News

Terry Gross' remarks to 2008 Graduates of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

May 21, 2008

Terry Gross John Smock

Transcript of Ms. Gross' remarks.

Thank you, Dean Lemann; and thank all of you for sharing this special day in your lives with me.

For those of you familiar with me from hearing me on the radio—possibly beginning from when you were forced to listen to me on the way to or from school, in your parents’ carpools when you were kids—you’re probably wondering: What’s she going to do here today—ask questions?

Because, after all, that’s what I’m known for: asking questions every day on Fresh Air.

And as a matter of fact, on finding out I was being given this award by the most prestigious journalism school in the country, I had to ask myself a question. The question was: Has some sort of mistake been made? Me?

Because for those of you who don’t know my work on Fresh Air … well, I wish I could say my tireless questioning blew the lid off warrantless wiretapping or the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

But in reality, the two interviews for which I think I’m best known are ones that … didn’t exactly go well.

One was with Bill O’Reilly, who after accusing me of asking him questions he didn’t consider fair and balanced, generously offered me some advice:

CLIP #1 BILL O’REILLY

If you think that’s fair Terry, you should get in another business. I’ll tell you that right now.

Then he stormed off…. before we could play him out.

My other most famous interview was with Gene Simmons, of Kiss. Together, he and I—well … he, mostly—upheld NRP’s reputation for mature, thoughtful discussion, and for always being in the best of taste:

CLIP #2 GENE SIMMONS
Simmons: The notion is if you want to welcome me with open arms I’m afraid you’ll also have to welcome me with open legs.
Gross: That’s a really obnoxious thing to say.
Simmons: No it’s not.

Yes, it is!

And on it went like that.

Questions are my stock in trade, not answers. Which is why I today find myself short of words of wisdom regarding both your future and the future of journalism. What I can do is share some of my own experiences and hope you find them relevant.

You know more about journalism than I did when I was starting out in the early 1970s. I didn’t go to journalism school, much less Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. I learned on the job, beginning as a volunteer at WBFO-FM, the NPR affiliate at the University of Buffalo, where I went to school. There were people at the station who were far more experienced than I was, and they showed me the ropes. But some of the rules I still follow were rules I made up for myself as I went along. I suspect that at least two are rules many journalist would find objectionable.

Rule Number One: Since we pre-record and edit all of the interviews on Fresh Air, I tell my guests that if I ask anything too personal, they should let me know and I’ll move on to something else. I do this because I respect their right to privacy, but I can’t presume to know where they draw the line. For example, one writer declined to talk about having MS, even though our listeners could hear his slurred, labored speech and possibly recognized it as a symptom. What did he want to talk about? About how he developed his love for literature, when he was young, by masturbating to pornography. So you never know.

But here’s the thing. By respecting a guest’s right to decline to answer a personal question, by giving him or her the responsibility to define what’s going too far, I’m giving myself the freedom to ask absolutely anything. Having been assured that I won’t invade his or her privacy, a guest is more likely to answer seemingly personal questions than he or she might have been otherwise.

Rule Number Two: Before we start taping, I tell my guests that if they figure out what they really mean to say in the middle of saying it—that is, if they figure out a clearer, more concise way of making their point—they can go back to an earlier part of the answer and do it over. This sounds like sacrilege, I know—it risks giving an interviewee an opportunity not only to rephrase a point but possibly retract it. But I really do want to give my guests a chance to say what they have to say as clearly as possible. Sometimes I’m even the one suggesting they try it again. This is because a long form radio interview isn’t like a print piece, in which the reporter can paraphrase what was actually said, or write around fragmented quotes. If an answer isn’t clear and coherent, I can’t use it. Sometimes a second take is required for a guest to figure out what he means to say, and then say it clearly enough for our listeners to make sense of it.

Once an interview is over, it’s a different story. A guest may have second thoughts about something he or she said, and fear that he or she has revealed too much. So the guest or a representative will call us and ask—sometimes insist — that we edit out something. But it’s too late. Our standard answer is “No.” Whatever was said is on the record. Giving a guest flexibility during the interview doesn’t extend to letting them participate in the editing process.

But even here, black and white sometimes turns grey. You can’t let the professional rules you play by stand in the way of common decency. During her interview with me a few years ago, a famous veteran actress revealed that she’d had an abortion when she was much younger. Afterwards, she called and asked us to edit out the reference to her abortion. She explained that at the time she was living in a predominantly Catholic country, and that if word got out about her abortion, there would be repercussions. My producers and I got together and deliberated. The simple answer would have been: “You said something on the record, and you can’t take it back.” And let’s face it, the discussion about her abortion could have resulted in a lot of attention for Fresh Air. But this was a real person, a real life. She wasn’t an elected official supporting legislation prohibiting abortion despite having secretly had one herself. There was no element of hypocrisy.

In the end, we decided to edit out the abortion. Keeping it in would have forced her into making further public statements about a difficult decision she dearly wanted kept private. The potential cost to her seemed to us finally to outweigh the public’s need to know.

You’ve learned what you may consider to be the rules of journalism. But you’re still going to have to make a lot of tough judgment calls. And they probably won’t get any easier with time.

I try to respect my guest’s privacy, but I’m often surprised by how forthcoming some artists are willing to be. Listen to this quote from a short story writer and novelist I spoke with.

This is a writer who said his mother was a truckstop whore. He told me that when he was a kid, his mother didn’t want her customers to know she was a mother because, as the writer put it, this might make it seem like her parts were worn out. So rather than admit he was her son….she just lied about his place in her family.

CLIP #3 JT LEROY

Gross: So you were passed off as her younger brother?
LeRoy: Usually younger sister.
Gross: Why did she pass you off as her younger sister.
LeRoy: Because it was less competitive having a boy around. And also if we were two pretty girls out we were more likely to get free things.
Gross: How old were you when she started passing you off as her younger sister.
LeRoy: About five or six. It wasn’t a big deal. I mean I was—I knew what the difference between a girl and a boy was. I liked being somebody else. Being dressed in pretty things. I liked the attention.

Unfortunately, the only phrase in that excerpt with any truth to it was “I liked being somebody else.” That was JT LeRoy, who we later learned was a fictional character himself, the creation of a writer named Laura Albert. I read in the New York Times that it was Albert I interviewed.

For me, this revelation served as a reminder that you have to enter an interview with a healthy dose of skepticism as well as empathy. On the subject of JT LeRoy, I was skeptical right from the start—apparently not skeptical enough. But before booking the interview, my producer did some fact-checking and... well, let’s just say that the con was elaborate enough to fool us. I’m not proud of this. But on the bright side, our misstep enabled us to reach a new audience—the judge and jury of a federal court, where my interview became evidence in a lawsuit charging Albert with fraud. I suppose everyone in this business occasionally gets fooled—but if it happens to you, I hope it’s not reported in the New York Times and showcased in court.

But getting back to my two rules—about giving guests a second crack at an answer, and letting them draw the line between what’s public and what’s private. I also have a Rule Number Three. It’s that when it comes to elected officials or persons otherwise actively involved in the political process, Rules Number One and Two cease to apply. Politicians are so good at sticking to their talking points that if I’m lucky enough to get them to say something unscripted, I don’t want to give them an opportunity to withdraw it.

And as for letting someone in politics tell me a question is too personal—well, if someone is attempting to legislate our personal lives in ways inconsistent with their own, I feel I have a right, even a responsibility, to ask about it.

Manipulating the press has become part of the game in politics, and the last thing I want to do is to give political guests more ways of manipulating me than they already have.

Sometimes people involved in politics say outrageous things they wouldn’t retract, even if I gave them the chance, because it’s what they truly believe.

Here’s an excerpt of my interview with Pastor John Hagee, the founder of both a Texas megachurch, and a Christian lobby group. This was recorded in 2006, one year after Hurricane Katrina, two years before John McCain sought and received Hagee’s endorsment.

CLIP #4 JOHN HAGEE

All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and that they were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area, that was not carried nationally,that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. And I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was in fact the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.

You’ve probably heard or read that quote. It’s been all over, from Newsweek to The Daily Show to CNN. The reason we invited Hagee on Fresh Air in 2006, was that he’d founded a Christian Zionist lobby group that had attracted the support of many powerful people in Washington. Hagee’s support of Israel is controversial because it’s connected to his belief that Jewish control of Israel is one of the prophetic signs that the second coming is imminent. When Jesus does return, Jews will have a choice: convert and be raptured to heaven, or be left behind to face plagues, pestilence and war. At the end of the interview I asked about Hurricane Katrina. I’d heard him discuss it in a recorded sermon, and I wanted our listeners to hear exactly how he thought God’s intervention works.

That what Hagee said has resurfaced in a big way two years later reminds me that in the age of You Tube and Google, you never know when a story will gain new legs and take on added meaning.

Given today’s occasion, I feel a responsibility to sum up the lessons I’ve learned in my thirty some years in journalism. It comes down to this, clichéd though it might sound: To ask the right questions, you have to do your homework, and you have to remain genuinely curious. You also need to listen to the answers. That sounds obvious, right? Listening is supposed to be the easy part. But sometimes it’s not. There’s so much to think about when you’re conducting an interview. You’re thinking about your next question, and about whether the person’s answers sound coherent or confusing. Should you ask a follow up question, or head in a new direction? Are there important questions you need to hurry up and ask before your time with this person runs out. There may be personal issues distracting you. You may have a headache. You may be bored and thinking about what to have for dinner.

And while you’re thinking about all of that, the interviewee may say something absolutely stunning that goes right by you. Let me give you an example from my own experience. I once was interviewing Grover Norquist, the founder of Americans for Tax Reform, and one of the more powerful conservatives in Washington. He opposes all taxes, especially the estate tax, or the death tax as he calls it. In response to my questions about the estate tax, he was quoting a lot of statistics and percentages I couldn’t follow, and that I was concerned our listeners wouldn’t be able to follow either. So I had stopped paying attention as I tried to figure out how to refocus the interview…. when I thought I heard him say…. Well, listen for yourself:

CLIP #5 GROVER NORQUIST

Norquist: The argument that some who play to the politics of hate and envy and class division will say is “Well that’s only 2 percent—or as people get richer, 5 percent in the near future—of Americans likely to have to pay that tax.” I mean, that’s the morality of the Holocaust. “Well, it’s only a small percentage. It’s not you. It’s somebody else.” And in this country, people who may not make earning a lot of money the centeripiece of their lives—they may have other things to focus on—they say it’s not just if you’ve paid taxes on your income once, government should leave you alone. It shouldn’t come back and try to tax you again—
Gross: Excuse me. Excuse me one second. Did you just compare the estate tax with the holocaust?

My mind started wandering again just now, listening to that clip. But as you can tell, I almost missed his analogy to the holocaust. I honestly wasn’t even sure I’d heard what I thought I’d just heard, which was the reason for my delayed response. So the point is you have to listen through the dull or confusing parts, or you might miss the truly important part.

By the way, Harper’s excerpted this portion of our conversation under a perfect headline: Millions and Millions Lost.

Like I said before, you’re so lucky to have the experience of having attended this fine journalism school. Learning by doing was great for me, but maybe not so great for my listeners. To prove my point, I’ll play an example of how I sounded in 1973, as one of the hosts and producers of a feminist program called Womanpower—can you think of a title more embarrassingly 1970s? This excerpt is from an edition I devoted to analyzing implicitly sadomasochistic imagery in westerns, comics and other pop culture… and arguing with the theory that women are inherently masochistic.

CLIP #6 WOMANPOWER

Masochism is not a problem unique to women. What is unqiue is the way in which psychology, specifically Freudian psychology, preaches that masochism is an integral part of a woman’s psychological makeup.

Thankfully, that’s my only surviving recording of Womanpower. I sounded like a feminist Minnie Mouse. And by playing it for you today, I guess I’ve given new meaning to the word masochism. But what I hope to suggest by playing it is that as good as you are now at what you do, you’re only going to become better at it with time and more experience.

You might be worried about the future of journalism. Will there be jobs for you? How many newspapers will still have foreign desks? Will many newspapers continue to exist? Will anyone be willing to pay you for writing a blog?

I’m no good at predicting the future. But I can tell you that when I started in public radio in 1973, few people even knew what it was. One of the biggest surprises of my life has been watching public radio grow. And yet who knows how much of a future radio still has? I expect I’ll continue to be surprised by what succeeds and what fails.

It may be a scarey time to be starting a career in journalism. But it’s also an exciting time, because you’ll be helping to define new media, and helping to redefine older ones.

Regardless of the medium, be it print or radio or television or the Internet or something still to come, what will remain true is that practicing journalism is an awesome responsibility—and an awesome privilege. It grants you access to both the corridors of power and the secrets of the human heart.

I look forward to reading, watching and listening to your work, and learning from it.

Thank you again for this wonderful award. In accepting it, I would be remiss in not pointing out that Fresh Air is a team effort, the product of a dedicated staff of producers. I want to thank all of them—especially our executive producer Danny Miller, with whom I’ve worked for thirty years now. Journalism is a field in which professional relationships—whether with a producer or editor or colleague—rarely endure that long. But I hope you’ll have the same good fortune in working so closely—and for so
long—with someone you trust and respect.

My last piece of advice for you is to marry my husband, Francis Davis. His own writing will inspire you, his constant reflections on the art of writing will enlighten you, and when it comes time to write a book or a speech, he’ll be the sharpest, most ruthless editor you’re ever going to find. I guess marrying him isn’t very practical advice—but it’s worked for me.

Congratulations one last time, and thank you.