MIKE PESCA:
This On the Media. I'm Mike Pesca. Some say the star of the new documentary, Page One: Inside The New York Times, is the newspaper itself. Others say it's David Carr, the media columnist who's part rascal, part sage. I say the real star is the hands-free headset. All the most dramatic moments are punctuated when a journalist rips off their hands-free headset.
We also meet at least one journalist who isn’t a public figure and whose byline Times readers might not know. That's media editor Bruce Headlam, who I asked, what did you learn from watching the film.
BRUCE HEADLAM:
I learned I roll my eyes far too much. I learned what it look like walking from behind, which is something I frankly could have lived without. You know, honestly I was generally happy because I looked at how my reporters. were acting and more how we manage to coalesce around a story.
We tend to look at journalism as the triumph of the kind of dogged individual who, you know, fights all opposition and the establishment in order to get that story out there. But it's a group activity.
MIKE PESCA:
And no matter what you think of the overall documentary, there were a few moments where we got to see a story, in fact, a few stories essentially being made.
So first we have David Carr who’s your media columnist. Here he is in an interview. He’s writing a column on Vice Magazine. There's the founder of Vice, a guy named Shane Smith. And he’s - this is a magazine that drips with hipster cred, and Shane Smith is this rough- hewn guy. And he's talking about doing some reporting on Liberia.
[CLIP]
SHANE SMITH:
Everyone talked to me about capitalism. And The New York Times, meanwhile, is writing about surfing. And, you know, I’m sitting there going, you know what, I’m not gonna talk about surfing. I’m going to talk about capitalism because that’s what [CUTS IN AUDIO] me up.
DAVID CARR:
Let me just say time out. Before you ever went there -
SHANE SMITH:
Yeah.
DAVID CARR:
- we've had reporters there reporting on genocide after genocide and just ‘cause you put on a safari helmet –
SHANE SMITH:
That’s true.
DAVID CARR:
- doesn't give you right to insult what we do, So, continue.
MIKE PESCA:
Carr interrupting him, essentially sticking up for The New York Times. Do you think Carr’s playing for the cameras when he does that?
BRUCE HEADLUM:
No, because I've seen David in similar situations. That's David when you talk about The New York Times that way.
There's all kinds of different ways to interview people. David comes in as a character. As he says, he sounds a little weird. And he does sound a little weird. But that's his technique of getting people to talk.
MIKE PESCA:
All right, the next piece that I want to talk about is sort of a dog that doesn't bark story. NBC characterized troop movements in Iraq as the end of combat operations.
[CLIP]:
BRIAN WILLIAMS:
Tonight U.S. combat troops are pulling out of Iraq. And, Richard, I understand your reporting of this at hour tonight constitutes the official Pentagon announcement, correct?
RICHARD ENGEL:
Yes. it is. Right now we are with the last American combat –
MAN:
With all this video –
[OVERTALK]
MIKE PESCA:
- with different departments in The New York Times saying, you know, what is this, where are they getting this? The documentary shows a lot of discussions, you guys debating it internally.
MALE REPORTER 1:
Did you watch NBC?
MALE REPORTER 2:
Yeah.
MALE REPORTER 1:
I thought it was hallucinatory. Brian Williams says to Richard Engel that - your report here from the field announced to the official Pentagon announcement of the end of combat troops in Iraq.
[CLIP]:
RICHARD ENGEL:
I don't know that there was – I mean, I’m not trying to be difficult
BRIAN WILLIAMS:
No, no, no -
RICHARD ENGEL:
Was there some sort of official –
BRIAN WILLIAMS:
Thom Shanker in Washington is right now calling the Pentagon again. I mean, I think it –
RICHARD ENGEL:
You would think – is the war over –
BRUCE HEADLAM:
NBC was saying one thing. And what we were hearing from both the White House and the Pentagon was something else, which is the war officially ends at the end of the month, we will still have 50 to 55 thousand combat troops involved. I mean, there are primary mission changes, but this felt strangely artificial to us.
MIKE PESCA:
Well, the next day we see your reporter Brian Stelter wrote a Media Decoder column. As combat troops leave Iraq news media ride along, and his first sentence was, “The combat mission in Iraq doesn’t end officially until August 31st, but viewers and readers could be forgiven for thinking it ended tonight.”
BRUCE HEADLAM:
Mm-hmm.
MIKE PESCA:
And so, he does talk about how different news organizations decided to play it.
BRUCE HEADLAM:
Yeah.
MIKE PESCA:
And your news organization really avoided phrases like “end of combat operations,” where some of the other ones, The L.A. Times and The Post used that in its headline.
BRUCE HEADLAM:
Well, I suppose that happens all the time. It's — you know, there are those certain kinds of journalists who, when asked at the end of their career, their great achievements, list all the things they didn't put in the newspaper. I'm not sure this is one of these.
I'm glad we did it the way we did. I think the next day there was enough reaction to both NBC and the other newspapers that we could take a more dispassionate look.
MIKE PESCA:
The presence of the documentary, has it given you occasion to kind of revisit any of those stories or just even to casually say, well, you know, we got that one right? What kind of conversations have resulted?
BRUCE HEADLAM:
Narcissistic as it sounds, some of the parts it affect me are looking at the cutbacks, listening to Richard talk about the business at that point, Richard Perez-Pena, who was my newspaper reporter at the time, said nobody was pessimistic enough. You sat around and literally had no idea what was happening.
There were articles about the possible demise of The New York Times. There are certainly people writing - cheering on the possible demise of The New York Times. And it was, you know, probably since the days of Howell Raines and Jayson Blair and all that, it was probably the most sort of unsure anybody was in the newsroom.
MIKE PESCA:
And have you taken any grief from this crack? The occasion was President Obama was visiting Buffalo, and you made a little historical reference to presidents visiting Buffalo.
[CLIP]:
QUESTION:
He's not gonna make news today, no.
BRUCE HEADLAM:
No, the last president who made news in Buffalo got shot.
[OFF-MIKE COMMENTS]
Wasn’t it McKinley? Let's put that one in the paper.
[END OF CLIP]
BRUCE HEADLAM:
I have taken absolutely no grief about that, which is the one thing, when I heard I said that – I will say something very curious about the whole film experience. When I saw it, I don't remember saying that, in particular. I remember a lot of those conversations. Under torture, I couldn't have remembered that Andrew was there. He really did blend in after a while and I just simply don't remember him being there for half those things.
So to see it now, it's like, oh God. It’s very, very strange. No, I - I'm worried people in Buffalo are gonna make fun of me. I grew up very close to Buffalo. It’s very, very close to my heart – the Bills, the Sabres, Flutie over Johnson. So I hope they don't take it personally.
MIKE PESCA:
I think there might be a statute of limitations for those sort of things. You know, McKinley’s assassination was –
[OVERTALK]
BRUCE HEADLAM:
Yeah, I don't — I don’t think it’s –
MIKE PESCA:
- a little while ago.
BRUCE HEADLAM:
I don’t think it’s - you know, I'm being that insensitive at this point. I think maybe that joke is safe.
MIKE PESCA:
Bruce, thanks a lot.
BRUCE HEADLAM:
Thank you.
MIKE PESCA:
Bruce Headlam, media editor of The New York Times. He's featured in the documentary, Page One: A year Inside the New York Times.