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Episode XIX: "You have literally no idea and very little control over what that person you just spoke to is going to do with that material."

Published 7/31/18
In this installment, Dave Itzkoff talks about Janet Malcolm's The Journalist and the Murderer, ambiguity between reporter and subject, writing about his father, and more.

Today I’m with Dave Itzkoff, a culture writer for the New York Times who’s also penned a handful of books ranging from memoir to biography. His most recent is Robin, about the comedian Robin Williams.

For this interview, Dave chose to discuss The Journalist and the Murderer. It’s the tale of the lawsuit between convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald and the man who wrote a book about the crime, Joe McGinniss. It’s also Janet Malcom’s most Malcomesque book—it doesn’t just tell a fantastic story but questions the underlying tenets of nonfiction, journalistic integrity, and truth.

Before we get into The Journalist and the Murderer, can you briefly touch on your education, and what brought you to the book in the first place?

In terms of my background, I've been a culture reporter at the New York Times for about 10 years. (My official anniversary here will be in September.) I've been freelancing for the Times since about 2002, and in past lives I was also an editor at Spin, Maxim and Details. I have a B.A. in English from Princeton University. 

Not to disappoint you but I can't remember how the book first came to my attention! It's not even something that I heard discussed by friends or industry colleagues, despite its subject matter. 

But I re-read it maybe once or twice every year. It's short—you can probably get through it in two or three hours—and hard for me to put out of my mind. It's like a pilgrimage for me. 

Why do you find yourself returning to it?

I find that some of the central issues it deals with come up all the time in my work: What does it mean to be an ethical journalist? Am I, in my own work, being fair to the people I write about? What is the proper relationship between a subject and an author? 

There are of course many other ideas that the book raises, but as a working journalist these are the ones I keep coming back to. 

And of course Malcolm finds a way to ask all of these questions and answer none of them. Do you find your own takeaways changing each time you read?

I wish I could give you a better answer but, I don't know. I do find myself drawn to the arrangement struck by McGinniss and MacDonald, examining it and thinking I see where it went wrong, and trying to persuade myself that I would not make the same mistakes, would not go that far down the same hole. 

If you could answer such a question, what was the kernel of McGinniss' error?

This is part of what is so fascinating about the book, and about the case at least as Malcolm relates it in the book, because when you break it into component parts, you see a lot of places where his professional relationship with MacDonald probably went awry, any one of them could be the culprit. 

Was it wrong for McGinniss, in the first place, to agree to be such a close, day-to-day observer of MacDonald's defense, in exchange for the level of journalistic access he received? I personally don't think so, but I could see how some people might feel that's his original sin. 

Was it wrong for McGinniss to leave MacDonald with the impression, at the outset of their relationship, that he would write a book that would be favorable to MacDonald? Yes, very probably. 

Then as time and the case progressed, was it wrong for McGinniss to continue to let MacDonald believe that the book would be positively disposed to him? Definitely. Was there some other way that McGinniss could have written the book and been honest with MacDonald about his feelings towards him and the case? I think so. 

I can't ever imagine finding myself in an analogous situation, but as I read and re-read the book, I play the game in my head: if it were me, would I be stronger, morally and ethically, than the version of McGinniss it presents? 

Let’s hone in on the second potential misdemeanor you’ve listed. One of Malcolm’s favorite dynamics to report on—one which she finds herself frequently tangled in—is the one between a journalist and a subject who is providing access on the (implicit, vague) assumption the reporter will help them tell their story. You say that you can't ever imagine finding yourself in an analogous situation, but can you think of a time you’ve had consider your own closeness to a subject?

I don't ever make promises like that to anyone at the outset of a story or a book. Certainly, let's say, with a profile that I might write for the Times, there's a certain shotgun wedding aspect to how it gets set up: I pitch a story to an individual, to a publicist or to an editor, everybody says yes, and off I go—within a few days or weeks I'm sitting down with someone who may or may not have any idea who I am, and whom I'm going to start asking potentially probing questions. 

Sometimes these are people with a specific project to promote—a new movie or TV show, let's say—and so there is at least an assumption on their part that the story I write will do that much. 

I don't see myself as having any other obligation except to do this, and to be fair to the person I write about. But that doesn't mean I have to write a fan letter. And that's where a lot of ambiguity and uncertainty can come in. 

How, exactly, does ambiguity and uncertainty come in? Is it that the questions you ask and the conversations you have might lead them to think the story will take a shape in a way that it won't?

Yes, I think you're starting to get at it, in a very perceptive way. I think it's sometimes the case—not always, but it happens—that a subject may think that, by virtue of being written about, the piece will be positive about them and that the subject will perceive it as a positive story when they read it. 

Beyond that, I think it would be almost impossible for a subject not to make their own inferences about a story based on the questions I might ask them and my demeanor towards them in our interactions, which is almost always going to be pleasant. (I don't think I have the ability to intimidate anyone.)

Sometimes a subject will say, at the end of an interview, something to the effect of, "Just make sure it's a nice story!" And I understand that. No matter how often you get written about, it must be a weird and potentially frightening thing each time you participate in an interview. You have literally no idea and very little control over what that person you just spoke to is going to do with that material. 

I want to touch on what you said, or implied, in "and my demeanor towards them in our interactions". It makes me think of the even less conscious and therefore more nefarious signals sent during an interview—not ingratiation per se, but when two people speak at length there's a natural, (usually) positive connection that forms. Have you considered how your own nonverbal language contributes to the information you receive, and the ethics of it?

I think it is almost inevitable. Unless you're talking about an interview that's undertaken under some duress—these are questions you'd better answer right now, because a story's about to post and it's saying something you'd really better address—or an old-school 60 Minutes-style ambush, there is probably going to be a little bit of a rapport that forms in the time you have with your subject. You want them to feel comfortable enough to answer your questions, and (my assumption is anyway) that's likely not going to happen if you don't engage them as a fellow human being. 

But do you ever feel that this inevitable connection is a tool, that you are in essence exploiting a natural instinct towards connection?

It is something I think about, yes, in the context of the book and in my own work. Is it, at some level, a kind of exploitation? Not at the degree of a Sacha Baron Cohen, obviously, but how much of an assumption am I making on the way in about how much the other person knows about journalism and its methods, and what they think I'm going to write about them?

Can you think of any examples of this from your own writing you’re willing to share?

About 13 years ago, I wrote a feature for New York magazine about myself and my father, and our relationship, both when he'd been abusing cocaine and in the time since he had gotten sober. 

My father knew I was writing the story—I had told him up front when the magazine asked me to do it, and he said he was comfortable with it. Some portions of it were about memories from when I was very young, and some of it was from conversations that he and I had in the present day, for the purposes of the piece. 

My father never asked to read the story prior to publication—though he would have been contacted in the normal course of the fact-checking process—and I never told him that he could read it in advance. It was his expressed preference that I write the piece I wanted to write. 

And I think he might have gone without reading it at all, except that he started to hear from friends of his who liked it or at least thought it was an interesting piece, so at a certain point he couldn't resist the temptation anymore. And of course when he did read it, he was at first very upset and felt it had portrayed him in an accusatory or unflattering way.

Now in this case, he was able to both take a breath and re-read it, and feel better about what he had read; and to talk to me, in a very calm and collected way, about what had bothered him and I could tell him what I thought I was trying to say in the piece, and we could both finally walk away from the experience feeling that both our sides had been heard. But that's my own father! Imagine any other subject who doesn't have that kind of intimate access to me, having a similar reaction to a piece I wrote about them. Maybe it's just a difference of perception, or maybe they have a legitimate grievance. How must they feel? 

That's such an illustrative example. Thank you.

Switching gears slightly. Unclear ethics is, of course, one of Malcolm’s favorite themes. Another is unclear truth, how nonfiction can fail when truth eludes our attempts to capture it in words. Is this something else that reverberates with your own journalistic experience?

That's interesting—I don't know if I have the luxury of worrying about such a weighty question in the course of my daily journalistic activities because a) there are deadlines, and b) I'm usually writing about things that have been written about before in some form and there are models I can pattern myself after if I'm ever feeling confused or at a loss for words. 

This probably isn't quite what you're asking, but it was an interesting experience to try to write about some of Robin Williams's stand-up routines, which are probably best experienced as audiovisual phenomena and which I felt, no matter how hard I tried, my words couldn't completely reproduce.

Well I was going to ask about quotes and interviews, and the printed word's notable failure to convey specific meaning when ambiguity abounds. There's capital T Truth of course; a story revealing something truly objective is a (usually unattainable) goal. But there's also just the grit of trying to communicate what someone has communicated to you in a less discrete medium. Is this something you've considered at length?

I don't necessarily find that the case in a top-down news story, where the goal is usually clear: something has just occurred, or information has become available that wasn't previously, and it's up to me to convey that in a way that's clear, organized and accurate. 

But of course it's different with a profile story, which is often about more unquantifiable matters—how does a person come across to me, how does it feel to be around them and how do they seem to comport themselves with other people? (All of that, in addition to their answers to the questions I have for them.) Those are all judgment calls, that's all in the eye of the beholder—in this case, me—and then it's up to me to convey it in words that hopefully best represent what I am thinking. As a writer you can really start to psych yourself out of anything if you start to thing about it at this level.

Of course, and I don't mean to give you a case of the journalistic yips. But I do wonder about the pull journalists feel when trying to present those unquantifiable matters. When reading other articles, let's say, do you find a bias in any direction? Do you question the writer's word against some objective reality?

I generally don't question it, which is to say I usually give the writer the benefit of the doubt—consciously or unconsciously—that he or she is an honest broker. Not that this person is perfectly objective or blessed with unfailing accuracy, but that in the course of their writing, they've grappled with the same kinds of questions and thought about their own presentation and arrived at the words and language that best convey what they're trying to say, in a way that's fair to their subject. 

Then, of course, you read the Malcolm book and you become hyperaware of one process in particular and you wonder if any of this is really possible. 

It's the rare book that makes you question every other example in its genre, so much so I would hope all of the journalists I am reading have read it and consider the questions it brings up. We're nearing time, so I'll ask you to send us off: what's some other required reading for journalists, in your opinion?

I can only think of books I relied on while I was writing my book, which may not be helpful, useful or interesting to people with more general interests.

What about fiction? Any novels you can think of that puts journalism to task?

Dave Itzkoff

Have you ever heard of this book, The Bonfire of the Vanities 

Ha, yes.

It's pretty good. The Quiet American, how about that? I'm so basic.