Latest news with #WhenTheGoingWasGood
The National
03-07-2025
- Politics
- The National
In a dangerous era journalism needs to show some backbone again
Having spent almost my entire working life in journalism, it's almost a given then that at some point during a break, I reflect on the nature of the job and profession that has engaged me for the best part of 40 years. Two things added to that sense of questioning journalism's meaning during my brief time off. The first was my choice of holiday reading, a memoir of Graydon Carter the one-time editor of Vanity Fair magazine aptly titled When The Going Was Good, and the other was the death earlier this week of the great foreign correspondent, author and ITN news presenter Sandy Gall, with whom a certain generation of readers will no doubt be familiar. READ MORE: The 26 MPs who voted against proscribing Palestine Action It was Gall himself who in great part inspired my own initial reporting sorties in Afghanistan back in the early 80s when I first met him and before the country and its travails became a near obsession for the both of us. Both Carter and Gall were journalists of what some might call the 'golden age' of reporting in the 60s, 70s and 80s. It was a time when budgets were high, as were the expectations of readers and viewers of the journalists they depended on to cover and explain the great stories of the time. Journalism back then seemed to have a clear sense of purpose in holding power to account with a laser-like probing power. No story was too far away. No person was exempt from scrutiny should they cross the line of acceptable political behaviour. Be it Watergate or war reporting, the journalists' beat knew few limits. It was a time too before 'fake news', a time also before journalists became targets – literally – for doing their job, or so it seems when looking back. The reality of course is slightly different, for such threats have in fact always posed a challenge to the media going about their work, just perhaps not to the extent they do now. Which brings me to the dire state of so much of today's journalism, for what a contrast there is between those times when Carter and Gall were in their heyday compared to the media landscape of today. For barring a few brave and notable exceptions, so much of our media landscape now seems inhabited by quislings and cowards. With hand on heart, I can say I've never at one and the same time been so ashamed and also so proud of some of my media colleagues. No story epitomises this right now more than events in Gaza and the Middle East. On the one side we have journalists seemingly paralysed by fear of asking the questions that need to be asked of our politicians and on the other, the resounding bravery of our Palestinian colleagues who pursue their reporting with a courage the like of which has rarely been matched by the global media in modern times. In such a climate, the likes of the BBC hides behind words like 'the perception of partiality,' in justifying its decision not to air the documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, leaving it to Channel 4 to pick up. But leaving Gaza aside, there is a much deeper malaise in journalism right now. Some of it is a result of the media's own making. Lack of investment, a dearth of imagination whereby the easy option rather than the 'difficult-to-tell-story' is the order of the day. Then there are the shortcomings too when it comes to maximising the potential use of new formats and platforms. Producing quality and in some cases great journalism, as the days of Carter, Gall and their generation showed, was never cheap, and the age-old maxim that you pay for what you get is something the industry singularly fails to recognise today. But putting these internal inadequacies aside for a moment, there is another far more potent force undermining today's journalism. I'm speaking of course about the way prominent politicians the world over are directly attacking 'troublesome' journalists with threats, lawsuits, or worse. As Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, a senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, pointed out last year, many of these politicians are pressuring media companies to remove their work. 'They belittle and vilify individual reporters when it suits them, often singling out women and minorities. They encourage their supporters to distrust the news and sometimes incite them to attack journalists,' Nielsen rightly observed. Across the world – everywhere you look right now – a growing number of governments and political authorities are not fulfilling their role as guarantors of the best possible environment for journalism. Intimidation and censorship are today almost at unprecedented levels. Any thinking person too will recognise that at their worst, political threats to journalism are often part of wider, systematic, sustained efforts to weaken, undermine, or even dismantle the formal and informal institutions of democracy. As outright political hostility to journalism grows, so the media needs allies and support from other quarters. As Professor Nielsen says, this effectively means the public that the media aim and claim to serve. 'At its best journalism has much to offer the public,' Nielen attests, and he's right. That much was evident back 'when the going was good', in those days that Graydon Carter refers to and when journalism served the public. For that to happen again today two things especially are needed amongst others. The first is that public support must again be won over to deter political attacks and at least help build resilience to resist attempts to undermine independent news media. The second is that journalism today has to find and show some spine again. In a dangerous era for the media, it must stop playing the role of political quisling. Instead, it should again aspire to be brave, dogged, resolute, and not shirk from calling out those deserving of it.
Ottawa Citizen
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Ottawa Citizen
Graydon Carter's toques to riches story began with 'instructive failures' in Ottawa
One of the most celebrated magazine editors of his generation, Graydon Carter grew up in Ottawa an unlikely success. Article content Article content His altogether miraculous rise from university dropout — he was a distracted student at both uOttawa and Carleton — to the editor's chair at Vanity Fair during the golden age of magazines is chronicled in his new memoir, 'When The Going Was Good.' Article content Article content Carter, now 75 and the eminence grise of New York City style, spent his formative years in Manor Park, where he was a resentful victim of Ottawa's winter, much burdened by its wools and flannels. Article content Article content The book reveals he was so directionless as a young man that he fell into the federal bureaucracy — and narrowly escaped a career as a public servant. Article content 'I had dreams, but nobody would have ever called me ambitious,' writes Carter. 'It could also be said that my parents, and indeed a good number of my friends, thought that life, in the professional sense, had little in store for me.' Article content Carter's Saskatchewan-born father, Edward, was a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot and Second World War veteran who loved nothing more than to fart and to collect wood. He won the heart of Graydon's mother, by among other things, farting loudly in a crowded movie theatre and blaming her for the crime, and he boasted to friends of his ability to bum trumpet the theme song from 'The Bridge On The River Kwai.' Article content Article content Carter remembers being press-ganged to poach firewood from the Greenbelt. His father was 'a bit tight,' Carter reports, and would regularly enlist him and his brother to help troll National Capital Commission forest in search of felled logs. Article content Article content 'Like moonshiners,' he writes, 'we did all this in the near dark, with just the jerky movements of my father's spotlight casting an eerie silent-movie aspect to the agony.' Article content Carter's mother, Margaret Kelk, was considerably more refined. The daughter of a soap executive, she grew up in Toronto's Forest Hill neighbourhood, attended Havergal College, and summered at the family's Muskoka cottage. She was dating the captain of the University of Toronto football team when Edward Carter suddenly blew into her life. Article content They married in September 1946, and welcomed their first son, Graydon, three years later. In the early 1950s, the family moved to Zweibrücken, Germany, where Edward Carter was stationed with the RCAF.
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘You Did Not!': Ex-Vanity Fair Editor Stuns Anderson Cooper With How He Trolled Trump
Graydon Carter, the former longtime editor of Vanity Fair, surprised CNN's Anderson Cooper with a story about how he once trolled Donald Trump ― and hit a particularly sore spot for the now-president. Carter's feud with Trump dates back decades when, in GQ magazine, he described Trump's 'too large' cufflinks and 'too small' hands in what was Trump's 'first national exposure,' he told Cooper. 'That drove him crazy,' Carter recalled on Monday while promoting his new memoir, 'When The Going Was Good.' Carter's Spy magazine later coined the now-infamous nickname 'short-fingered vulgarian' for Trump, a moniker Carter said 'drove him crazy' even more. 'We tried to be friends for a period, and that didn't work out,' Carter remembered. And then, just before Trump announced his 2016 presidential run, Carter said he received from him a 25-year-old ad for his 'Art of the Deal' book with Trump's hand in the promo picture circled by a gold-colored Sharpie. Next to it, Carter said, Trump had written, 'See, quite large.' Carter said he 'stapled a card to it,' writing, 'Actually quite small,' and had it hand-delivered right back to Trump. 'You did not!' Cooper exclaimed. 'I did,' Carter confirmed. 'I should have held onto it.' 'You couldn't let it go?' Cooper asked. 'It was just too easy,' Carter replied. Later in the interview, Cooper asked the Canadian-born Carter about Trump's recent rhetoric on the country, including trade war threats and his demand that it become America's 51st state. 'You cannot ask for a better neighbor. Canada is a loyal ally in times of war, a great trading partner,' Carter said. 'I'm not quite sure what he thinks the end game is here because it's not going to happen,' he added. 'Canadians do not want to be Americans. And if he goes in in the winter, he may face the same problems that Hitler did when he went into Russia in the winter. Canadians are good on ice, and they are tough.' Watch the interview here: Former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter shares details on his "short-fingered vulgarian" comment about President Trump years ago. Carter writes about that and much more in his new memoir "When the Going Was Good". — Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) March 25, 2025 Fox News Hosts Put Most Ridiculous Spin On Group War Chat Scandal Fallon Roasts Trump's Portrait Meltdown With Hilarious Blasts From The Past Critics Rip Brian Kilmeade's 'Chilling' Remark About Undocumented Immigrants
