David Brancaccio is the kind of man who helps prove Auberon Waugh right when Waugh wrote, “Generally speaking, the best people nowadays go into journalism, the second best into business, the rubbish into politics, and the shits into law.”
As a journalist and broadcaster, Brancaccio has a long-standing reputation for objective reporting, clever insight, and careful doses of urgency in covering immediate human issues ranging from democracy and reproductive rights to tribal bloodshed in Kenya. Starting with his public radio stretch to his now more visible position as host of the much-lauded newsmagazine NOW on PBS, Brancaccio consistently evinces the moral force of compassionate yet equitable bulletins and dispatches of “the fourth estate.”
Last Tuesday, Brancaccio visited the F&M and local community for a presentation, arranged meetings, and Q&A sessions.
Upon meeting him, it’s abundantly clear that his demeanor accurately reflects the tenor and superior quality of his print and televised commentary: casual but engaged, yet sincere. While chatting with students he just met, Brancaccio spontaneously discusses the peculiarity of “anti-Americanism” in the U.K. press (particularly in some of the more Labour Party-backing tabloids), the lunacy of Robert Fisk (The Independent’s Middle East correspondent who has pretty much done everything short of labeling Barack Obama as Planet Earth’s Warlord-in-Chief), and even the virtue of being a science major (“Go bio!” he says at dinner with his right fist elevated in a high-school-cheer manner).
Next came Brancaccio’s special event, “Adventures in Economic Disaster: What the Financial Crisis Means for Justice and Jobs in the Next Generation.” The event, held in Barshinger Center for Musical Arts and sponsored by The Center for Liberal Arts & Society-sponsored, began with a amusingly elaborate punch line, as he attempted to convince the audience that the worldwide economic calamity was caused by a black hole created by the Large Hadron Collider’s 2008-2009 activation of the alleged “God Particle” (when the machine was turned on the first time, “AIG disappeared,” and when the machine was switched on a second time, “Dubai disappeared” within the same week).
He quickly shifted to topics ranging from corporate bullying and their litigious strong-arming of elected officials, botched insurance coverage in the private sector, unemployment uncertainties, and the question of “what funds ‘original’ journalism.” In discussing democracy and the future of news gathering, he stressed that, “good news stories are a meshing” of professional, reliable sources (New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, what have you) and “grassroots-level” reporting (anecdotes, the Everyman, working communities, etc.). As for the coexistence between blogs, big-name newspapers, and propagandistic 24-hour news cyclones, he had this to say with a fitting measure of concern: “How can you have a functioning democracy when you can’t agree on the basic facts?”
“We need to have a national conversation about who we are,” Brancaccio emphasized, as he talked about looking beyond the prism of economics and pegging the pressing American dilemmas as inextricably social, political, and educational.
Near the end of the evening’s discussion, he was gracious enough to reveal his “cheap advice” for succeeding in realms like television journalism:
“1) Show up to work on time. 2) Don’t drink to excess. 3) Shower occasionally. And 4) Learn Mandarin.”
(On a disconsolate personal note, I’m at a loss on all four pointers. I show up an average of four minutes late to everything, I frequently guzzle airline red wine while gardening, I shower to excess, and I can’t tell or hear the difference between Mandarin and Klingon.)
Most notably, Brancaccio never fell prey to the egregious sin of taking himself (or global financial implosion, or teachers unions, or The Economist nerd staff, or Dick Cheney, or public broadcasting, or free enterprise...) too seriously. And that fact alone was worth my time spent sequestered in some discolored, shabby corner of Barshinger.
Junior Asawin Suebsaeng is the Managing Editor. His e-mail is asawin.suebsaeng@fandm.edu.
