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 Hello/Intro Gwen Ifill |
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| Conversation Gwen |
Key: American History/ Biography |
| Gwen Part two |
Key: Women |
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| Hello/Intro Gwen Ifill |
Web Promo |
| Conversation Gwen |
Key: American History/ Biography |
| Gwen Part two |
Key: Women |
| Hello/Intro Gwen Ifill Return to index of stories... |
Hello. I'm Richard Ager and welcome to NH Outlook. During her distinguished career in journalism, Gwen Ifill has broken a number of barriers including becoming the first Aftrican-American woman to host a national political talk show. She has now hosted Washington Week for a decade and become a senior correspondent on the PBS NewsHour. And through it all, the subject of race - and how America deals with it - has been a constant. From encountering racist slurs to witnessing the election of the first black president, Gwen Ifill has written and talked about race while striving to maintain a journalist's perspective. I spoke with Gwen Ifill during a recent visit to New Hampshire. |
| Conversation Gwen Return to index of stories... |
WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER THE EXPECTATIONS HE MIGHT HAVE HAD, BEING THE DAUGHTER OF A PREACHER? Well first of all, everybody was watching all the time. When you're a preacher's kid, everybody feel that they own some part of you and you learned how to behave just in case someone was watching. But truthfully, my father really was a kind of a social justice creature in many respects so he was very engaged in the world around him and the possibility that government, or politics or civil rights could change our lives. So we always saw the connection from early on that speaking of, or participating could have a direct connection on the life you live. And so as a result I think all of us children came away with this understanding that public service was a good thing, that engagement was a good thing. And I also grew up in the 60's and so I saw the connection between people marching the streets and laws getting past. So I think that even without being conscious of it at the time we took all those lessons. YOU KNOW I READ THE PART OF YOUR "DAILY DIET" WITH THE NIGHTLY NEWS… It's true, it's true. We watched the news first thing in the morning, we got afternoon papers at our house so we came home from school and the news paper would be there. We believed everything in it was God's truth. To this day, and that's the way it is. And as a result, I was always exposed. NOW YOU WENT ON OF COURSE TO GET AN EDUCATION WITH SIMMONS COLLEGE, WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO SETTLE ON JOURNALISM? You know, I decided very early on that I wanted to be a journalist. I was probably nine years old. I decided I liked to write a lot. It was really fun for me to write. And I also decided that I needed a deadline because I couldn't get any of it done. And so by reading news papers and seeing it at the house I saw the connections between actually writing something, getting it done, and then putting a by-line on it. Which was a really nice way of getting credit for the work you did and satisfying your curiosity at the same time so journalism seemed like the only place I could end up. NOW YOU GOT AN INTERNSHIP AT A FAIRLY MAJOR PAPER, THE HERALD AMERICAN OF BOSTON BUT I READ THAT IT WAS NOT AN ENTIRELY PLEASANT EXPERIENCE. Well, you know I got that internship when I was a junior in college and I worked there for the summer as a gofer, I went for this, I went for that, and we got along fine. I was unlike anything anyone in that news room had ever seen at the time; which was an educated black woman, and there weren't a lot of those around at the Boston Herald American. But when it came time for me to leave, and go back to school, shortly before I left, I came to work one day and I found a note with a racial slur on it at my work space and I thought, my first thought was, "I wonder who this is for?" But my second thought, which tells you a little bit about the way I saw myself, I didn't see myself as that kind of name, the "N Word" and I decided to show it to my boss who was horrified and he showed it to his boss who was horrified. And even though it was an off-putting experience, there response was to say, "Where so sorry this happened, if you ever need a job, come back and work here." And my response, initially was, "Never, I will never work with these racists." A year later, when I was looking for a job, it looked really good that there was an offer on the table so that's how I got in to working in a news room. Even though I was doing entry-level work, it got me a chance to get in, and then once I was there, I could perform. WELL YOU KNOW, IN YOUR BOOK, 'THE BREAKTHOUGH OF POLITICS OF RACE IN AGE OF OBAMA' YOU BEGIN COMING OFF ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE AT THE HERALD AMERICAN. AND THIS QUOTE IS WONDERUL, BECAUSE YOU SAY, YOU BEGIN WITH: "I LEARNED HOW TO COVER RACE RIOTS BY TELEPHONE, THEY DIDN'T PAY ME ENOUGH AT MY FIRST NEWS PAPER JOB TO VENTURE ONTO THE GROUNDS OF SOUTH BOSTON HIGH SCHOOL." THIS WAS OBVIOUSLY WHEN THOSE RIOTS WERE GOING ON. AND YOU WOULD REPORT, THEN HOW DID YOU GET THE STORY? I was being paid thirteen thousand dollars a year exactly. I would call the headmaster on the phone and say "what happened that day, how many chairs were broken?" essentially in Southie and then a white colleague would go in and would report and would bring back information for me to complete the story. So if you look at the stories now, they were always double bi-lines, because it was me, writing from the office where it was safe, and my white colleague who would actually go on the site and even then, I was pretty matter-of-fact about this. This was just how you had to go about it. I didn't spend a lot of time raging at the unfairness of it all and just did my job. YOU KNOW IN LOOKING BACK IN YOUR BOOK YOU WRITE IN THE YEAR 1977 I QUOTE "BOSTON WAS A WASH IN THE SORT OF RACIAL DRAMA THAT FORESHADOWS DRAMATIC CHANGE." WHAT SORT OF CHANGE- HOW WOULD YOU CHARACTERIZE THE CHANGE THAT HAS COME SINCE THEN INCREMENTALLY? Well, it's interesting. When I started writing this book, I had a very simplistic idea of what it was going to be. It was going to be a story about black, educated, people who, given access to things their parents were denied could now break through and run for mayor and governor. It seemed really simple. But as I kept reporting it, I found out it was so much more complicated. There were cities like Atlanta, where the breakthrough was or even in Alabama where the breakthrough were black officials, who came into power during the civil rights movement, now giving up that power to a younger generation of black people. It was people within families who didn't have a basic agreement about things like school vultures. They're all African American but they were handing power off. And whenever power is handed off, whether it's the Bromans or the Irish, or in New York, whether it was the Italians or the Jews, there became this- 'I want my power'. It wasn't about the ethnicity it was about control. |
| Gwen Part two Return to index of stories... |
SO YOU HAD NO IDEA OF COURSE ALWAYS AT THE TIME THAT OBAMA WAS GOING END UP WHERE HE ENDED UP. It's embarrassing how little idea I had. IT'S KIND OF LIKE YOU WANTED TO WRITE A BOOK ON UNDERCURRENT AND IT BECAME A RIPTIDE. I had this, the publisher wanted me to write a book about Barack Obama; Next black president. At this point, I thought that was a ridiculous notion and so I said "how about this idea instead?" That talked about Deval Patrick and Massachusetts, and Cory Booker in Newark, and Artur Davis in Alabama, and how Barack Obama is not the only one, and they bought that. But as I worked on it, it became clear that this phenomena was unfolding in front of me and it provided me the pad to tell these other stories and he was the overview, but he wasn't the whole story. WHEN DID YOU FIRST ENCOUNTER OBAMA, WHEN DID YOU FIRST SERIOUSLY DEVELOP THE IDEA THAT THIS GUY COULD ACTUALLY DO IT? Well, you know the first time I met him, interestingly enough was on the podium at the 2004 democratic national convention- right after he had given that big speech. We had prearranged that we were going to interview this guy who's giving the key note speech for the news hour with the understanding that he was the senate candidate from Illinois. JUST THE SENATE CANDIDATE, WHAT'S HE DOING GETTING A KEY NOTE SPEECH? Yeah, we knew there was something- there was a lot of buzz, but no one was thinking presidency- he wasn't thinking it. When he came off the stage that night, the place was on fire. It was- everything was sparkly. And he walked over to where I stood, he and Michelle Obama, and for this interview, and they both had this dazed look in their eyes, and I had a dazed look in my eye because I was standing facing that room- It was remarkable. So I thought "this is a remarkable moment" and I thought nothing more of it. I think I asked him a dumb question like "how do you feel?" or something and he was like, "I just hope I didn't screw up." That was his answer to the question. So now, four years later, no one expected, certainly he, that he would be the one standing on that stage accepting the nomination. YOU KNOW, YOU WRITE A FAIR AMOUNT ALSO IN THE BOOK ABOUT THE MAN WHO HAD GOTTEN THE FURTHEST BEFORE OBAMA, WHICH WAS JESSE JACKSON WITH HIS RUNS IN 1984 AND 19- AND EVEN MORE IN 1988. REMARKABLE PERFORMACE- THAT SCORING WINS IN MICHIGAN AND I'M WONDERING HOW YOU DIFFERENTIAED IN LOOKING AT HOW JESSE HAD DONE IT, AND GOTTEN AS AFAR AS HE DID AS OPPOSE TO HOW OBAMA WAS DOING IT. I don't think that reverend Jackson got enough credit for what he was able to do in 1984 and 1988. He won thirteen contests in 1988. He lasted all the way to the Democratic National Convention and challenged Michael Dukakis to pay attention to him. He even wanted the vice presidency and didn't get it. But by laying the ground work, people forget that one of the things that reverend Jackson did was that he created a true rainbow coalition. He got support from white voters, from Latino voters, and for a lot of people he was the first introduction to the idea that you could vote for a black person for president. So when Barack Obama came along, 10 years, 14 years later, a lot of that had already been addressed. It seemed conceivable because of reverend Jackson. And reverend Jackson didn't I think in some ways get the credit he deserved for having laid that ground-work. 16:15:30 COLIN POWELL - AHEAD OF HIS TIME…OTHER INTERESTS…BUFFALO SOLDIERS YOU KNOW, YOU BROUGHT UP THE CASE OF DOUG WILDER WHO WAS THE FIRST BLACK GOVERNER OF VIRIGINA AND HE BECAME A LITTLE BITTER IT SOUNDED BECAUSE HE FELT THAT HE HAD BEEN PROMISED A LOT OF SUPPORT, AND HE ENDED UP SAYING 'THEY LIED TO ME, THEY WILL ALWAYS LIE'. AND YOU QUOTE HIM AS SAYING THAT 'RACISM IS NEVER GOING AWAY.' 16:07:48 Yeah. He actually believed that and he also believed that he would have gotten more support but for his race- even when he won, even in the year that he won. He subscribes to a notion of what some people call the "Bradley Theory" which was after Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles ran for governor of California and he lost by so much more than anyone expected that the final polls had shown. 16:08:15 People said that maybe this was because of race; that people went into the polls and voted differently than they said. They also said that it would happen with any other black candidate for state-wide races and higher. They said it would happen for Barack Obama but when you look at the final numbers, especially at the Obama race, more white people voted for Barack Obama than for John Kerry four years before. 16:08:38 What does that mean? Who are those people? Was it race that was driving that? Or perhaps it was a bigger issue than race. Perhaps race is a big factor in our society but not THE factor or the defining conclusion that folks draw. NOW, AS A REPORTER COVERING MAJOR CANDIDATES IN A NUMBER OF THESE CONTESTS, I'M SURE THAT YOU DEVELOPED YOU OWN PERSONAL OPINIONS ON THEIR QUALITIES BUT HOW DO YOU KEEP YOURSELF FROM being unbiased? I get that question a lot from young people, in part because they cannot imagine that there is any kind of journalism that is not opinion journalism. And I came up at an age when no kind of journalism was opinion, it was already straight ahead. So it's never really been hard for me because I feel like if I form an opinion about a candidate, then I stop listening for things. 16:04:51 It's- I remember once I went to cover Pat Robertson, the televangelist when he was running for president. I remember going in there with the preconception that this crowd was going to be, I don't know, a little biased, a little rube. I didn't know. All I know is when I walked in that room, everybody there were regular folks who were just worried about their kids and worried about their futures. That's why they were coming to talk- to listen to Pat Roberston. 16:05:12 And I found that even though the crowds were mostly white, they had a lot in common with crowds that were mostly back who were going to see Jesse Jackson. They were opposite ends of the political spectrum but they were speaking the same kind of truths, or at least they were hearing the same kind of truths from both of them. 16:05:27 So that taught me that politics, is politics, but what people are hearing, and what they're seeing and why they're voting is based on things much more profound and in things we have a lot more in common. So to form an opinion that this guy's clearly the best guy means I'm shutting off part of the argument. ACTUAL SET TO MODERATE THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE. AND THE EXISTANCE OF THIS, I GUESS PARTIALLY COMPLETE MANUSCRIPT BECAME AN ISSUE SAYING, YOU'RE OBVIOUSLY AN OBAMA SUPPORTER, AND THEREFORE NOT QUALIFIED. 16:09:13 IT ALL SEEMED TO WORK OUT, BUT HOW DID YOU DEAL WITH THAT? You know, it's interesting. I learned a lot because I'm not used to being in the middle of the vortex, in fact I really don't do well. But fortunately, I was so much focused on the debate, getting the debate done that I was protected in lots of ways from this little drama that came up. I realized that once, I had written several articles talking about this book so it had been out there, people knew it existed. So the fact that it came up two days before the debate signaled to me that someone was trying to use it as a battering-ram to shake me up. I'M SHOCKED. And that part was fine. What I wanted to make sure however, that people understood because I cared about my reputation, I spent thirty years trying to be right down the middle was that I hadn't written the Obama chapter yet and part of the reason that I hadn't written it yet was because I didn't know how it was going to end. And I was not rooting for him consciously because I was trying to hold out the possibility of all kinds of outcomes. 16:10:10 I focused all my energy and it was quite a lot of energy, because your working full time, your work-covering a campaign like this full time, and writing a book and all the other chapters about the other people. About women in politics and about the other breakthroughs and purposely withholding back about the Obama piece and to the extent I had written anything I kept putting biographical stuff in, and then rewriting that, so I hadn't decided where I was landing or the conclusion, much to my publisher's frustration it should be said I had not finished any of this. So, a lot of the dust-up was trying to shake up the rest part of it and part of it was raising- just planting the idea in people's minds that a black moderator couldn't be fair to a black candidate even though, ah, he wasn't on the stage it was actually Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. So after a while you just sit back. You understand what's going on, you understand that there's a game that's being played, and you don't play along. I'D LIKE TO JUMP TO THAT SUMMER NIGHT IN DENVER.BECAUSE THE FIRST THING YOU ACTUALLY WRITE ABOUT IT IS, 'I DO NOT BELIVE THIS TO BE A POST-RACIAL MOMENT' BECAUSE THAT'S A WAY OF EXPLORING WELL WHAT DOES POST-RACIAL MEAN. IT'S ALMOST LIKE IT'S AN IDEAL THAT SOME STRIVE FOR, SOME DREAM OF, SOME MAY NEVER WISH, BUT WHAT WAS YOUR MEANING OF THAT TERM AND WHY DID YOU FEEL IT NECISSARY TO MAKE THAT DISTINCTION JUST AS MUCH OF THE NATION WAS CELEBRATING THEIR FIRST BLACK NOMINEE? I think it's great that he's the first black nominee but to suggest that you don't want something to be post-racial suggests there's something wrong with race. I find that we're not really good at viewing race as a positive. The idea that I don't wake up every morning bemoaning my terrible fate of being born an African American surprises some people. I think it's a good thing. I think it adds something to my life. I don't think it has anything to do with anybody else's life necessarily. So to say let's transcend race, or let's get passed race suggests to me you think there's something wrong because if you thought it was good, you wouldn't want to get passed it. So how do we value the politics of difference? What's different about us- without devaluing the other person's essence? And that's what I mean when I saw we are not post-racial because I don't know that we need to be. YOU THINK ACCORDING TO THAT THEORY THERE WOULD BE NO MORE CARRIBEAN RESTAURANTS, NO MORE JAPANESE RESTAURANTS? At the very least, our quizeen would suffer. YOU KNOW, YOU DO QUOTE JULIAN BOND ON THE DECLINE OF SEGREGATION AND HE HAD A CONCERN ACTUALLY BECAUSE ONE EFFECT WAS THE DISIPATION OF THE COMMON BONDS THAT UNITED THE BLACK POPULATION. I DON'T SAY COMMUNITY BECAUSE I GUESS BY HIS IMPLICATION IT'S BEING FRACTURED. "WE LIVED TOGETHER", TO QUOTE HIM, "WE READ THE SAME NEWSPAPERS." AND THAT BROUGHT TO MIND THE QUESTIONS OF WHETHER BARACK OBAMA WAS BLACK ENOUGH? It was one of the most infuriating moments in the campaign when people kept asking him "are you black enough?" I talked to the mayor of Philadelphia who's African American and he said, "what does that mean? Does it mean that my pants don't hang low? Does it mean I'm supposed to turn my hat to the side? What does that mean being "black enough"?" And people- I think it often came from other black people. They're asking- and I realized that after I broke it down that people weren't asking about skin color, it was asking about authenticity, it was asking 'do you speak for me?' When white voters said, 'I don't know if he's too black?' What they meant was "this guy Jeremiah Wright, is that who he is? That guy scares me. Does he speak for me?" So when we start to put these definitions on who people are and whether they're enough of something or too much of something else it's code for saying "Will you represent me?" And every elected official whether you're a city council president or dog catcher or Governor or President only gets elected if they convince voters that they are going to represent their interests. And that is all I - I've decided that these questions about people's authenticity is ever about whether it's about racial authenticity or whether it's about "You're just too rich to be like me or you're just too poor to be like me or you're too rural or too urban." It all boils down to "How much of my interests do you share?" You are referring to over in racism during the campaign, you wrote; "its hard to pick a favorite outrage, there were men in war, monkey shirts, elected officials who called them upidity." I mean how do you not make too much of the crazies at the fringe of the crowd? I could have written a whole chapter of the crazies at the fringe of the crowd. I didn't do that because I didn't want to give it too much. You have to acknowledge what's out there, the question is how much weight you want to give it. I think you give it-you acknowledge what's there and you don't over react to it. |
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| Key: American History/ Biography Return to index of stories... |
NEW HAMPSHIRE OUTLOOK Air Date/Time: 1/1/2010 HOST: Richard Ager Length: 25:42 Hello. I'm Richard Ager and welcome to NH Outlook. During her distinguished career in journalism, Gwen Ifill has broken a number of barriers including becoming the first Aftrican-American woman to host a national political talk show. She has now hosted Washington Week for a decade and become a senior correspondent on the PBS NewsHour. And through it all, the subject of race - and how America deals with it - has been a constant. From encountering racist slurs to witnessing the election of the first black president, Gwen Ifill has written and talked about race while striving to maintain a journalist's perspective. I spoke with Gwen Ifill during a recent visit to New Hampshire. PRODUCER/REPORTER: Richard Ager NAME OF PARTICIPANTS: Gwen Ifill\Journalist. |
| Key: Women Return to index of stories... |
NEW HAMPSHIRE OUTLOOK Air Date/Time: 1/1/2010 HOST: Richard Ager Length: 25:42 Hello. I'm Richard Ager and welcome to NH Outlook. During her distinguished career in journalism, Gwen Ifill has broken a number of barriers including becoming the first Aftrican-American woman to host a national political talk show. She has now hosted Washington Week for a decade and become a senior correspondent on the PBS NewsHour. And through it all, the subject of race - and how America deals with it - has been a constant. From encountering racist slurs to witnessing the election of the first black president, Gwen Ifill has written and talked about race while striving to maintain a journalist's perspective. I spoke with Gwen Ifill during a recent visit to New Hampshire. PRODUCER/REPORTER: Richard Ager NAME OF PARTICIPANTS: Gwen Ifill\Journalist. |