The Case of the Ugly Truth

At home, when we pick up or click on the newspaper, a properly skeptical reader wonders how much of what we read is truth. But an even better question might be, what are we missing? What’s not being written?

In the 1990s, sports columnist Frank Fitzpatrick covered Phillies outfielder Lenny Dykstra for the Philadelphia “Inquirer.” Dykstra, who had a 12-year career with the Mets and Phillies, cheated on his wife, took amphetamines and steroids, and was in prison for about six months for concealing assets and laundering money, didn’t hide his personality from Fitzpatrick.

“We knew [...] things,” Fitzpatrick said to WNYC’s Bob Garfield in an interview. “Yet, behind everything a baseball beat writer does there’s this fear of severing a good relationship because, without them in a competitive news environment, you’re dead.”

It’s a sentiment that rings all too true in a local (or in Honolulu, a hyperlocal) context. When strangers are few and reputations are worth a career, how does a writer tell an ugly truth without burning bridges?

Even the great Truman Capote was basically exiled from his sources of inspiration, Manhattan’s powerfully rich — his affluent socialite swans, as he called them —  such as Babe Paley and Gloria Vanderbilt. He’d been working on an exposé about “every sort of person I’ve had any dealings with [...] I have a cast of thousands,” he said to his biographer in 1979, according to a “Vanity Fair” article on the book, “Answered Prayers”. The first installment, “La Côte Basque 1965” ran in “Esquire’s” November, 1975 issue, but “Answered Prayers” was never published in full. Nine years later and after stints in rehab centers, ostracized by his socialite friends, and in an abusive marriage, Capote’s liver finally failed.

You could connect the dots and say Capote’s truth- telling was career (and then physical) suicide. So how does a writer find that balance between telling a real story from all angles, while protecting his relationship to his community (and career)?

Documentary shows such as PBS’s “Frontline” or Edward R. Murrow’s “See It Now” are fearless for what they do, the stories they tell, and the voices of the people they represent. Are there ramifications? Yes—advertisers for “See It Now” dropped when things got too hot, and its controversies became too exhausting for CBS’s chief executive, William Paley, who dropped the news show in ‘58. But Murrow cultivated a brand for himself as the tough news man who cut through the puff for the truth, and the public knew to expect it from him Stephen Colbert’s guests know what they’re in for when agreeing to be interviewed by him. Murrow showed that it was okay to slap the gentle hand of tele- vision back.“The debate over Senator McCarthy was supercharged with emotion and fervent belief,” reads “The New York Times’s” obituary on Murrow. “Since commercial television thrives by giving little offense, the medium had given the matter gingerly treatment. Mr. Murrow and his longtime co-editor, Fred W. Friendly, broke this pattern decisively.”

Perhaps the gossip in “Answered Prayers” is a far cry from journalism, a cash-in on secrets Capote’s friends told to him in confidence, and should rightfully be disdained by his sources. But it could also be the balance we need in a media industry that turns a blind eye to dicey, sensitive situations.

Obviously, journalists are well served when they look for guidance from the gaze of Murrow’s brow. And long have they done so. But if we, as journalists, remain afraid to tell true stories, no matter how unflattering to those involved, what more are we to the public than a (very poorly paid) public relations staff shelling out more spin and gloss?

This essay is published as part of the Deadline film series, produced by Interisland Terminal and The Offsetter, of which James Cave is the editor.