a general assignment reporter. Basically I show up in the afternoon and work on whatever stories I’m assigned. Could be anything.”
“Does it pay well?”
“Not at all.”
“Then what attracts you to it?”
“The opportunity to write, to be creative. Also, to make a difference.”
“How so?”
“Well, you can expose wrongs, crusade. Reveal information that others want hidden. H. L. Mencken said the role of the press is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I like doing that.” I had quoted that line many times and I said it then without thinking about my audience—the entirely comfortable. I knew it was a mistake even before Everett Hall’s already ruddy face deepened.
He drank from his glass of wine. “Why does the press make so many errors?”
“Errors, sir?”
“Mistakes of fact and of bias. I hardly read a story that I know something about where there isn’t an error.”
I felt myself flush but I admit I’ve often observed the same thing. “There’re thousands of facts in the paper each day and almost all of them are right. It’s an imperfect craft. We get it as right as we can within the confines of deadlines and space.”
“Well, you do a poor job of it.”
There isn’t a journalist alive who hasn’t had to withstand an assault on his or her profession, whether from grandstanding politicians, crazed conspiracy theorists, or even readers legitimately upset about an error in a story or, even more often, an inaccurate headline. But I hadn’t expected vitriol with the vichyssoise. My surprise must have showed because Brad jumped in to deflect the tension.
“Father, I wasn’t aware that you even read the Charlotte paper.”
“I don’t have to. New York Times. Washington Post. Charlotte Times. CBS. It’s all the same. A liberal bias infects the whole media. You heard Mr. Harper say it himself. He wants to afflict the comfortable. People like us.” He took another swallow. “And comfort the afflicted. Whom do you mean by that?”
“The poor. The powerless. The exploited.” I was rising to the debate.
The elderly black woman picked that moment to enter from the kitchen and quietly began refilling the water goblets. Before I could answer his question, Everett Hall turned to her. “Mary Pell, do you feel afflicted?”
“Pardon, sir?” She stood back from the table, holding the silver pitcher.
“Mary Pell, this is Mr. Harper,” Everett Hall said.
I stood up. Mary Pell nodded but said nothing. “Mr. Harper is a reporter. He likes to comfort the afflicted. Are you among the afflicted?”
“I got my aches and pains, Mr. Everett, but the Lord’s blessed me.”
Everett Hall bored in. “Mary Pell, are you exploited at Windrow?”
“Father!” Brad said, but his father paid no attention. I sat down.
“Do we exploit you, Mary Pell?” Everett Hall demanded.
“I’m very happy at Windrow, Mr. Everett. You know that. Very happy.” Mary Pell smiled uneasily and retreated to the safety of the kitchen. I saw Brad mouth “I told you so” to his wife, who looked embarrassed and stared at her lap.
Everett was getting drunker and I knew there was no percentage in arguing. I tried to humor him, hoping to get us on lighter ground.
“Wait a minute? Afflict the comfortable? I don’t believe I said that. I’ve been misquoted! The press is always getting it wrong!” I said. Brad and Lindsay laughed. Mr. Hall didn’t.
“You said your business is creative. I understand that, because you make things up.”
I felt my face redden.
“I don’t and I don’t know of any journalist who does.”
“Your bias shows in what you select to cover. You look for bad things because there’s no story if they are good.”
“Correct. If things work the way they are supposed to, that’s not news. It’s news when they don’t. We play no favorites. Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, blacks and whites, men and women. Everybody’s fair game.”
“Afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted isn’t playing favorites? You ever see a newspaper crusade on behalf of some businessman getting harassed by the federal government even though he’s risked his own money and created jobs? It’d be okay for a white man to get screwed but stop the presses if it’s some poor black.”
Tell that to those Times readers who are sure I’m a racist, I thought to myself.
“You think the press would have gone after Nixon if he’d been a Democrat?”
“Without question.”
“The press gave Kennedy a pass.”
“Journalistic standards were different then.”
He bolted down his wine. “Standards? You have no standards. Do you have to get a license to be a journalist? Do you have to pass some test? Is there a body of knowledge you have to master? No. You need a license to cut hair and give a manicure. But anyone can be a journalist.” Mr. Hall finished his salad. “That was delicious.”
Finally, we had found something we could all agree on and I took the opportunity to chime in. “Wonderful. What kind of greens were they?”
“Lion’s Tooth,” Brad said. “Genus taraxacum. Dent de lion. Otherwise known as dandelions.”
But Everett Hall wasn’t about to quit the battle. He resumed as Mary Pell cleared our plates. “Watergate was the worst thing that ever happened to your business. It made every youngster in journalism school decide to go out and look for a coonskin to nail to the wall. Well, there weren’t that many coons out there that needed skinning. So people got it whether they deserved it or not. Politicians. Businessmen. Everybody. You said it yourself. Everybody’s fair game.”
“Those who got it deserved it,” I said. “And that’s exactly our function—to keep everybody else honest, to make sure the people know the people’s business. It’s why the First Amendment is first. We’re a watchdog, a fourth branch of government—beholden to nothing but the truth.”
“Fourth branch of government? And who elected you?”
“Our readers, every day. If we don’t pass their test, if we’re not accurate and honest, we’re out of business.”
“Which explains why the National Enquirer sells so many copies.” Mr. Hall raised his glass signaling a temporary end to the conversation and, I’m sure in his mind, victory. Brad shrugged and gave me an apologetic look.
Mr. Hall pressed a hidden button under the table. I heard a faint buzzer in the kitchen and Mary Pell emerged to serve the main course—dove and quail bagged during a recent shoot. For the vegetarian Brad, she served something she called Brad’s Rice, which turned out to be a delicious wild rice hybrid he had developed and planted on several acres of Windrow that he had returned to cultivation. And, of course, there was more wine. A crisp white, this time. The conversation turned more pleasant and certainly more mundane, with me asking a lot of questions.
I have heard it said that people become reporters because they’re shy. They want to know everything about other people but, in the guise of objectivity, never have to reveal anything about themselves. They are afraid of involvement. They don’t want to participate in the action, they want to observe it. That may be true. But all I was trying to do was keep the conversation going in non-controversial directions. So I asked Brad about the process that had led to the rice. And his father about the quail and dove season and whether the river was low. And then about the stock market.