On a springlike November day, PW traveled to New York City's far East Side, just a few blocks from Gracie Mansion, to meet with the New Yorker's media columnist, Ken Auletta. Soon we are sitting in Auletta's cozy, book-lined study where Scooter, Auletta's English cocker, joins the confab. The conversation is almost immediately interrupted by a telephone call from Lachlan Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert, and one of the protagonists in Backstory: Inside the Business of News, which is the first title to be published under Ann Godoff's new imprint, the Penguin Press.
It appears the tabloid wars have invaded the Auletta household. As usual, the New York tabloids—Mort Zuckerman's Daily News and Rupert Murdoch's Post—have been slugging it out. This time the News is gleefully reporting, based on Backstory, that the Post is losing $40 million a year. Lachlan Murdoch, who runs the Post for his father, is trying to step away from the story, but Auletta has him on tape. "He was a gentleman," Auletta reports of his conversation with Lachlan, "and he called to be sure that the contretemps last week was between him and the New York Daily News, not between him and me."
The first question to the New Yorker's media watchdog is right to the point: What is the state of the American media today? "I think the press is sitting there waiting for another semen-stained dress," says Auletta, equally directly. "This is not true of the New York Times, the Washington Post or some of the networks, but, in general, sensationalism dominates too much of the press. And if it's not the semen-stained dress, it's Laci Peterson, or before that it was OJ, or it's Jessica Lynch or it's basically soap opera stories. Kobe Bryant is the next one."
There is a fixed shibboleth that permeates American media and acts as a lightning rod for both the left and the right: Is there, in fact, a left-wing bias in the media? "I think, sometimes you will see traces of a liberal bias in some of the large media," says Auletta, "just as you will see traces of a conservative bias, certainly in Fox News. I actually think that's not the right debate to have, even though it's a debate you should have. The bigger debate, the more meaningful debate, is that the real bias is an economic bias and the real bias in the press is a bias for conflict. By economic bias, what I mean is that we live in a world where there's so much competition, the consumer has so many more choices, that once-dominant media are no longer dominant. Because television and much of newspapers and radio is increasingly worried about competition, they're like carnival barkers at a circus—they shout louder to get more attention. These are people who are worried by losing audience share and thereby losing money. And I think that's a much more prominent bias than is the bias whether the spin is a liberal spin or a conservative spin."
There is probably not a more qualified man to chronicle New York's incessant and colorful tabloid wars than Ken Auletta, for his life is soaked in New York tradition. Auletta was born in Brooklyn in 1942. His father, Pat, holds a sacred place in the hearts of Dodger fans—he was the one who discovered Sandy Koufax. "Jane Leavy actually found it out in the wonderful biography she did of Koufax [Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy]," says Auletta with obvious delight. "My dad had a sporting goods store, and he founded and was president of the Brooklyn Borough Sports League, and he would go and see Koufax pitch. He told the Dodger scout, 'You're looking at the wrong guy.' They were looking at some other player. 'You got to look at this kid Koufax.' And they went to see this kid Koufax and they ended up signing this 18-year-old prodigy. So my dad did have a hand in it, and I wish my dad was still alive to have read the book. He was proud of it and so were his sons."
After receiving a master's degree at Syracuse University, Auletta went to work for Senator Robert Kennedy. "He had an influence," says Auletta, speaking of RFK. "I probably should say a big influence. I didn't know him really well at all, and I won't pretend to, but he was a man with passion and full of surprise—he was a totally unscripted politician. And would say incredibly surprising things and powerful things. In some ways, he was kind of an existential politician, which is very rare for politicians who, as I suggested, are scripted. But he talked about race in a way that was unusual and he talked about the [Vietnam] war and he related to blue-collar people in a way that many Democrats did not. He could be painfully shy and yet expansively passionate. So I just found him a very unusual, interesting figure."
After Kennedy's death, Auletta hooked up with another candidate, which turned out to be his ticket out of politics and into journalism. "My candidate for governor in 1974 was Howard Samuels," recalls Auletta, "who with my help lost the race for governor [to Nelson Rockefeller]. I was his quote-genius-unquote campaign manager, who took him from a 20-point lead in the polls to a 20-point defeat." Auletta gives a self-effacing laugh as he recalls his career shift. "I had done journalism before. I'd always wanted to be a journalist, but now I was forced to become a journalist." Auletta worked for the New York Post, New York magazine and the Village Voice. When Rupert Murdoch bought the Voice and New York in a hostile takeover in 1977, Auletta quit. "At that point," Auletta recollects, "Mr. [William] Shawn called me and I started writing for the New Yorker magazine, started writing a weekly political column for the Daily News and then did a weekly television show on WNET public television."
Over the last two decades, Auletta has been prolific, producing nine books, including Backstory: The Streets Were Paved with Gold (1979), Hard Feelings (1980), The Underclass (1982), The Art of Corporate Success (1984), Greed and Glory on Wall Street (1985), Three Blind Mice (1991), The Highwayman (1997) and World War 3.0 (2001). Asked what's the difference in writing about politicians and journalists, Auletta laughs. "Very little—they're both very sensitive to criticism," he says. "I find that journalists are good, as they are supposed to be, at digging and reporting and exposing miscreants and people who don't always tell the truth and policies that are flawed, and hypocrisy. But when you report and write about journalists' hypocrisy and fraud, they scream, by and large. They're not used to being criticized, they're used to playing the role of the Lord, and when they are suddenly the subject of criticism themselves they tend to be overly sensitive, just as politicians they complain about are. In fact, in some ways they are more sensitive because they have less experience in being criticized."
Rupert Murdoch casts a giant shadow over the book because if you're talking about the power of the American media you can't ignore Murdoch's empire, which includes Fox News and the New York Post. PW asks Auletta if the kind of journalism that Murdoch touts—biased and confrontational—is good for American journalism? "No," he responds. "I think Murdoch is a brilliant business man and he's someone who keeps his eye on the long haul and is taking risks. They said he couldn't start a fourth network and he did. And he's a guy who's not looking at the bottom line in terms of putting money into the newspaper like the New York Post, all of which are admirable things. But he is a man who believes, as much of the British press does, that the press should be partisan. And not separate out the editorial page from the news page. And I think you have to. And so therefore he will, in his publications, be it here in the New York Post or in England with the four papers he owns or in Australia, the editorial opinion will seep into, not seep into, will just intrude on the news side. And those who he likes are supported—Rudy Giuliani in New York—and those he doesn't like—the Kennedys—are punished. And I think that has a harmful effect on the press."
Maybe the journalistic story of the year is about former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair and how he bamboozled his editors and the public, and cost executive editor Howell Raines his job. "I think Howell Raines is the stuff of novels," says Auletta with admiration. "I think Howell Raines is a brilliant journalist and it's easy to forget that, in light of his being forced out of his job and some of the things that were revealed about him. I begin my book, the first chapter, with a profile I wrote about Howell, the year before he was fired, including some new material that didn't appear in that 20,000-word New Yorker piece.
"Ultimately," says Auletta, "Howell Raines is kind of a classic figure of Greek mythology in that his strengths that we saw, that allowed him five days after becoming the editor, September 11, 2001, happens and his taking charge, bullying to get the staff galvanized, to use a favorite phrase of his, to 'flood the zone,' to do the kind of coverage that was a miraculous performance by the New York Times in that six months after 9/11. And a lot of that rode on the back, the very strong back of Howell Raines.
"And yet that strength he had—that almost autocratic, take charge, I-know-what's-right, push-you, push-you, push-you, you gotta perform work-like-a-slave—that strength became his weakness, which is true of classic mythological figures. He was still pushing too hard, he was not allowing a very professional institution like the New York Times the kind of collaboration that people like to have. And he couldn't change. And ultimately, his strengths, his virtues, became his vices. And when the Jayson Blair incident broke in the spring of 2003 and at this big public meeting at the New York Times, suddenly out poured this vitriol and this anger at Howell Raines and all other decisions that were made. No one accused Howell Raines of doctoring or being responsible for Jayson Blair's fabrications or knowing. But they did blame him for being an autocrat and for making the Times a less happy place to work. So the publisher told him he had to change and he couldn't change. And ultimately a month later, after the public flogging, he was fired."
What are the lessons to be learned from the Jayson Blair incident? "One lesson you learn from Jayson Blair," says Auletta, "is that you need checks and balances. An editor is not a censor. An editor is supposed to edit. An editor is a check and a balance against your potential abuse of power. And to make sure you get it right. So one lesson is the need for stronger editors, more assertive editors to perform the role they're supposed to. The other is, remind people it's not okay to lie or to plagiarize. Period. End of story on that. Just don't do it. And a third is, watch that you don't push people along too fast. Maybe they pushed Jayson Blair, still in his 20s, along much too fast. And I guess the fourth is, which is a lesson all of us need constantly learn, is the dangers of hubris. Howell Raines succumbed to hubris, arrogance, pure and simple arrogance, as did a lot of people at the New York Times."
Of course, it's hard not to have hubris when journalists are now celebrities in their own right. "One of the things that's wrong with journalism is the lack of humility," says Auletta. "If you think about it, you need a lot of tools to be a good journalist: you have to be careful, you have to be a reasonably clear writer, a reasonably clear thinker to explain things. But one thing you absolutely need is humility, because what does a journalist do? A journalist asks questions and a journalist to ask questions has to assume he or she doesn't know the answer to those questions and get people to talk. Listening takes humility. The more we appear on these television shout-fests and the more we are asked to express opinions and the more we become better known, the more we risk losing that humility to ask questions. 'Why do we have to ask questions of some young official? We know the answers.' So the journalist says, 'I'm asked on McLaughlin, he asked me my opinion. What do I have to be humble for?' And that's a disease, that is death."
