I didn’t end up writing much here during the Russian election, but I did tweet like mad. Then I put it all into a piece for the Huffington Post:
It’s good to speak Russian.
My knowledge of the language, picked up in nearly 15 years working in Moscow as a journalist, really comes in handy during those times when Russia is in the news. Like now.
There’s been plenty written about the re-election of Vladimir Putin. But here are a few interesting things I’ve picked up in Russian that you might not have heard elsewhere:
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The latest theory circling the Internet is that Putin wasn’t really crying when he left the Kremlin Sunday night to declare victory, but that the head of his election campaign — Russian film director Stanislav Govorukhin — decided to make Putin appear teary eyed with an old Soviet film trick: smelling salts. Some bloggers write that Govorukhin put smelling salts into the collar of Putin’s coat, where one side is clearly sticking up. They say that when Putin turned his head to look over the crowd, he drew a breath right were the smelling salts were located, making the tears appear. I’m not saying this is true — I’m saying this is going around the Russia blogosphere. Putin’s blaming his tears on the wind, but Russians are also noting that President Dmitri Medvedev, who was standing with Putin, didn’t cry at all.
And in Putin’s brief remarks to the crowd, he used the word “honest” to describe the elections twice, and “clean” once. These are not words that politicians tend to use in victory speeches.
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And speaking of the Putin rally, there is a fascinating 10-minute long video going around made by two young journalists from the Russian weekly newspaper Bolshoi Gorod (or Big City). The two interview people walking towards the Kremlin a few hours before the pro-Putin victory rally, and inside a giant holding area where the pro-Putin force was being organized. The journalists show pretty convincingly that the people there were being paid, and only there either for the money or because they were bused in by their employers. Very few said anything about liking Putin. In fact, many didn’t even know what they were there to do—they had just signed up with sites like Massovik.ru, (which bills itself as a site for making extra money on shoots and “promo-actions.”)
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The vote totals are in for the Russians who voted in the United States. Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov got nearly twice as many votes as Vladimir Putin did.
The official election results show that the Russians living in the U.S. cast 5,857 votes for Prokhorov and 3,349 for Putin. For those of you keeping score, these are voting precincts 5235 (San Francisco), 5233 (New York), 5231 (Washington, DC), 5367 (Seattle), and 5364 (Houston).
(The results are only in Russian, but you can click here to see the full foreign vote. Line 19 shows the total for Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Line 20 for Gennady Zyuganov, Line 21 for Sergei Mironov, Line 22 for Mikhail Prokhorov and Line 23 for Vladimir Putin.)
Russian officials in the U.S. seem to have done an excellent job organizing and conducting the election, setting up polling stations not only at their embassy and consulates, but in many areas with significant Russian populations like Boston and, of course, Brighton Beach.
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One of the most surprising things was seeing Mrs. Putin show up to vote. As far as I can tell, Lyudmila Putin hadn’t been seen in public with her husband since mid-2010, when they sat down together to be interviewed for the census — an event shown on Russian television.
For the past two years, Lyudmila has been AWOL during some occasions when she had traditionally appeared with her husband. For instance, President Medvedev always shows up at Moscow’s main cathedral for midnight mass on Orthodox Christmas with his wife, Svetlana. The nationally televised ceremony cuts to the Medvedevs often, showing them crossing themselves and looking pensive amid the grandeur of the cathedral. The Putins used to be there too, but for the past two years, Vladimir Putin has attended mass in a small, humble church outside of Moscow. There have been dozens of parishioners with him, but no Lyudmila. Not this past Christmas, nor the one before.
Russia has been rife with rumors about Mrs. Putin’s whereabouts. The most common was that she had gone off to live in a nunnery after being all but discarded by her husband. I’m not making that up. Nunnery or not, Mrs. Putin was back to vote on Sunday, although truth be told, she had noticeably gained weight since being interviewed by the census taker.
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The protestors were back out on Monday, and there will be more protests over the next few weeks. But aside from a few places like the Chechen polling station that had more people vote than were registered, there wasn’t falsification on a mass scale this time. It was more like a finger pressing a little on the scale, to make sure Putin got well over the 50 percent barrier to avoid a runoff.
People are angry, but some are already resigned to six more years of Putin. It reminds me of the old Russian saying: “We hoped things would be better, but they turned out like always.”
The Russian NGO Golos has a great interactive map up election violations happening today:
http://www.kartanarusheniy.org/
The site is in Russian, but the map is in English, so you can get an idea of how broadly Russians are monitoring the vote.
Golos has a toll-free phone number and a number for text messages on that site, so that people can report in. There are more than 2,600 violations so far. So are small, like someone’s name missing from the voting rolls, or the name of a dead person being there still. But some are large. There are numerous reports of “carousel” voting, where buses of people are trucked from polling station to polling station to vote multiple times. (This is not be allowed, but corrupt poll workers can make it happen). And one Muscovite claims to have been offered 1,000 rubles (about $30) to vote to billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov. The voter offered the money says he told the man from Prokhorov’s campaign to “Go to Norilsk!” referring to the northern mining town where Prokhorov once had major interests. That’s like “Go to hell!” except Norilsk may even be worse than hell, given it’s -50 degree winters and the choking fumes from all the metals processing.
Tomorrow’s the big day. I’ll be tweeting and writing here on Tumblr for the next few days whenever I hear some news worth repeating about the Russian Presidential election, or have some useful insights. In my years in Russia, 1990 to 2006, I covered four presidential elections, the election of Yeltsin to head the Russian Republic when it was still part of the Soviet Union, and numerous mayoral and parliamentary elections. This one is sure to prove what all the others did: in Russia, what still matters most is not who casts the votes, but who counts them.
I’m dubious about all these video cameras they’ve put into election precincts. It’s just too easy for shenanigans off-camera. And while there will be tens of thousands of election observers, the way the Russia system is set up makes it too easy for officials to go around the observers to fake the vote.
One big difference between the Russian system and ours is that people can vote at home. The indigent can request that election officials come to their house so they can cast a ballot in the days before the election. That opens the vote up to massive falsification right then and there. And the fact that many soldiers can vote where they serve rather than at home also opens up vast vistas for falsification. In Russia, the reporting of votes is also done differently…they’re not all counted first in each region, the way we would count a whole state. Districts if I understand correctly report their votes right to Moscow, giving the Central Election Commission too much of a chance to tilt the numbers.
What do I think will happen? This is how the official tally will look in the end, post falsification: Putin will win on the first ballot, but with 55 to 60 percent of the vote. Gennadi Zyuganov, the Communist leader, will get nearly 20 percent of the vote, and the Liberal Democrat Vladimir Zhirinovsky will get more than 10. Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, owner of the Nets, will get around 15 percent. Sergei Mironov, a Putin pawn, will get close to nothing. Observers will find lots and lots of falsification. There will be more protests, but Putin will be sworn in. Of course, I could be wrong…but that’s my call based on more than 20 years of studying the place.
What will the real vote be? Perhaps a very narrow victory for Putin—maybe a toss to the second round against Prokhorov. There are still plenty of people out there for Putin.
I attended a small party last night for Masha Gessen, whose new book about Putin has gotten a lot of attention already. Kudos to her publisher for releasing the book at the perfect time, right before the election. I found people there to be extremely upbeat about the protest movement, and optimistic that the movement can topple Putin. One young Russian woman I met there who’d been living in the states even told me she’s moving home after the election, to help continue the protests.
But as I talked with people there, argued that the protest movement is almost bound to fail, because it has no leader and will have no leader, because there is no one qualified to lead it. All of Russia’s existing opposition politicians have been discredited by their own infighting and bad choices. And there are no politicians I can see lower down in the system who could rise up and play a leadership role, because Putin and his team have completely gutted the democratic system in recent years. Several layers of elections, like direct elections for governors and for half of the Duma (lower house of parliament), have been eliminated, insuring that the “vertical of power” includes only people loyal to Putin.
So tomorrow’s the day for Russians to make their feelings known. I wish the observers luck in trying to keep the elections honest. That’s what the Russian people deserve most of all.
Anonymous asked: Hi Beth... I assume this will get to you. I knew your name of course, long before I read your Huffpost tribute to DickThrekeld. I met you at the service Monday, briefly, but it was crazy, and someone pulled you away just as you acknowledged me. I was hoping to follow-up with you somehow. I've been with CBS since 1967, mostly free-lance as a cameraman, and for 20 years+ as a producer/shooter for Sunday Morning. Worked with them all, and Dick was one of the best. "Skip" Brown
Hey Skip!
Thanks for the note. could you please write to me at knobel@fordham.edu so we can chat some more?? thanks! Beth
I posted this on Huffington Post after Vladimir Putin announced that he would seek a new term as Russian president:
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Wow. What a surprise….not!
The news that Vladimir Putin will seek a new term as Russian president is about as surprising as Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi announcing that she’s going for another round of spray tanning.
Russia’s current President, Dmitri Medvedev, made the long-awaited announcement on Saturday, ending months of nervous speculation about how the ruling tandem would decide to rule Russia.
Ever since Putin gave up his office in 2008 because he had served the maximum two terms allowed by the Russian constitution, Russians have been saying that he’d be back. And as usual, Russian folk wisdom has turned out to be right.
Russia’s presidential rules are different than ours, don’t forget. In America, a president gets two terms, period. In Russia, you can serve two terms and then run again after taking a break.
There was simply no way that Putin would pass on being president in 2014, when the Winter Olympics will be held in the southern Russian city of Sochi. And the soccer World Cup will be played in Russia in 2018, which is another must-host event for Putin.
Though Putin and Medvedev have been holding off on an announcement for months, anyone watching Russian television closely this summer could have seen it coming. The amount of airtime for Putin has been slowly rising, as government spinmakers started to prepare the people for the big announcement.
It’s actually good that the succession plan has been announced now, and not after the country’s parliamentary elections in December, as had been the plan. The country’s governmental structures have slowed down considerably in the past few months, because bureaucrats weren’t sure if they would be keeping their jobs or not. Now, officialdom can go back to business as usual.
Russia’s governors have been particularly handcuffed as they’ve waited to see whether Putin or Medvedev would be the candidate for president. They’re the ones with primary responsibility for turning out the vote, and it’s been impossible for them to start without knowing to whom they’d need to give their patronage.
There were some people pulling for Medvedev to keep his job, including the White House. Vice President Biden made it fairly clear during a March 2011 visit to Moscow that the Obama administration would prefer that Medvedev stick around.
They seemed to be encouraged by comments Medvedev has made during his four years as president about the importance of the Rule of Law, even if he hasn’t made it happen.
But Medvedev was always the junior partner. And this just proves it.
The reaction to the news has been mixed. Putin’s still very popular with older and rural Russians, and plenty of them will be happy to vote for him.
But not so for many younger Russians, who see this as a return to the Soviet tradition of leaders for life. Just hours after the announcement, a cartoon starting circulating on Facebook showing what looks like a weary 75 year-old Putin, wearing Leonid Brezhnev’s favorite outfit: a military uniform with lots and lots of medals. Another cartoon shows Medvedev flashing a victory sign…from a little chest pocket on Putin’s jacket.
After Medvedev announced that Putin would run for president, Putin responded by saying he wants Medvedev to be his prime minister. And that’s a tandem that could last for many years to come, now that the Russians changed their constitution to extend the Russian president’s term to six years from four.
That means that when Putin gets elected in March (notice, I didn’t say “if”), his first term will go to 2018 and second term to 2024. If Putin make it through two more terms, he would be 71. At that point, he could either retire or potentially become Prime Minister again—though I find it hard to believe that he wouldn’t have had enough of running Russia by then.
An important thing to note about the coming changes is that everything that’s happening is completely legal. Putin and Medvedev are playing by the rules of Russian democracy…they’re just rules they wrote themselves.
And that means there’s not a whole lot that America can do about this, except to prepare to meet with President Putin at summit meetings for a long, long time.
Today, I addressed the freshman class at Fordham College at Rose Hill as part of the annual Convocation that starts the school year. Here’s my speech, in which I tried to mix humor with useful advice:
Thank you very much for giving me the honor and the challenge of trying to explain everything new freshmen need for your college careers…in just eight minutes.
I am here to represent the Fordham faculty, the men and women who will play such a key supporting role of your Fordham experience. I know that some of you look at us professors and get a little intimidated. Others must think that we’re a bunch of out-of-touch dinosaurs from the 20th Century. So I’m here to show you that we’re actually quite accessible, helpful and even normal. Most of us still listen to rock and roll, most waste as much time as you do on Facebook, and…some of us… are even…GLEEKS. And we ALL remember what it’s like to be a college student. You will find that we CAN relate to you and the experiences you’re facing. In fact, most of us would love to change places with you, to get to soak up knowledge full time for the next four years. (Ask faculty—am I right?)
Now everyone here has taken a different and unique path to get to Fordham. Some of you might have applied here on a lark, thinking you’d never get in…and here you are. Others of you had parents and even grandparents who went here, and coming to Fordham seemed inevitable. So I thought I’d share a little bit of my own Fordham story with you.
My gig as a professor is actually my second career. Now, I know that I look way too young to be on my second career, but in fact I worked for nearly 20 years as a journalist before I came here. I worked at student newspapers all through high school and college, and then I moved to Moscow after I fell in love with a Russian journalist I met while writing my dissertation. What else but love could induce someone to move to a country with nine months a year of winter?
In Russia, I worked for the Los Angeles Times, and then for nearly 10 years for CBS television news, where I started off as a producer, and then became the bureau chief, and then became an on-air reporter as well. Thanks to CBS, I not only got to travel all over the former Soviet Union, but all over the world. After 9/11, I got sent to a lot of out-of-the-way places linked to the so-called war on terror—like Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan. If a country’s name ends in “stan,” I’ve probably been there.
I learned a LOT about the world, both good and bad, and won some nice awards including an Emmy, which I bring in to class at the end of every semester. I ask my students to hold it for inspiration, because if I won one, they can too.
I tell you all this not to toot my own horn, but because I want you to know exactly what kind of faculty you’re going to find at this university. Many of us have interesting real-world experience that we bring to our classrooms. Others are world renowned for their research. And all of us are here because we enjoy teaching, and we love mentoring young men and women like you.
Being here these past five years has truly been a blessing to me, and I hope being here will be one for you too. Give this place a chance. I learned that lesson when I entered college, when to be honest I was in a pretty bad place emotionally. The college where I ended up, Barnard College in Manhattan, was my next-to-last choice; I’d been rejected or wait-listed from nearly every place I applied. Barnard was, however, my parents’ first choice for me, and they begged me to give the college a fair shake. I arrived planning to transfer out. But about a month into the first semester, I started meeting some great people, working on the school newspaper, and singing. By the end of first term, I was in love with my university. It WAS a great place for me…I just took me a while to figure it out. And boy was it hard to admit that my parents were right.
Hopefully, you’re already in love with Fordham, or you will be soon. This university is truly an amazing place. There are definitely some things that you can do to make your Fordham experience all it can be, and I’d like to share some of them with you. I don’t want this to sound like a sermon. You’ve probably figured out by now that I am not a Jesuit. But I truly searched my heart for things that I thought would be helpful to you right now.
Mostly what I want to do is to urge you to take RESPONSIBILITY. I’m going to speak briefly about three different aspects of responsibility—responsibility to yourself, responsibility to your community, and responsibility for your spiritual life—to help you get the most of your time here.
1. Responsibility for yourself…3 points
1—Take responsibility for your own education. High school is over. Now, your education is up to you. Make the most of your time here; don’t just float from course to course. There are so very many great things to study here that it’s hard to decide, so choose wisely. Your professors and the deans are around to help you figure things out. Taking a course because you’re interested in the subject is good. Taking a course because that cute neighbor from downstairs is taking it is not. Use your time here to find subjects that you are passionate about, and once you do, get into them.
2—Take responsibility for being a good student. Work hard. Secret: we professors hate it when students don’t take their studies here seriously, because that’s the core of what you’re here to do. And don’t blow off classes. You’re paying too much to be here. And this time in your life is far too precious to waste.
3—Take responsibility for making the most of NYC. We are blessed with a gorgeous campus, but get off it from time to time. Make a list of things you want to see while you’re here, especially if you don’t think you’ll settle down in the city. New York is amazing; so take advantage.
2. Responsibility to your community.
1—Be responsible TO your friends and classmates. Look around…I know that you guys are just aching to look around for your first Fordham boyfriend or girlfriend.
Here are your friends for life. Social networking means that you will be interconnected forever. For better and for worse. So ask yourself what you want to be known for…then be it. I’d suggest that you be known for intelligence, diligence, sincerity and compassion.
Be tolerant and accepting of others. Remember that people come here from all over the globe, with different world views and experiences. Be open to what others can teach you.
And when you blow off steam with your new Fordham friends, hey, please do it responsibly.
2—And, this is important…be responsible FOR your friends and classmates. You need to watch out for each other. College can be a very difficult time, and it’s a lot easier to get through when someone has your back. So if you see someone who’s not quite themselves, reach out to them. And if that’s not working, or you’re feeling down, then reach out to an RA or a professor or a member of our staff. As the slogan goes, “If you see something, say something.”
3—Remember that professors are part of your community too. Don’t leave here without having established meaningful relationships with at least one or two of us. Take the initiative and come to office hours. We don’t bite. In fact, I’m Facebook friends with a many of my former students—keep that in mind the next time you post something embarrassing—and I take tremendous pride from what many of them are doing today, whether it’s calling Double A baseball, hosting a radio show on ESPN, or working for Martha Stewart.
3. Lastly, take responsibility for your spiritual life.
—Don’t shy way from using these years to consider why we are here on earth and what you’re meant to do. The Jesuits call this process “Discernment”, and it’s a deeply appropriate thing for folks at college to do. No matter what your belief system, you are probably here because you respect Jesuit values, as I do, and believe that we are all here to learn how to live with integrity and character and to serve a world so in need. Well there are lots of opportunities to start making the world a better place right here near campus, working with new immigrants or tutoring children from our neighborhood. These are the kind of things that feed your soul, and make a difference in the lives of others.
I can honestly say that I love this college. I love that we give our students a great education. I love it that people are proud to say they studied here. And most of all, I love that we teach our students to be bothered… to care about the problems and injustice in the world, and determined to be part of the solution.
So get it out of your mind that this is some big, impersonal college. You will find that the Rose Hill faculty and staff will get to know each and every one of you. So welcome to the Fordham family. And I know that we will be immensely proud of you.
May God bless you all and keep you on this tremendous journey that you’re beginning, and bless all of us at FCRH.
I banged out this piece quickly yesterday, after a few minutes of walking down memory lane… It’s funny how I still find myself trying to be relatively gentle in my criticism of Russia.
With thanks for Marvin Kalb, who arranged the internship at NBC News for me. His friend Ike Seamans was the bureau chief in Moscow then.
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Twenty years ago today, I was a summer intern in the Moscow Bureau of NBC News. I’d been living in Russia that summer, working on my doctoral dissertation about Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his use of the press.
I’d awakened along with the rest of the Soviet Union on the morning of August 19th, 1991 to find Swan Lakeplaying on every channel. Clearly, something was wrong. Very wrong. I ran to the NBC office, where I learned about the coup that was trying to overthrow Gorbachev and return the nation to hardline Communism.
The next three days changed the course of the Soviet Union and, with it, the world.
There are a few things that people who have been writing this week about the 20th anniversary of that failed coup have forgotten. One of them is that Moscow was almost devoid of journalists at the time. There had been a summit meeting earlier that month in Moscow between Gorbachev and then-president George H.W. Bush. The summit had taken a long time to arrange, and so few journalists based in Russia were allowed to take a summer vacation until the summit ended during the first week of August. After the summit, people bolted… and most weren’t back in Russia when what’s called “the putsch” in Russian started on August 19th.
Moreover, when the coup happened, there was a hurricane hitting the east coast of the United States. Flights were cancelled, meaning that news organizations either had to send in people from Europe, or wait for the storm to end. What it meant is that the skeleton staffs still in Moscow had to do their best to cover the events, working round-the-clock for three days until the coup collapsed. The situation felt overwhelming at times, as rumors circled that the plotters were about to attack the unarmed crowds outside the center of the resistance, the Russian “White House,” at any minute.
Another thing that’s been forgotten was the state of general paralysis that happened during those three long days. One of my jobs at NBC News was to try to get Soviet politicians to come in to give interviews about what was happening. But almost no one was willing. Everyone seemed to be waiting to see if the coup would succeed or fail before taking a stand or saying anything that might backfire later. It was a clear sign that the coup plotters had very limited support… as did Gorbachev.
I also remember the incredible organization at the White House. Camped out around the building, men had used their military experience to build barricades, organize multiple rings of defense, and build stocks of food and water. They had also devised plans for repelling a military attack on the building, which they thought could be coming at any moment. And yet despite the stress, the mood of the crowd was jubilant, because people were so proud that they were actually doing something to stand up to power. The crowd was incredibly diverse — grandmothers sat with teenagers, sharing their food and their dreams in a brave act of non-violent protest.
But what stays with me the most about those days was the sense of empowerment and optimism that followed the end of the coup. In the weeks that followed, national pride was incredibly high. Everyday people thought that Russia and the other republics would grow to be great nations, with democracy and freedom for all. People looked toward the future with happy anticipation. The mood was manic, but joyful.
And that’s why this anniversary is rather sad for me. Many of the Russians and other Soviet citizens I know feel disappointed in their countries today. They hate the ever-present corruption. They feel like their leaders are out of touch. And many of them are struggling to keep their heads above water as prices for just about everything keep rising dramatically. The oligarchs may feel optimistic, but not so the people I know in the middle class and below.
Of course, it takes more than 20 years to establish a truly healthy democracy, especially in countries like Russia that are large and complex. But I think that a lot of those Soviets who put their lives on the line 20 years ago today hoped that this far out from their struggle, more of the post-Soviet promise would be fulfilled.
Yes, from Tallinn to Tashkent, the stores are full, people are able to travel at will, and free enterprise has blossomed. But the feeling of optimism, the most precious thing of all, has been eaten away by heavy-handed political systems and economic challenges. And 20 years ago, I would have never predicted that.
Yesterday, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by a Russian journalist named Valery Panyushkin, whom I don’t know personally, about something I do know personally…the very poor atmosphere for journalists in Russia.
You can read the piece here:
ttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/opinion/22panyushkin.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=russia%20and%20license%20plate&st=Search
Some of the things in the article struck me as kind of strange—for example, the author’s assertion that officers of the former KGB, now called the FSB, are stealing license plates of the journalists they trail, to prove to their bosses that they are in fact doing their work. Although I haven’t been working full-time in Russia for four years, I can honestly say that I’ve never heard of anything like that happening, ever. (Although I did have a tire come off of my car while driving one day in 1998, but couldn’t tell if the bolts had been intentionally loosened by someone or if it was truly accidental. I and the car were, amazingly, were not hurt).
Another part of the op-ed that was a little strange was about the main “opposition” radio station, Ekho Moskvi, announcing on the air that the author had been “detained by the FSB” after the author in fact had been questioned briefly at a train station and then NOT detained, but allowed to board his train. But that is a complaint about Ekho Moskvi, not the Times. I put “opposition” in quotes because there is quite a lot of evidence that Ekho Moskvi actually has a close behind-the-scenes relationship with the government, which allows the station to operate as a steam valve. In any case, the station should not mouth off about a detention that did not happen. That’s not good journalism in any case.
All that said, the situation for journalists in Russia is awful. Journalists are intimidated, beaten and even killed on a regular basis. Two journalists I knew personally—Yuri Shekichikhin and Anna Politkovskaya—and one I did not—Paul Khlebnikov—were the victims of brutal murders while I was based in Moscow. Much of the Russian media is either directly or indirectly government controlled, and the rest is filled with material that looks like legitimate news but was often purchased for large sums of cash.
It is great to see the Times address the issue of press freedom in Russia. I just wished they had checked the facts on this one.
From the Huffington Post, May 3, 2011. Scott Pelley in his Own Words: In June 2009, I had the honor of interviewing Scott Pelley for the book I co-wrote with 60 Minutes legend Mike Wallace, Heat and Light: Advice for the Next Generation of Journalists. Despite his busy schedule, Scott graciously talked with me for nearly two hours about his career, his ever-present coffee cup in hand. Some of the very best advice for young reporters in our book comes from him. Rather than repeat what’s already in print, now seems like the time to share parts of the interview that didn’t make it into our book, to shed some new fresh light on what kind of anchorman people can expect Pelley to be. My own impression after our talk, and after working with him just a little at CBS News, is that Pelley is exceedingly humble, deeply committed to serious journalism, and unabashed in his belief that good reporting can change the world. And that bodes well for his stint in the anchor chair. Here’s why: One: Pelley learned journalism from the bottom up, and got where he is today thanks not only to raw talent, but to relentless hard work. His compassion will shape his work. Pelley’s own words: “No one ever wanted to hire me. Ever. I’ve never been recruited anywhere. I have beat my head against every wall, at every place that I worked.” “I was 15 years old when I got a job as a copy boy at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, which was the 90,000 daily paper in Lubbock, Texas. I had to lie about my age — they only hired kids who were 16. I was only 15, and my mom used to have to drop me off two blocks from the paper so I could walk there, so that people wouldn’t see that I wasn’t driving.” “I was too dumb to know that I couldn’t be a 60 Minutes correspondent. Nobody ever sat me down in Lubbock and explained to me that my dreams and aspirations were unreasonable. And so I just blundered ahead.” Two: Pelley understands the importance of having a vibrant news organization that does difficult but important reports. He has travelled all over the world doing tough stories, often in dangerous places. I predict there will be less fluff on Pelley’s Evening News and more of the hard news that really matters. Pelley’s own words: His most memorable reports are “Stories in which we take this very powerful tool of 60 Minutes and we shine a light on something that others want hidden.” “One of the examples of that, of course, is Darfur. When we went to Darfur on one of the two journeys that we made there, the Sudanese government had shut down that province and had shut down the border, and was aggressively arresting people and throwing out NGOs because they were murdering hundreds of thousands of people and causing millions to flee their homes — they didn’t want anybody to see that. “When we were there, we were able to work with an armed rebel group to put together our own armed reconnaissance into Darfur, and we were able to get to a village that had been wiped out by the government forces and burned to the ground. This was the thing that the government didn’t want anyone to see, and to be able to go there and see that and bring it to a mass audience and expose what was going on behind this sort of an iron curtain, if you will, that the government had thrown up around Darfur was very gratifying. If we are able to expose an injustice in that way, that’s just the greatest thing that journalism can do.” Three: Pelley’s reporting isn’t liberal or conservative — just truthful. Over his career he’s been equally skeptical of Republicans and Democrats, of American and foreign leaders, and I’d expect that to continue. He may help dispel the image of the CBS Evening News as a liberal bastion by keeping the show in the Walter Cronkite tradition of objectivity, which may help lure some new viewers. Pelley’s own words: “We go down for the original information insofar as it can be found, and then we test it. I don’t think that young journalists realize how similar their job is to the job of a scientist. It’s a very similar sort of thing: you get down to the original information and you test it, and you test it again, and you peer review it, and you test it again — it’s very much like science. Science doesn’t care, by and large, what the answers are. It’s only interested in getting the right answer. And journalism should be very much that way. “ Four: Pelley sees how journalism is changing, and understands that its future ultimately depends on having strong news organizations that will serve the public interest. Pelley’s own words: “The quality of life in America is dependent on the quality of the journalism. Most people don’t realize that, but if you think about it, journalism is one of the pillars on which our society is perched. And you can’t pull that pillar out. It relates to the quality of our politics, it relates to the quality of life, it is essential to having a great country. You look at the countries in this world with restricted journalism, with poor journalism, with government-controlled journalism, and you tell me if you want to live in any of those countries. I bet you don’t.” “If you want to expose the big lies and the big injustices that are perpetrated by governments, you need to have a very strong, well-financed and robust organization to take on that kind of thing. We just can’t live without that — there has to be a way to carry that forward. A lot of people are trying a lot of different things in the business models to maintain that kind of robust journalism, but we cannot, as a society, afford to lose it. One of the greatest strengths of this country is the quality of its journalism. People take it for granted. It’s too bad. But the quality of the journalism is what helps keep our country on the right path.” And Pelley has produced some extraordinary journalism in his career, racking up nearly every major news award in the process. His knack for a story is clearly one of the reasons why 60 Minutes is still one of the most watched shows on television. Everything that Pelley says indicates he’ll shape the CBS Evening News into something intense and worthwhile. And people who really care about the news, like many of the readers of this site, should tune in.
A big thanks to Dennis Klainberg for this wonderful write-up of the book in the current issue of Columbia College Today, the alumni magazine of those boys across the street at Columbia College. Dennis is the class correspondent for the Columbia class of 1984:
…which leads me to make the provocative move of introducing to our all-male (entering) class the progress of a Barnard alum!
This very special friend, and indeed, amazing asset to the Columbia community in those days, was, and is, Beth Knobel ’84 Barnard. (She deserves boldface treatment, but that honor is reserved for College and Engineering classmates.)
Beth distinguished herself in many leadership roles, most principally with Spec, working under editor-in-chief Steve Waldman and alongside co-news editor Richard Pollack.
“It was through Spec that I met a few of my closest friends to this day, including Jim Weinstein, whom I met when I interviewed him, and Richard Froehlich ’85. I now sit on the Spec Board of Trustees and recently found one of my favorite photos in the office, a front-page photo of Jim and the late, great Stuart Garcia, who were both College senators, posing a bit like superheroes.”
Now, as a journalist and professor, Beth graces us once more, as the author of Heat and Light: Advice for the Next Generation of Journalists, which she co-wrote with the one and only Mike Wallace.
“Mike and I worked together twice when I was the Moscow Bureau Chief for CBS News and he was still at 60 Minutes, when he came to Russia to interview Boris Yeltsin and then Vladimir Putin. Mike always was incredibly nice to me, and when I left CBS to teach journalism at Fordham in 2007, he accepted my invitation to speak to students. Mike had such interesting things to say about journalism that day that I told him that he should write a book about how to be a good reporter … or that we should write one together. And we did! We took all of our best advice, then added the best advice of a lot of our friends (including AP baseball reporter Ron Blum ’83 and Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli ’83) and turned out an easy-to-read guidebook for young journalists. In writing the book, I thought a lot about my college years working on Spec and kept asking myself what I know now after 20 years as a journalist that I wished I’d known then. The book was published by Three Rivers Press, part of Random House, and I think it is a good read for any aspiring journalist.”
On a personal note, I am most happy to see Beth and her son now and then at the local JCC where we are all members; her son and mine have even attended the same camp. Small world indeed!
