lawyering is less so.

I didn’t go to journalism school. I am a failed playwright but I failed very early so I was able to learn another trade. Here’s how I became a journalist: I was a temp one day and the next day I was a fact-checker. There is no ceremony. If you want to become a journalist just say “I’m a journalist” into the mirror three times and then, presto!

After that, it’s a lifetime of late nights and questions and worrying about dangling participles. Early in my career, I got the price wrong for an expensive external hard drive I was writing about for a magazine about technology and small businesses. My editor was not pleased. You know that corny old adage, “Don’t sweat the small stuff?” Well, that editor told me to sweat the small the stuff.

My old man was a proud political flack. I remember that. He was the son of a preacher his whole life and prided himself on his honesty. Politics is ventriloquism but you could see his lips move. He loved reporters and was respected on Capitol Hill. But he also knew the best ones were junkyard dogs who needed to be fed truth daily or else.

I think that’s why he loved them.

All The President’s Men really sells the romance of a newsroom, circus-like open offices where journalists save the world. The last shot of Redford and Hoffman shows them in the newsroom hunched over typewriters, dramatically banging out the words that would save the Republic.

The problem with the movie is journalists aren’t superheroes. A good journalist knows power in any measurement — even a spoonful — corrupts. That sometimes rotten meat can smell sweet. A good journalist isn’t unbiased. They’re human beings. Which means they’re hugely biased assholes. A good journalist just knows that everyone is an asshole, including journalists. There are no creatures under heaven who excrete rose petals. Reporter, expose thyself.

Journalists are not sexy Robert Redford, with sensitive furrowed brows. Dustin Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein is a chain-smoking, barnstorming ladies man in All The President’s Men. Woodward and Bernstein were ex-hippies in tight pants with egos the size of Chevy Impalas — like the rest of their generation. The movie just made them rock stars and only rock stars are rock stars. All The President’s Men is a fun fantasy to watch for two hours and 18 minutes but it’s just make-believe. You know, bullshit. The Adventures Of Bob And Carl.

I don’t think journalism is a sacred calling. I don’t think it’s a religion, which is the best business model in the history of the world. It’s a job, and not a particularly well-paying job. It’s a job that’s easy to ignore or mock, especially when you don’t think you need it. I bet most people don’t really think about firefighters until there’s a grease fire.

You know a fraction of the truth and what little you know is a gift. Information is power and the powerful want to dazzle and hypnotize you with drama. News that shimmers and tickles. They fear any truth getting out, even a squirt. Did you know the strong steal from the weak every day? That preachers lie and police officers murder the innocent? Right now, as you read this, the rich dig spurs into the soft flanks of elected officials.

The world is on fire and the only reason you know about it is that journalists reported it. The process of finding that out and writing it up was likely boring and that person was probably insulted on social media afterward.

And yet tomorrow morning there will be headlines screaming truths — fact-checked stories written by serious-minded journalists with condiment-stained shirts uninterested in fairy tales or best-case scenarios — whether you want to read them or not. Assuming they’ve done their jobs ethically, you owe your freedom to those people — your freedom to think, to question, to point and shout, “Who do you think you are?”