New York (AP) Author Gay Talese, who influenced a generation of writers with books such as "Thy Neighbor's Wife" and "Honor Thy Father," was named the winner of a George Polk Award for career achievement.
Other winners of the 2008 Polk Awards include New York Times reporters Barry Bearak and Celia Dugger, who risked their lives exposing violence in Zimbabwe, and Paul Salopek of the Chicago Tribune, who reported on pre-emptive U.S. tactics in combating terrorism in the Horn of Africa.
The Polk Awards, presented by Long Island University, are considered among the top prizes in U.S. journalism. They were created in 1949 in honor of CBS reporter George W. Polk, who was killed while covering the Greek civil war, and will be awarded at an April 16 luncheon oin Manhattan. The awards will be announced today. (Tuesday, February 17, 2009).
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Technology killing journalism, says American author
Nonfiction author Gay Talese (Mainichi)American author Gay Talese has gained prominence throughout his journalistic writing career, winning the George Polk Career Award in 2008. In a recent interview with the Mainichi, Talese highlighted the importance of on-the-street reporting and the threat to journalism posed by technology.
Talese, who became a full-time reporter for the New York Times in the 1950s, agrees that the newspaper industry is facing difficulties as the skills of journalists decline.
"It started with technology," he says. "Technology is killing journalism. Journalism is not supposed to be technology. Journalism is supposed to be like a foot soldier. You're supposed to do it yourself. You're supposed to walk and talk to people, see faces, and examine these people who are giving you information.
"The journalists now -- they don't go outside, they stay inside. They look at a laptop ... They are living behind the laptop. "
Talese, who says he has an active social life, going out to restaurants every night, avoids certain forms of technology in journalism himself, saying he never uses the Internet.
"I type on the computer. That's it. I don't have a cell phone, I don't e-mail."
He says big newspapers make the mistake of competing with television or the Internet, wanting to be the first.
"The technology is the real toxic agent right now," he says. "Newspapers had the world to themselves as long as they did a good job. When you sell a newspaper, it should be selling the truth as best you can find the truth. You should be selling the honor, you should be selling integrity. You are not supposed to be selling being the first."
Talese, 77, says the worst journalism in his life came after 2001 -- the year of the World Trade Center attacks.
"Look at the way the government corrupted the newspapers in the Iraq War ... Three-hundred-thousand troops died in this war. Why? Because the newspapers have been lying to the public, lying to the politicians, and politicians lied, the president lied. The vice president lied.
"The problem was the journalists failed in Washington to challenge the government and these unacknowledged sources, these private sources, in the paper every day, these lies. The worst journalism in my lifetime was after 2001."
Talese says he writes real stories, using real names.
"I never change names. I put everybody's name in the book, even if it's a sex book. Everybody has a real name. It's very difficult to do that. That's why it takes me so long to get the people to trust me, to allow me, to put a real name in a book."
Talese's writings include "The Bridge," a book published in the 1960s about the construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. He says that in 2005 and 2006 when he went back to interview the men who worked on the bridge, they told him they weren't surprised about what happened to the World Trade Center.
"They told me the engineers were terrible. The design was terrible. They said if the two terrorist planes had hit the Empire State Building, the building wouldn't be knocked down. If those planes hit the Verrazono Bridge, the planes would break up and nothing would happen because it's so strong."
Looking back on recent politics, Talese criticizes the previous administration of George W. Bush for trying to force its way upon the world.
"It didn't listen to other people. It believed that it had a right to impose upon other people what the American government thought was the best for other people. Absolutely wrong," he says. "I say the United States is filled with human rights violations -- the whole government -- I say it should be up for war crimes. The President, the Vice President, Secretary of Defense (Donald) Rumsfeld, some of the members of Cabinet, who killed all those people in Iraq. We just think about 3,000 plus Americans. But there are triple that amount of Iraqis, ordinary people, killed."
But Talese holds hope that the United States will be able to prove itself to the world in the future.
"I'm thrilled that Barack Obama is the president. I am very hopeful that America will get the second chance to the world to prove its democracy, fair-minded ... I think there is hope." (Interviewed by Takayasu Ogura, New York Bureau, Mainichi Shimbun)
(Mainichi Japan) April 6, 2009
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