By Bob Gaydos

Bret Baier  interrupting Kamala Harris.

    Where to start? Let’s go with the obvious. When you are a “journalist“ interviewing the vice president of the United States, who also happens to be the first ever female vice president of the United States, you don’t interrupt her in the middle of her comment and stick your hand in her face.

    It’s rude and disrespectful to the office and the person. Heck, it’s rude to anyone. It doesn’t matter if she’s not sticking to the script. It’s not her script anyway. It’s yours. Let her answer and then follow up with a question if you’re not satisfied with what you heard.

   Journalism 101. Something rarely practiced on Fox News because, as they have admitted in court, they are not a news organization, but rather, an entertainment network, a fact too many people still don’t know. That means most of the people who work there act like journalists, saying whatever they please whether it’s true or not, and most of their guests follow a script that both interviewer and interviewee know very well.

      Kamala Harris is not part of that chummy Fox club, Bret Baier, who drew the job of interviewing her, knew that full well. And she is running for president against Fox’s favorite fascist and political candidate who can do no wrong, Donald Trump.

      So Baier went into the Harris interview in a “gotcha” mode. It backfired. She got him. She chastised him for interrupting her, completed her statement, called Baier out on running a clip that did not address the issue of the discussion and concluded with a detailed and accurate description of the pathetic candidate Trump is today. Definitely off script.

     Baier should’ve just let her answer the question. But see, that’s the problem when you’re not a real journalist. At Fox, everyone pretty much knows what questions to ask and what answers are going to be given. They get in trouble when outliers like Harris agree to appear with them. She’s a trained prosecutor used to arguing the facts of the case.

     Baier should’ve known that. Maybe he forgot. Or maybe he underestimated his interviewee. That’s rule number one in political interviewing. Know whom you’re dealing with. Number two is know the issues well and what you want to find out. Number three is be polite, but firm, if necessary.

      The goal should be to provide viewers or readers of the story to follow a better picture of the candidate. What he or she stands for on the issues and how well he or she explains those positions. Is he confident? Is she comfortable? Is he nervous? Is she believable?

       Baier actually accomplished all that in spite of himself. Because he was so bad at trying to sabotage Harris and because she is such an experienced, skilled politician, the real Kamala came through. Controlled and confident. Comfortable and believable.

       That’s not always the case. I remember an interview with a local congressional candidate, a political novice, who had difficulty explaining her position on some key issue. In an interview with the newspaper editorial board, her first answer was vague and evasive. Someone asked her to expand on it. Same result. Again, someone asked politely could she please explain to us a little more clearly, so we could understand and write about it accurately. Not much better and growing obviously uncomfortable. When someone started to ask just one more time, tears actually appeared in the candidate’s eyes. We relented. We knew what we needed to know. We endorsed the other guy. Polite-but-firm had worked.

        There’s a lot of quasi-journalism going on today. Especially on television. Newspapers are disappearing every day and people have no clue what’s going on in their own hometown. Social media is not a reliable alternative. The truth is a constantly moving target. This is how candidates like Trump survive. Someone needs to come up with a solution fast.

       I don’t know Bret Baier’s background or training in journalism. I don’t really care, because he sold his soul when he agreed to take a paycheck from Fox News to peddle lies about Donald Trump and his MAGA cult. That goes for all the Foxies.

      Not tooting any horns here, but taking the license granted me when described as a curmudgeon at my retirement from newspapers, I must report that, over many years, in interviewing governors, senators, congressmen, mayors, state officials, legislators, judges, countless local officials and business leaders, never did I or any of my colleagues ever put a hand in the face of the person we were interviewing and interrupt them.

     It’s not respectful or professional and, as Baier found out, can be counterproductive.

     rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Image from Storybench, Northeastern University School of Journalism

  That was fast. A while back, I wrote a column about how AI was coming to take my job and the jobs of maybe millions of other people lovingly referred to as “knowledge workers” by the CEOs of the companies who are rushing to make it happen.

     Well, it happened, in of all places, Wyoming.

      A reporter, new to the trade and no longer with the paper, admitted to using artificial intelligence to create quotes, even whole stories, for the Cody Enterprise, a newspaper founded by Buffalo Bill Cody, who needed no genius computer to create his legendary story.

      The phony reporter was busted by a veteran reporter for a competing newspaper, the Powell Tribune, who said he started asking around when he noted some of the phrases in the other guy’s stories seemed to be a bit off, or robotic. Bad writing.

       No surprise there. YouTube is replete with documentaries and special reports full of inappropriate or outdated or trite, slightly off phrasing narrated by “people” who mispronounce basic words. 

       At such times, I can be heard complaining agitatedly, “AI!”

       Also, preaching: “Everybody needs an editor.”

       It’s my favorite response and basic rule for any writer. But the YouTube videos go on, their producers seemingly unaware or unconcerned with the amateurish product they’re presenting. Artificial mediocrity suffices, probably because it draws an audience and it’s cheaper than employing the real thing. People.

         Which brings me back to Wyoming. Things were different in Wyoming. The governor and other people were saying they never said what the newspaper said they said, although they admitted it sounded like something they might have said.

          Classic AI. Scan the past and take a plausible shot at recreating it in the present. Chatbots always aim to please.

          But unlike YouTube shows, newspapers can get into trouble making stuff up, with or without AI. The publisher of The Enterprise said AI is “the new, advanced form of plagiarism and in the field of media and writing, plagiarism is something every media outlet has had to correct at some point or another.”

           She said the paper now has a policy in place to recognize AI-generated stories. That’s good. With no official controls on this new, still-developing technology, all news media should have a policy on the proper and improper use of artificial intelligence and make it known to the public as well as their staff.

           The editor of the Enterprise, Chris Bacon, said, “The Enterprise didn’t have an AI policy because it seemed obvious that journalists shouldn’t use it to write stories.”

          Yeah, one would think, right? But these are different times. Times of stolen user names, online dating scams, spam emails. Progress. While the recognized practice in journalism always has been not to steal other people’s writing and not to make stuff up, some have tried and some have been caught. Newspapers have been sued. But AI apparently makes it harder to spot, especially for less-experienced eyes.

        The AP says Bacon is “a military veteran and former air ambulance pilot who was named editor in May after a few months working as a reporter.” Swift promotion. 

        He said he “failed to catch” the AI copy and false quotes and apologized that “AI was allowed to put words that were never spoken” into stories in his newspaper. At least seven stories, seven people falsely quoted.

      I don’t know. Apparently one AI-generated story about a shooting in Yellowstone National Park included this sentence: “This incident serves as a stark reminder of the unpredictable nature of human behavior, even in the most serene settings.”

       In nearly half a century working in newspapers, I can’t recall a more unlikely sentence in a news story to have been allowed to pass unquestioned by a copy editor. No way Moe or Dennis or Linda or Tim lets me get away with that hackneyed life lesson without at least a, “Hey, Bob …” 

       Maybe my basic rule for writers needs to be modified: Everybody needs a really fussy human editor. 

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

The Post staff rebelled against a proposed new editor with a questionable ethics past.

    Score one for the good guys.

   In a time when (1.) “fake news” is thrown around routinely as a way to delegitimize real reporting by real journalists while (2.) social media is awash in actually fake news produced by fake journalists and (3.) the airwaves are polluted by well-funded “media” outlets pushing outright lies, all to support the propaganda machine of the Trump Republican Party, The Washington Post recently provided a lesson in what has historically been considered basic journalism ethics in America.

  Actually, The Post staff with major help from The New York Times gave Post management a lesson in basic American journalism.

    In brief, they forced the ordained new editor of  The Post to change his mind about taking the job because, well, it’s always more pleasant to work with people who like you and who share your principles and ethics. Or, in this case, lack thereof.

     Robert Winnett, the Post editor-to-be, announced that he’s decided to stay in England, where his brand of “journalism” is accepted and (by some) even admired, rather than come to The Post, whose staff was in revolt over his selection.

     That’s because Winnett was involved in a scandal that engulfed British newspapers years ago in which stories based on hacked or stolen phone and business records or records purchased from a data information company were published to embarrass prominent politicians and celebrities. Lawsuits followed.

      Those practices are frowned upon by legitimate American news organizations and have been for a long time. Winnett denied taking part in those activities, but both The Post and The Times published articles quoting individuals involved in those sensationalized stories saying Winnett was in it.

      Indeed. So was his almost new boss, Post CEO and publisher Will Lewis, who was, in fact, Winnett’s actual boss at The Sunday Times, a Rupert Murdoch newspaper across the pond. Lewis was reported to have assigned Winnett to do one of those hit jobs.

    Still, Lewis did manage to get hired as the top dog in Washington. Apparently, The Post’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, didn’t notice or didn’t care that the British style of “journalism,” as practiced most outrageously in America by Murdoch-owned Fox News on TV and to a lesser extent The New York Post, wasn’t acceptable for major American media, especially those with a reputation for fairness and ethical practices, like The Washington Post.

     Bezos, who turned Amazon into a mega profit machine, is understandably concerned that The Post is losing money. Maybe he never considered all the advertisers that newspapers lost when businesses flocked to the Internet to companies like Amazon to promote their products.

   In any event, Bezos wants The Post to establish a third news-gathering wing, presumably centered on the Internet. Lewis wanted Sally Buzbee, the Post’s former top editor, to take over that new job, but she properly took it as a demotion and resigned. The Times and Post stories story on Winnett followed. Hence, the search for a new editor. (A new publisher wouldn’t be bad either.)

     Back in London, Chris Evans, top editor at The Daily Telegraph, Winnett’s current newspaper, sent a message to his staff saying, “I am pleased to report that Rob Winnett has decided to stay with us. As you all know, he’s a talented chap, and their loss is our gain.” 

     Well, chaps of a feather do stick together.

     In any case, the hope here is that Lewis and Bezos and others at The Post who maybe were thinking of taking part in some form of UK “hit job“ journalism get the message: The First Amendment protection afforded the press in this country in the Constitution is not a license to lie, cheat, steal or in any other unethical way ruin people’s lives for the sake of selling more newspapers or getting more clicks on social media.

    Not yet at least.

(Editor’s note: The author worked for more than 40 years at three daily newspapers, all of which followed the basic ethical principles of American journalism. Two of them — The Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton and The Times Herald-Record in Middletown — were tabloids in size, but not in the practice of journalistic sensationalism. The Evening Capital in Annapolis, a standard broadsheet, was no less rigorous about ethical practices.)

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Pete Hamill

Some random observations of a Covid-weary pundit in the month of August …

By the way … The death this week of Pete Hamill, at 85, got me to thinking about journalism — by which I always mean print journalism — and the voices I listened to as I followed my own path as a newsman. Hamill was right there with Jimmy Breslin, the voices of New York, whose columns were more than words on a page. They were conversations in a diner. I heard them in my head. That’s because they were honest and true to their creators. Nothing phony. Less noted than Hamill’s recent death was that last year of Russell Baker, longtime New York Times columnist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, whose “Observer” column was as much a must-read for me as any of Hamill’s columns. Totally different, but required. Brilliant satire that was like having a cup of coffee with a very clever friend. 

   I had a couple of other favorites — Jim Murray, who never wrote a sports column the way they taught it in college, and Jimmy Cannon, whose ”Nobody Asked Me, But …” columns were required reading and the inspiration for this obvious knockoff. The voices in my newspapers are all gone. What remains with me is the now-conscious, but onetime unaware, conviction that a writer must be true to him or her self first. Do not try to impress or be what you are not. Tell the story as best you can so that people will actually want to read it. Trust your voice and your opinion.  Check your facts, use proper grammar and know how to spell, too. It seems I’m in search of some new voices to read today.

    By the way … They call these the dog days. Why? Have you ever known a dog to like the hot, humid days of August? No dog I’ve ever known, including each half of the current duo, Taj and Prince, has ever suggested taking a long walk on a 90-degree day and maybe playing some Frisbee later. It’s usually let me out to do my stuff and let’s get back inside with the air-conditioning, fast! And before some smart Alec with an itchy Google finger hurries to straighten me out, I already checked with Merriam-Webster. Apparently, the phrase was first used in 1538 and referred to the rising of the Dog Star, Sirius, in the skies in the period from early July to early September. OK, but it’s been almost five centuries, people. Let’s give dogs their due with a star in the skies, but let’s not pin this crummy weather on them. They had nothing to do with it and they like it even less than humans do. Prince told me so.

    By the way … Try as I may, it is virtually impossible for someone writing about life as we know it today to avoid writing about the Embarrassment Administration. I’ll go easy, with a pass at the putz-in-waiting, Mike Pence. The nearly invisible and virtually mute vice president had something to say this week. He should’ve kept it to himself. Pence thinks Chief Justice John Roberts is a “disappointment” to conservative voters. Maybe it’s that lifetime appointment and separate and equal branch of government thing that Pence doesn’t understand. Maybe he doesn’t get that people in high government office, even vice presidents, are allowed and even expected to have their own opinions on issues and be willing to stand by them. And, in Roberts’ case, be protected by a lifetime appointment.

        The Chief Justice “disappointed” Pence by siding with the Supreme Court’s more liberal judges on cases involving LGBTQ labor rights, reinstatement of the Dreamers, a rejection of a Louisiana law restricting abortions and a rejection of. a Nevada church’s attempt to avoid limits on attendance because of Covid-19 restrictions. Pence said his boss would make sure to appoint more reliable rubber stamps to the court if he is re-elected. He’s even planning on putting out a list of potential candidates, not that he would dream of politicizing such an important position just before an election.

            Roberts, of course, cast the deciding vote in a previous 5-4 ruling that preserved Obamacare. Pence’s boss promises to provide a substitute for this healthcare plan about every couple of weeks. But apparently his golf gets in the way. I’d like to say it was nice to know the vice president actually speaks, but then, he is what is waiting in the wings. You, sir, are a disappointment to the majority of Americans. On the other hand, Mr. Chief Justice, well done.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.