Steven Erlanger is currently the Jerusalem Bureau Chief for The New York Times. He has covered much of the world for the Times, including Southeast Asia and Central Europe. Here he is in conversation with The Media Line's Felice Friedson.
TML: Do you sometimes feel pressurized because of the scrutiny that you talk about
ERLANGER: We try all the time to write good journalism and good journalism is knowing as much as you can know in the time that's allotted to you in the space that you have, but here, one thinks a lot about the language that she uses, you have to, and you think a lot about what is fair and fairness has to be judged over time. I mean not every story is going to mention every issue that matters to every single person. That's impossible, but over time coverage needs to deal with the legitimate and sometimes not so legitimate, complaints, pains, difficulties, troubles, victims of all sides.
TML: Can two unlike entities be covered the same?
ERLANGER: You can't cover them the same, because they have different dynamics. They have different issues, different problems…education. They're different polities… but I think you can and you must bring the same principles of journalistic practice to your coverage of both and it can make both societies very uncomfortable.
TML: What would you like newspaper readers to understand about the work of a field reporter?
ERLANGER: I would like them to understand…editors to understand too…that stories do not just appear full blown on a screen or a piece of paper, they are made of a long series of judgments, …[they're made from a long series, some stories are faster than other stories]. You bring your whole experience to bear, and sometimes you're lucky and sometimes you get the people that you need to talk to in time and sometimes you're unlucky and sometimes things get cut out of your copy in the middle of the night because suddenly an ad pops up or some space shrinks or something else happens they have to cram into the paper and they end up taking out just the balancing paragraph you worked so very hard to get in and when you went to bed was in and that's the part that hurts because then you get attacked by people and you know why they are attacking. And you go through this bit of a crisis, because obviously I stand by what was printed, but sometimes you know what is printed isn't exactly what I would have liked to be printed, but it's not my job to try to blame other people...
It is people making judgments, these are not opinionated judgments, these are judgments about what needs to be done, and what holes there are and doing it very often very late at night, very early in the morning, traveling distances, going out into the field, sometimes being shot at and sometimes not. People are not kind of sitting around on their behinds in air-conditioned offices all the time opining -- that is not what we do. And that's what I hope people will understand.
There isn't a kind of scoreboard that we use, what we try to do is over time, is to give people the best, most accurate narrative that we can and that's partly about analysis, context…
TML: Doesn’t it become extremely complex when you have all these different standards (European, American, etc.) of journalism? Is it difficult to find that common ground?
ERLANGER: It is difficult. Long ago I stopped feeling responsible for other journalists. I mean I feel responsible for my journalists. I feel responsible for the New York Times. I don’t even want to feel responsible for other good journalists, though there are plenty of them, and I certainly don't want to feel responsible for Israeli or Palestinian journalists. They do their job the way their bosses want them to do it.
I do think Palestinian journalism is a fascinating area. Partly because, you know the influence of the Israeli democracy, however flawed that democracy is, has had an enormous impact on Palestinian society and it has created all kinds of new, and I think very important expectations among a younger generation of Palestinian journalists, of what it is to be a journalist and to have freedom of expression and press. And I've been very struck by the open reaction of some Palestinian journalists against efforts to muzzle them by certain officials…
TML: What is your favorite kind of story to write?
ERLANGER: It's a story that stands for something larger, but that involves people whose lives are affected by larger waves of political or historical change. [My favorite kind of story is really about the people caught up in war or political movement in Gaza. There are interesting stories about people who built they're whole lives on a dream or on a promise. And as one women said to me the other day, when they pull the rug out from under your feet it's hard to keep your balance… so I love stories that actually strip away people's normal social face. War can do that and pain can do that and injury can do that. Happiness can do it, success, lots of things can do it. And when you begin to see people as they actually are when they're not conscious of how they're acting and to try to capture that in prose that does credit to what the reality is that gives historical context, that provides readers that real people are going through an important moment of larger change…
TML: Why did you choose to go into journalism?
ERLANGER: It's always surprising, people are surprising. Someone asked me once if there was, if I had found much nobility in the world and I said, "No, not too much." But what always pleases me is that I usually found it where I least expected to find it.
To hear the interview in its entirety, click on Audio.
