Some of my summer reading has
involved journalistic topics. So call me predictable.
Highlights:
Yours In Truth: A Personal Portraitof Ben Bradlee by Jeff Himmelman performs a difficult task well: portraying the
larger-than-life executive editor of the Washington Post, who was memorably
played by Jason Robards in the 1976 movie All the President’s Men.
Bradlee is a hero to many
journalists for his role in the newspaper’s unveiling of the Watergate scandal,
which forced U.S. President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974.
Highlights of this warts-and-all
bio are the photos of brief, punchy letters and memos from Bradlee to friends
and foes. The title comes from one of those.
Himmelman claims he wanted to call
the book “Dear Asshole,” from another Bradlee letter.
Yours In Truth also contains a
vivid portrayal of Katharine Graham, Bradlee’s boss and one of strongest female
characters in American journalism.
The news hook in the book is
Bradlee’s comment that “there’s a residual fear in my soul” that some of the
paper’s references to Deep Throat, its source, were not completely true.
But you don’t need to know anything about
Watergate to enjoy this fast-paced, entertaining read.
Somewhat more ponderous is Cronkite by Douglas Brinkley, a doorstopper at 819 pages.
It’s an anecdote-stuffed examination
of the life of Walter Cronkite, perhaps the last of the old-time, authoritative
television news anchors. Cronkite defined avuncular on CBS News, emphasizing
American and international politics and space exploration.
He followed a traditional career in
journalism, from newspapers to a wire service to television, emphasizing
fact-checking and seeing things for himself.
From the Second World War to the
moon landing and political assassinations, Cronkite delivered the nightly final
word on “the news” into the 1980s.
There won’t be any more Cronkites. Today’s
instant information and multimedia universe leave no room for final words.
Cronkite’s nemesis was Dan Rather,
a brash Texan and CBS co-worker who was apparently a little less scrupulous
about fact-checking.
His memoir, Rather Outspoken: My
Life in the News, with Digby Diehl, is on my fall reading list.
For fun reading I highly recommend The Spoiler by Annalena McAfee, a hilarious satirical novel set in Britain
in 1997, at the dawn of the Internet.
Newspaper hacks sense something is
changing in their competitive but tightly knit world. But as they swill their
nightly drinks at the bar while plotting their quasi-legal exploits, they scorn
the new technology.
There’s a shadow of Rupert Murdoch
here: the protagonist steals a fistful of unopened letters addressed to an
interview subject, and then reflects that lifting more letters would have made
her appear more professional to her bosses.
Speaking of the Dirty Digger, Dial M for Murdoch by Tom Watson and Martin Hickman eviscerates Murdoch.
Watson, a U.K.
member of Parliament, was one of the many targets of unsavoury investigations
by Murdoch journalists. In a way, the book is a continuation of Watson’s aggressive
grilling of Rupert Murdoch and his son James at a parliamentary hearing that
revealed astonishing details of phone hacking and bribery by Murdochs’
journalists, and a massive international cover-up by their executives.
Hickman, a British journalist,
steers this account more in the direction of impartiality.
Several of the characters in this
book have been charged with criminal offences, and they may well be headed to
prison, following the tracks of Conrad Black, a former Canadian.
That one-time press baron has released
a “fully updated” edition of A Matter of Principle, his version of his losing battle
with the United States
legal system. It was a victory, not a defeat, Black insists.
The updating consists mainly of 16
pages detailing the end of his 42-month sentence in Florida
prisons for fraud and obstruction of justice.
Black reports that his last day in
custody “began in a foreign, tropical prison cell with the ear-shattering pre-dawn
wailings of an ostensibly female African-American correctional officer.”
There is also a new four-page
attack on Murdoch. No honour among pirates, apparently.
A Matter of Principle and The
Spoiler probably will send you to the dictionary a few times: a delightful
bonus.
