Paladins were the legendary Medieval knights of Charlemagne’s 8th century court. Like King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, they were sworn to fight evil. In the mid-twentieth century, Paladin was a gunslinger on TV.
Some people get into journalism because they want to be famous and make lots of money. I spent most of my career in news because I wanted to be like Richard Boone in Have Gun Will Travel. He was committed to justice and the American way. Paladin showed up, stood up, and spoke truth to power. He was respectful, but never deferential. He knew how to outsmart the bad guys, make a difference, and have fun doing it.
Paladin traveled across the west saving damsels in distress, farmers from greedy land barons, and townspeople who were intimidated by rouge lawmen. He was a thoughtful gunslinger. Like the chess game that he enjoyed, every move was smooth and calculated. He always got positive results, though circumstances and outcomes varied dramatically. Paladin enjoyed a life of adventure, excitement, danger, and helping people. As a young man, I had similar romantic notions.
Born curious, I traveled across the country to places I’d never been, met lots of famous people, and learned to hone my instincts. Even so, I was betrayed by people I trusted and disappointed by the industry that I had held in such high esteem.
My effort to save American journalism was futile. I tried, but eventually learned that the system was broken long before I started reporting. At CBS they put me on perpetual final notice for pushing back against corporate yes-men in the news division. They were content to perpetuate lies. In those days, I stood up and spoke truth to power. Unlike Paladin, I wasn’t carrying a sidearm. Most of my complaints were politely ignored.
My assignments didn’t involve damsels in distress per se, but I was able to help a mom assist her son in his fight against the navy’s anthrax vaccine mandate. Another time, at the request of his family, I helped an American airman escape life behind bars in a Turkish prison. The impression is that you have to go searching, but most times the big stories found me. That’s how I came in contact with cult leader David Koresh and helped convince him to release innocent children before he burned his Branch Davidian compound to the ground.
Some writers would have you believe that we live in the most tumultuous of times. In truth, our history is one of continual crises. As I was about to enter high school, they murdered Kennedy and MLK. I have vivid memories of those assassinations. Even as a youngster the stories had holes. How did Jack Ruby get close enough to execute Oswald? Why was the alleged killer of Dr. King arrested in England? In high school we saw Bobby Kennedy murdered on live television. Years later I interviewed a psychiatrist who assured me that Sirhan Sirhan was innocent.
I watched every minute of Nixon’s Watergate hearing on TV and wondered why a popular president, assured of re-election, would bother to have his people plant a listening device in the Democratic National Headquarters. As a reporter in San Francisco I attended every session of the Patty Hearst trial and watches as the legal system sent an innocent victim to prison.
I covered police and fire beats, local, county, and state politics, and witnessed quite a few accidents, parades, celebrations, and protests. All that to say I’ve seen a lot along the way. Things aren’t always what they appear to be. Skepticism is healthy.
Imagine crawling out of a warm bed in the dead of winter to cover a fire, or rising well before sunrise to anchor the morning news. That late night call or early morning alarm wasn’t always welcomed, but most days I was up for the challenge. If you want to live a life of adventure, it’s bound to involve discomfort. At the height of my career, it was impossible to see, hear, or read enough about current events. News was an addiction. For every answer there were two new questions. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know. It was never a job or a burden, it was a passion. Journalism was a noble profession. My generation was consumed with the search for truth.
Today the news business has devolved to ratings, likes, clicks, and subscriptions. Build a following, develop a brand. Pick a side and advocate like hell. Use TV to kickstart your career. Make a splash, catch a wave, go for the gold. Get loud. Survey your audience. Give them what they want.
Although it’s still advertised as news, what you see is a far cry from honest reporting. How did it get so far afield? The answer is found in American history, the history of reporting. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was good cause for poor reporting. Reporters used crude tools and extremely slow distribution channels to tell stories. Quill pen and ink, and hand delivered parchment made it hard to report real time events. Inaccuracies were innocent and par for the course.
In college a brilliant professor named Peter Fritzell introduced me to the notion of Myth vs. Reality in American history. Our national heritage is a combination of fact and fiction, he explained. His premise was that from the earliest days of colonization, the stories being written about the New World were exaggerated because reporters had no context for what they were looking at. They did the best they could describing things they had never seen and didn’t truly understand.
Captain John Smith, in some of the first written notations about the New World described America in grandiose terms. Mountains of gold, noble savages, and other hyperbole were meant to describe places and people that were foreign to European readers. Because he didn’t accurately understand what he was seeing, he painted colorful word pictures. It wasn’t because he was trying to be disingenuous, but rather he lacked sufficient frame of reference to convey what he saw in words. Unfortunately, many of today’s reporters have a less sincere excuse for “coloring” the news.
New technologies brought sounds and pictures to journalism, but as we saw during the summer riots of 2020, reporters stood in front of burning structures and explained that the protests were “mostly peaceful.” It is a short step from coloring news to advocacy journalism. Captain Smith described things the way he imagined his readers would see them. Today reporters imagine what their audience wants to consume and slant the news to fit a political narrative. The goal isn’t to share images as much as to convince viewers to see things the way they do.
I was taught to challenge assumptions. To be a journalist was to be skeptical. Question everything, especially your own beliefs. Unfortunately many reporters start with a premise and then do whatever is necessary to confirm that premise. Instead of questioning authority, they attempt to justify government actions. They lob softball questions at their favorites, and skewer political adversaries with ridiculous allegations.
I remember some of my first experiences in major market reporting. Politicians and industrialists would pass out “press releases.” These propaganda documents were meant to make reporting easier. Many even included “suggested questions.” Some reporters took the bait. They’d attend scheduled press conferences with the questions they’d been handed. That made me bristle. If I had to attend, I’d often ask off the wall questions intended to confuse the speaker.
Seven years before I went to work at CBS I was a finalist for a reporting job at KCBS. The assistant news director, Larry Cooper, summoned me to his office and explained that if I was hired, I’d be covering a lot of scheduled news conferences. He was being honest with me because in my cover letter, I postured that scheduled “pressers” were a dereliction of journalistic duty. It was an easy decision. In one of many dramatic moments, I stood, shook his hand, and thanked him for his consideration. Seven years later, when Larry hired me as his assistant, he explained that he had always agreed with me, but it took him a long time to realize that news organizations didn’t have to depend on public relation handouts to find great stories.
A few news people in America still pursue the truth, but most are more interested in their personal standing, fame, and fortune. They focus on building an audience. A large audience means endorsements. The bigger the audience, the larger the sponsorship fees. Even some of the most respected journalists are hesitant to ask difficult questions. It’s a big deal if you are granted permission to talk to a head of state or some famous person, so most are afraid to mix it up. Getting a shallow scoop is considered preferable to hard digging.
Real journalists look for anomalies. They do quick surveys to determine what is out of place or doesn’t make sense. Today we have a news cycle where reporters cling together and chase the same stories. Most major news outlets carry exactly what you find on their competitors. They occasionally sprinkle in a few original features, but most of the time they are content to regurgitate exactly what appears elsewhere. That’s why so many famous newspapers and traditional network news operations are easily duped. If the competition is covering the story, it must be real. They are like lemmings running toward an ocean cliff. You may have seen the video compilation of TV news anchors saying exactly the same words.
As the media has moved further left, major networks and information delivery platforms not only cover the same stories, they come to the same conclusions. They tell us what is good, and what is bad. Today’s news consumers choose their delivery systems based on their own personal bias, so you end up with an ignorant population siloed by political preference.
Instead of changing channels to find alternate opinions, consumers get the same stories with the same bias wherever they watch. Cable networks slant the news to favor their left and right audiences, and people flock to the internet for their favorite podcasters to reinforce their bias.
Newspapers are also trapped in left or right dispositions. Today’s “journalists” use phrases like fair and balanced, but they’re anything but. They build audience by playing to preconceived notions. Like gerbils on a wheel, they chase the same stories and poop out information. The bottom of the cage is always dirty. It’s no wonder Americans have little or no faith in their information delivery systems. Everybody lies. What a tangled web we weave.
I pursued a career in news because I am a romantic. I wanted to make the world a better place. That’s all changed now. The news industry and its heroic figures are gone. When we watch the news we’re watching a shallow, partisan money-grub, populated by ego maniacs.
Edward R. Murrow, the famous CBS war correspondent, is generally considered one of the founding fathers of modern broadcast journalism. He came from a log cabin in North Carolina without indoor plumbing. His family was dirt poor. Being a very bright young man, he got involved in international politics in college, and parlayed that into a good job at CBS New York in 1935.
He went to Europe to try to convince European newsmakers to appear on the CBS Radio network. Murrow got to know his way around Europe and was in the right place at the right time, in the middle of the action during World War Two.
Generally overlooked by historians, Murrow was an activist. He had strong feelings about many issues. Those opinions were reflected in his reporting. His passions included bringing foreign students to the U.S.. Feeling pressure to push back against Nazi propaganda, he worked with the government to create American propaganda for Radio Free Europe. The father of modern American journalism helped the U.S. become the world’s premier propagandist. Is it any wonder that we have such biased news coverage under the banner of journalistic objectivity?
I didn’t go to journalism school. My training was on the job. I had some wonderful teachers who taught me to be independent. My passion was for finding the truth, so I worked to avoid leaning to the left or the right. When we ask questions without prejudice, we don’t have to judge the answers. You can train yourself to ask hard questions. Sometimes your bias infiltrates your choice of words, but the harder you try, the more you can become dispassionate.
Back alleys and real people teach powerful lessons. They refine a person’s perspective. Interacting with interesting places and interesting people changes you. In the early years I took my recorder and wandered off into all sorts of interesting places from strip clubs and massage parlors to smoke filled back rooms where politicians huddled.
Later in my career, when I ran news operations, I lived vicariously through other reporters. I sent them to the far corners of the world. Their reports helped refine my big picture. Like Charlemagne, I lived many of my Paladin adventures through surrogates.
Be curious. Ask questions, lots of questions. Get people to share their stories. Well executed interviews are essential elements of the news. For me, the attraction was stories that nobody else was covering. In my world, Paladins went places other reporters didn’t go and asked questions that weren’t being asked. It’s amazing how many good stories come from people who have never been interviewed before.
Today’s reporters want to talk to big shots, people with money, fame, and power. Many of my best stories came from people you never heard of. Hookers can tell you a lot about living in a city. Beat cops know a lot about how rich people play the system. Janitors know more about environmental pollution than the people who own the buildings where they work. You don’t see a lot of that kind of reporting today. Today’s reporters hang like wolf packs outside buildings and shout at newsmakers as they exit. If you’re curious about things, logic tells you that shouting questions won’t lead to a good story. Good stories are born of thoughtful questions to people operating close to the ground.
When I was twelve, six teenaged boys got into a car in my hometown on a Friday night. They drove around town having fun, shouting out the windows, honking the horn, and playing their music too loud. One of the boys, Larry, told the driver to stop the car. He got out and walked home. It was a bold move, and totally out of character for him. Within an hour the other five died in a fiery crash on a highway just north of town. After the accident, officials towed the car into town. A group of us went to see. I’ll never forget the smell of burning flesh. Experience is a powerful teacher.
We’re all products of our environment. We have likes, dislikes, opinions, and biases. Like you, my background and experiences color my outlook. Something inside me has always driven a search for truth. I try not to get excited about reinforcing theories. Sometimes the best stories run contrary to preconceived notions. Reporting isn’t about proving a point, it’s about discovering unconsidered truth. Naturally skeptical, good reporters ask questions and let the truth take them where it will.
News paladins have the courage to seek uncomfortable truth. Empathetically observant, they are never emotionally involved. Ask questions, but don’t make it personal. Want to know why. Why did that one boy uncharacteristically choose to get out of the car? What happened in the last minutes before the crash? What caused both vehicles to explode in a ball of fire?
Nobody taught me to be curious. Larry King taught me how to ask questions. He asked short, simple, direct questions. He never tried to impress his audience with long questions intended to show how much he knew. Older, more experienced reporters taught me the ethics of a press room. There was a pecking order. Young reporters paid their dues. They learned from older reporters’ experience.
My style and presentation are my own. I write my own copy. When I worked in a newsroom, nobody saw my biases except me. My goal was and is to make other people think, not convert them to what I believe. Challenge assumptions. Dig until you find the truth. Tell the story in a way that is easy to understand.
In the early days, that spirit of dispassionate heroism was common in the news business. Like many of my colleagues, I wanted to make the world a better place, expose the bad guys, and shed light on people who deserved recognition. But we didn’t push an agenda. We asked questions to make people think for themselves.
It was never about self-aggrandizement, fame or fortune. The awards I accepted were always on behalf of my team. During photo ops I was most likely standing in the back row, even though I was never one of the taller people on the news team. All the good reporters who worked for me have made more money than me. A few of them are famous.
None of the hard core reporters I learned from were rich or famous. Most were rough around the edges. Their sharp tongues never suffered fools. Sometimes they flexed their vocabularies, but normally they watched and listened. It’s a simple job. “Just the facts ma’am.” Their quest for truth outweighed any desire to call attention to themselves. When you’re watching your favorite news outlet, see if you can spot anyone who fits that description.
Today the news business has been conquered by bias, opinion, and hyperbole. It’s the ratings, stupid. Click, like, and subscribe. Today it’s hard to find a reporter who simply tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth with facts gleaned from multiple sources. “Expert commentary” has replaced reporting. There’s an abundance of “happy talk” and anchor interchange. “Breaking news,” and “Live on the scene,” flash across the screen, but there’s not a lot of honest reporting. Today it’s about being first. Getting it right is preferred, but not required. The news cycle turns quickly, and today’s blunder is forgiven and forgotten tomorrow.
In the press rooms where I worked, mistakes were scorned. There was nothing worse than screwing up a story. Nobody ever thought to substitute opinions for facts. The standard was multiple sources and alternate points of view. If you went out on a limb, your reputation and career hung in the balance. Today’s media is driven by ratings and revenue. The goal isn’t accuracy as much as sensationalism. Make a splash. Get your name out there and grow your following. Followers bring revenue streams, and most of our “news personalities” today are rich. The stories they cover are secondary to their quest to grow their audience.
We’ve always had some famous reporters and news anchors, but they never earned the kind of money that popular podcasters and TV program hosts do today. That doesn’t mean reporting news was “by the book.” Reporters are infamous for charting different courses. Brave reporters embedded themselves in military conflicts. You don’t remember their names, but you wouldn’t have learned about the horrors of war without their reporting.
Rules of the news game are simple. Observe closely. Explore root causes. Sometimes we cover events, but most times good reporting involves a deep dive into important issues. For old time reporters “Get it right” was the universal mantra. The lazy ones chased press releases. The best reporters pulled back the curtain and gave detailed descriptions of the shenanigans going on backstage. Most of today’s reporters give their impressions of what they see on stage.
And while news has always been a business, there was clear separation between reporters and sales. News couldn't exist without revenue for salaries and production, but healthy news operations built a firewall between reporters and commercial clients. Today, stories are tailored to protect politicians, industries, and advertisers.
Program Hosts endorse sponsored products and candidates without regard to the truth or the best interests of their audience. They pitch pharmaceuticals and fake gold IRA’s. Exposes about businesses and corrupt officials are few and far between. Podcasters take pot shots at people they don’t like, but hard core research is rare. Local stations chase ambulances and fire trucks, and networks use ratings formulas to control content eb and flow. It’s a business.
News Paladins, on the other hand, are soldiers of fortune, knights without armor, standing toe to toe with the rich and powerful. They force issues, ruffle feathers, and are often disliked. News Paladins live with the satisfaction that comes from a job well done. Find the story and report it honestly. You may never get rich, but you can always sleep soundly, knowing you’ve done the right thing for the right reason.
I recently heard Matt Taibi talk about his early reporting. He was once assigned to a political candidate who jetted to campaign stops across the country with reporters in tow. He explained how the other reporters regurgitated press handouts and tagged along to scheduled campaign appearances. They took comfort in the candidate’s jet and ate from his private menu. Matt refused to eat the food or follow the herd. When he departed the plane he chose instead to head in the opposite direction, finding real stories and interviewing real people far from the scheduled appearance.
That was my style. I looked for the stories behind the stories. I encouraged the reporters who worked for me to examine issues and their root causes. As you’ll see in this book, when I was forced to cover scheduled press events, I often asked the unasked questions. It felt good to make newsmakers uncomfortable.
Vice Presidential Designate Gerald Ford (shortly before he became president) had been programmed to answer all the patent questions. He was totally unprepared to answer my off the wall question about streaking. He stumbled and stammered for an extended period of time. Not quite a Joe Biden stumble, but close. The point wasn’t to embarrass Mr. Ford, but to unveil the shallow nature of his national press tour. His answers were rehearsed. I wanted to see if he could use his brain. A stupid, humorous question caused him to become unhinged.
Governor Ronald Reagan was so set on refusing to answer one of my questions, he gave three different non-responsive answers each time I asked the same question. They called him a master of communication. If you heard the tape from that news conference, you’d laugh.
In Miami I pissed off George Meany when he was the president of the AFL-CIO. Later in my career I listened intently to a deranged and delusional David Koresh and helped convince him to release innocent children from the Branch Davidian compound the night of his shootout with the ATF.
My stories will be new to you. If you take time to read them you’ll see some famous newsmakers in a different light. My interviews with famous people are a lot like my interviews with not famous people. I never felt a need to be in awe of the rich and famous. Authentic people always stand out. So do phonies. When you ask the right questions, character comes to the top. Being a News Paladin is fun. It’s one of the most rewarding jobs in the world. One day soon I’ll publish a short book of stories from my life in the news business. For now, I’m challenging you to watch carefully and form your own opinions of what happened to Knightly News.
CharlieSeraphin.com
