FEAR AND LOATHING AT THE OBIT DESK

By Andrew Williams

 

 Weπve lost at least two great journalists this year: Peter Jennings last month at age 67 to lung cancer; Hunter S. Thompson earlier this year at age 67 to an allegedly self-inflected gunshot wound. One would be hard-pressed to find them in the same publication, or imagine them sitting at the same table to discuss the dayπs events in the world. The urbane, self-educated Canadian and the hard-living, hard-drugging cynic from Kentucky may not have shared many personal qualities, but they had two important things in common: they were journalists, and they believed in going after the truth, no matter the personal or professional cost.

 

 Their methods of pursuit seem different on the surface, but are rooted in Journalism 101 principles: Find out what happened. Talk to people. Do research on the background events that may have triggered this event. As a reporter for the National Review and other publications in the early to mid-1960s, Hunter Thompson followed these precepts and won the respect of his colleagues as an expert in such diverse topics as Latin American politics and American folk music. So did Peter Jennings, who gave up his position as ABC News anchor in 1967 to become a field reporter because, as he himself later archly commented, he lacked seasoning. In the following decade before he reassumed the anchor desk, he earned the respect of colleagues who were his contemporaries and hard-bitten veterans of the news desks. They both followed the same cardinal rule: Go to where the story is, and bring it back alive.

 

 Facts, and the interpretations of facts, can be as divisive as opinions that derive from objective facts and subjective interpretations. This is the part in the woods, the fork where Jennings and Thompson diverge: where the former sought objectivity through detailed research and data analysis, the latter abandoned it in favor of what he saw as the ultimate point of view. The only objective journalism he ever saw, Thompson claimed in Fear and Loathing On The Campaign Trail, was the security camera in the convenience store near his ≥compound≤ in Colorado.  He sought the ultimate subjective experience: using hallucinogenic drugs as filters through which to see the world and its machinations, without losing sight of the insights garnered through his sharp reportage.

 

 While I was a huge, gonzo fan of Thompson, I only occasionally checked out network news, feeling it lacked nuance, detail and the guts to report on real controversies--stories that could get a reporter killed, or turned. Every so once in a while, Jennings would make me turn my head--sometimes with just a phrase. After ABC News aired a CIA-created animation that purported to recreate the final moments of Flight 800, with narration by an unidentified person, Jennings observed, ≥That was the voice of the CIA.≤ Anonymous, unidentifiable, uncorroborated.

 

 Both excelled when given the opportunity to cover the political spectrum, especially the two main parties and their conventions. Thompsonπs Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail is considered a quintessential document on the inner workings of Presidential campaigns. Thompson in the 1970s, like Jennings in the 1980s, was a newcomer to political coverage, and their political naivete gave them a perspective that other correspondents lacked. They had no bridges to burn, so they went as in depth or not as they liked. But as enthusiastic as Jennings was about campaigns from then on, Thompson became soured on the process, seeing it as a charnel house where truth was daily sacrificed for the expediency of a few thousand votes or wooing an influential community leader.

 

 Each had their bete noire. Jenningsπ was Big Tobacco. Thompsonπs was Richard Nixon. Each saw their chosen targets as personifications of evil, but Jenningsπ cosmopolitan style and willingness to listen made palatable what Thompsonπs bile could not. And even Thompson could be swayed: in Fear and Loathing, he recounts a lengthy discussion with our 38th President on football in which he admits--not without admiration--≥Richard Nixon is a stone football fanatic.≤

 

 You put pictures of Peter Jennings and Hunter S. Thompson side by side and the contrasts jump out at you. These are pictures that seem to tell life stories: the Canadian who was born with pencil shavings in his blood, the James Bond look-a-like who defied expectation to become more than a pretty face, to become a man of substance. Then we see the Doctor, the ≥gonzo≤ journalist who could nail a lead or roll a spliff with equal facility and attention to detail. They were journalists, men who were respected, who were expected by their readers and viewers to tell the news as they saw it, to tell, in Irwin Shawπs words, ≥where I think I am and what this place looks like today.≤ 

 

 I say goodbye to two masters of the form, two men who mentored dozens of men and women who, I earnestly hope, will be as searching and as questioning as they were, and not simply joiners of the ≥ripπnπread≤ club, as too many members of the so-called Fifth Estate are.  And what better way to say aloha, as Lono might agree, than to be shot into Earth's upper atmosphere as part of a psychedelic 21-gun salute, with the chance of some of your earthly cremains ending up in the President's face? What better karma could you imagine?

 

 P.S. The balls-to-the-wall, round-the-clock coverage of Katrina has caused me to revisit somewhat my rather harsh assessment of TV journalism. I would say, however, that as many reporters as there are holding politicians' feet to the fire, there are some Pink Boys and Girls who whine about "not pointing fingers" and not asking too many questions. Duty now for the future, spuds.