Interview with Ed Gordon

So, what is your name and how did you spend 25 years of your life, father? My name is Ed Gordon and I spend 25 years of my life being a father to you from the age of one to your present age. What else did you do? Honestly, need there be anything else? What other monument can a father ask? How did you support this habit? Miserably, I think, but I think you're asking about my career. In fact, I know you're asking about my career. The last 25 years until I retired in January, I was a correspondent for the Voice of America. How did you get into that racket? I would like to say by default, but actually, I wanted to be in news. I was one of the fortunate people who knew from the age of six what they wanted to do.

And in sixth grade, I edited a class newspaper, one page-type sheet that ended abruptly when I printed a joke. What was the joke? Let's see if I can recall. Oh, yes, it went something like this. The husband says to the wife or the wife says to the husband, you've got to get shades for the bedroom window because the neighbors might see me and he replied, don't worry, when they see you, they'll buy the shades. While I admit, for a sixth grade humor, it wasn't bad, but I don't think it would hold up in this present day of permissiveness. And was it uphill from there?

I'd rather consider that the peak of my career, but at any rate, it's the story of being involved with junior high and high school and college newspapers. And when I was 17, my second job, the first in a bank lasted for two months. When I lost about a million dollars worth of uncancelled checks in the subway, my first real job was at the New York Times as a copyboy. And within a year and a half, I became a reporter. And how long? What sort of stories did you cover for the Times? Like most young reporters, I covered basically police news plus teachers and I had to dig up myself and that went on until, well, actually till I was 26, till I was your age. And then how did you end up working for Voice of America? Well, after I was fired from the Times and what were you fired for?

I never really knew, Peter. I discovered later from my own reconstruction that you can't go up to your boss with a look on your face that indicates that he's the biggest son of a bitch you have ever met. It just doesn't work out. Somehow, that gets across to him and he sort of takes a dislike to you. But they found a number of reasons for getting rid of me. The union wanted to take it up mainly because a year before or two years before I had been brought up by the Times management and another union fight as the ideal type of young reporter they wanted. So the turnaround in two years was quite being quite significant. At any rate, when I left the Times, I decided I did not want to work for a commercial outfit. I made two applications.

One was to the United Nations, UN Radio and the other was to the Voice of America both because people at the Times had known people at these organizations and suggested I go up to see them. And then what year was this? This was in 1951. Actually, I wasn't hired at the Voice until April of 1952. Had you done any work in radio before then? Rather, superficially doing some work with WQXR and News Bulletin, WQXR is the New York Good Music Station that's owned by the New York Times and the Times City Room supplied the News Bulletin and also very early in my career. And I think in my first days as a reporter, I used to write the moving headlines

that went around the Times Building in Times Square. I don't believe they're doing that now. Well, I haven't been back to New York and God knows how many years. And I think that's rather sad. I was a bit of a ham, I guess, because I used to go down into Times Square and watch the people reading my headlines. If you write a poem or you write a book or you do something like that, you can't get your audience reaction, but I had it right there. I think maybe that's one thing that always intrigued me having an audience that you could see that you could hear. Did you have any reluctant feelings about going to work for the United States government in 1951? No, I'd rather like the idea. I was at that time if you want to use a word that's come into somewhat of disuse and has a strange connotation to a great number of people.

I was patriotic. Was this type of patriotism generally persuasive at the voice? I really don't know. Or something you never talked about or thought about, you know, you're not patriotic. There were people, of course, there, and these were the people from countries that had been taken over who, what you might call super patriots, there was an either or and there was no in between for them. But in the newsroom, they were ordinarily general, run-of-the-mill news people, not run-of-the-mill, they were excellent news people, and I rather enjoyed working with them.

Was there, what were the effects of the McCarthy hearings? Well, these were rather devastating. Personally, I was out of a job for ten months. We used to fit through the hearings. They were on the speakers that were in our newsroom and listened to what was taking place and recognizing and associate every now and then who had decided to become the savior of the Western world by telling the bobs between cone and shine, some things that they thought were rather egregious at the voice. And he's consisted of, oh, I remember one that our religious editor was really an atheist, beautiful stuff. What were the more interesting assignments that you had?

You mean over the last 25 years, during the 50s, during the Eisenhower administration? Well, I was basically a news writer in the newsroom in the 50s. I never really got out much. I was not a correspondent. I was a writer, a feature writer, a documentary writer. I headed the documentary unit at one time. Really, the only outside work that I did, a couple of sessions at the UN and one trip to Bermuda when Eisenhower met with McMillan. So basically, it was all office work. Proponderantly. Then I remember you got sent to Germany in 1963. It was awfully nice of you to remember and send as much as we took you with us.

Let's say in 1963, I ended being the head of the documentary unit which I ran for about two years and went out to Europe as a foreign correspondent. What was it like for you being away from the United States between 1963 and 1968? Well, there were some rather difficult times. Personally, there was the time your grandfather died and we could not be there. And much more generally, there are things such as the death of Jack Kennedy, death of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King. We had met King when he came through Munich.

In fact, your mother spent an afternoon with another woman escorting King and Abernathy around the bearish dubious of Munich. When you were basically a correspondent of Eastern European affairs, it developed that way. Let me get back to that. I don't think I really answered your previous question. It is very strange to be away from your home country when things of great moment are happening. The death of a president is, you know, offices, especially by assassination is something that is rather soul-fearing. I don't know how you feel now since we've gone through Watergate, but before there was a feeling of permanence about the president and his young as he was,

Jack Kennedy was still sort of like a father figure to a great many of us. So when Jack Kennedy was killed, we were sort of on an island cast off away from everything. Oh, we did our stories. There were plenty of reaction stories to do in Europe, but it was still a feeling of removal from what was taking place. And we came home right after the 1968 Chicago demonstration. And that was rather strange atmosphere to come home to. It was almost like coming into a room filled with strangers. I'd say after five years overseas. But to get back to your last question, I developed into an Eastern European correspondent.

Did you see yourself primarily as a correspondent or a gatherer of information? Or did you also see yourself as being not so much vocal, but being an American presence in these countries? I hadn't really thought about that. I'd always considered myself a correspondent. And it was the type of correspondent that had a little more edge on the other members of the press because my words, my reports, were being right back to the countries from which I reported. And it sort of, as they said in German, put you in the oraya on the spot,

all the bureaucrats and East European politicians, although whether or not they admitted it, would listen religiously. I can use that term for East and Europe to the voice of America. And they knew exactly how you were reporting, what you were saying, and how it was going over. How did they treat you? I would very good relationships in a number of countries, especially Hungary, and towards the end in Czechoslovakia, in fact, just before the Moscow take-off of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Czech radio, which was dominated by the Communist Party, of course, sent me an invitation to come in, to Prague,

to cover their Party Congress in September. He had to say that Party Congress was never held. You were in Paris during May of 1966, period? And that's right. That was the opening of the first Vietnam talks. What was it like in San Clemente, to cover in the press room? Well, now we're jumping ahead a few years, and when I was covering the Western White House, there's sort of camaraderie among the news people there, and a sense of sharing what's shareable most of the reporters with very good people, very helpful.

Are you asking what the attitude there was towards the White House? And one sense, and also, I'm just curious about your own personal, I guess, perception of Nixon being around Washington during 50s. And I guess this was probably shared by a number of the people there. Oh, my impressions of Nixon, I am happy to say, never changed. I'll admit that I was wrong in thinking that at one point that no president could ever do such a thing as that. My God, that would shake the foundation groups of the whole country. No president could do that, except if one could, and it could be, and it was Richard M. Nixon. I have a blank spot in my thoughts right now.

I think that's understandable. I think Watergate was a pretty shocking experience, a great many of us, the cynical young, the cynical newsmen, who, although they claimed, they always believed that this was possible, and they were there to ferret it out to remain to young reporters from the Washington Post to really pin it down. The newsmen did not actually print suspicions. They were tethered by the short chain of hard facts. Oh, I don't think many of them, very few, in fact, like Nixon. Do you find that being a reporter gave you or had anything to do with a certain type of cynicism, or do you feel cynical at all? I don't know what comes first, the cynicism or the desire to report,

but it's very difficult, I think, a lot of the cynicism is overrated. I think most of your good newsmen are basically not cynics, meaning that they believe the worst of everything and every possible thing. They are looking, really, I think they are looking for the better part of man. I think rather than being cynical, I think, a good number of them, a great majority, are idealists. What about you? Am I an idealist? I don't know, maybe I'm more of a romanticist. Have you ever thought of it that way? Perhaps, I don't know if I ever thought of it that way. Did you ever have stories that you did not want to do?

There are always stories that you did not want to do. I would have been very happy not to have had to do watergate. In other words, that it would just go away and never have happened. No, there were stories that were part of the work. The run of the mill dull speeches, the speeches you've heard over and over again and you still have to report because everybody else is reporting the same thing. So much hack political stuff that you have to report. I also did things that, you know, I did not especially want to report that the others didn't report because we were the voice of America and it was our job to explain through the news what this country was up to. So if from the White House, for example, they'd be one or two sentences

about Save the Wild Life Week, which somebody might include in their newspaper as a calendar of events and would not get mentioned on the domestic networks. I do a piece on Save the Wild Life explaining why we had been set aside for it. What the idea was, what the background of conservation in the federal government was going back to Teddy Roosevelt, something like that. I didn't especially want to do it. It wasn't greatly exciting, but it was part of the job. Did that include discussion of the ecological problems that are happening now in America? Of course, absolutely. I've done an awful, awfully large number of ecological environmental stories. Some of the ones I can think of are the oil spills off of Santa Barbara,

the drought, the air pollution problem, especially here in Los Angeles. No, that's something we didn't spend on. Were you given policy directives? If I did get any policy directives while I was a correspondent, it was after the fact. And when you say policy directives, I think you're thinking of, you've got to put this in, you can't put that in and so forth, am I right? Well, I wasn't being specific, but there, I guess recently, in the past year and the news, there's been, is about the voice. I can't even remember the recent case, but in terms of conflicting with state department policy. Well, there's always going to be a conflict between the voice and state department policy,

because I think state department policy is basically to say nothing about a negative story and the hopes that it'll go away. Of course, it never does. How did you get along with all the state department people when you were in Europe? For the most part, I think I got along with them very well. There are one or two stiff ones. I got to tell you about one story that I had killed. And this is when I went into Prague, once with the Secretary of Commerce, we then lose the Hodges. And it was a tiny two-engine plane, and there were maybe five in the party, and he was going to do, have some economic talks. So, naturally, we let the Secretary go down the gangplank first, and there was an old delegation of about 15 to 20 people. It was very friendly checks, so very friendly, and welcomed him warmly,

and he was rather pleased. When I wrote the story of the visit, I mentioned that the Secretary Hodges was warmly welcomed at the airport. This came to the attention of some rather benign ambassador, whose intelligence was indirect or in inverse ratio to his wealth, for the name of Outer Bridge Horsey. And the ambassador got hold of a copy of my story because I made the mistake of saving a couple of pennies, and I sent it over the embassy teletype machine to Munich. And the ambassador raised her own back in Washington, and my God, how could you even express the thought that the checks gave the Secretary a warm reception? The story never got on the air. I was rather pissed off that the story was killed.

I don't understand. He did not want the implication that the checks gave him a warm welcome. Exactly. I guess the ambassador figured that in Eastern Europe was emotionally and politically impossible for them to warmly welcome anybody. I can't go into the man's mind. It's one of those things that happened, and very rarely. There was one other one that happened when I was in Hungary, and I had been wandering around after meeting it in the Budapest press club, and there was a little old man there, and there was a two of us, and we sat down, and we talked. He happened to be the father of a very tough stern lady, who was with the Ministry of Information, and he, as he told me,

had been one of the founders of the Communist Party in Hungary. And I was fascinated, and we talked for a long while, and we talked about various goals, and what had been accomplished. And he said, you know, if I had one wish, I'd go over to the United States now and start a revolution. And I said to accomplish what? Well, he read down a list of injustices that he thought prevailed in the States, and I ticked them off one after one, and we got into discussing evolution in relation to revolution, and by his lights, we had already had our revolution, and in the end, he sort of agreed, and he said, there are still things to be done, and they agreed with him, and there were great many.

And I wrote it up rather straight back in Washington, and there was a flap when they saw this. And I must say that my superiors at the voice backed me up as far as they could, but the head of the USIA, US Information Agency, which is the parent of the voice of America, finally said no. And when the voice people demanded, I don't know whether they demanded, but they asked, well, why not? The only answer he could give, how do we know he ever said that to Gordon? That's the time I almost threw in the towel, but as I said, that was very, very rare, and I'm citing these as exceptions. Usually, not usually, mainly, the stories went in, and no complaints, nothing changed, nobody told me what to write,

or how to write, I was expected to be a newsman. I get my ass kicked around if I was at the same story, a Washington Postman or a New York Timesman covered, and I did not get the essential facts that they got. What was the most boring story you ever covered? The most boring story. Oh, I think the most boring stories, and there were a number of these with special stories we did for the language test. We brought cast in 35 languages, and you'd get a request from the language service in Washington. The Minister of Culture, so-and-so, is arriving from Salem, and for his first visit to the United States on Thursday. See him Thursday afternoon and get his impressions of the United States.

Well, I shouldn't have used Salem, I should have used another one, in which the questions had to be given in English, and you received the answers in the native tongue, which you didn't understand. So these were rather boring. You sat through a number of lengthy trials recently. Well, I wouldn't say they were recent. I covered the Sir Hanser Handtrial, I covered the Angela Davis trial. I went down once or twice to the Charles Manson trial. I spent some time at the Daniel Ellsberg trial. Which was your favorite? Favorite in terms of what? Well, you know, you'd get up in the morning and you'd go to court, which was more pleasant. I don't know whether I would use the word pleasant exciting.

I think the Sir Hanser Handtrial was exciting because I had that from the beginning, and there was so much of the traumatic in that trial, the story of this kid's life and how he developed and what led him to the assassination, and also was a huge story with international implications. With Sir Hans being rather upset and Bobby Kennedy had made some promises to send planes to Israel, something like that. The Angela Davis trial was very good because I think, or at least in my own mind, I never expected the verdict that came. What is your impression of the, or have you read much about the conspiracy theorists?

I've read an awful lot about the conspiracy theories. I have never, in my own mind, come across anything that could swing me the other way to accept any of the conspiracy theories. I'm perfectly ready to, I believe in conspiracy. I believe greatly in the possibility. But I get kind of tired of the mark lanes who are professional conspiracists if I can make up a word and who make the box by going over an old ground. I think there are great many things that have not been said about the Kennedy assassination and occasionally you get things that come out,

but nothing that would lead me to believe that Israel did not do it alone. And the whole, and Watergate did not change your ideas about this at all, either. No, because you use the word cynical. I guess I am, although I was shocked, I am pretty cynical about Watergate because what you had was petty politics and a mean-minded man in the catburns seat. And this is possible at this point Nixon and Haldeman and Haleckman and Mitchell did not go around setting up hits on targets. I can, I enjoy spy novels and CIA novels

and I enjoy all the possibilities that could come out. I enjoyed the movie, the parallax view and the possibilities that could exist, but I don't really believe in them. Did any of the stories that you cover put you in physical danger? The only time I really felt in physical danger was when your little brother was up at Berkeley and I was covering the Angela Davis trial. And I had some time off, so I drove up from the San Jose to Berkeley and found myself, and I guess it was the last big hassle on telegraph road. Or is it street, I forget, but whatever it was, the special tactics police were out in force and I went up to Josh's dormitory

and there was nobody there, I said to myself maybe he is in the middle of this. So I am using my press credentials, I went through the police barricades and about five blocks down to where the action was. And there are a lot of people, various states of dress milling up and down the street and a lot of noise, and certainly I hear up and people began running. And I look around and I look up and there in one of these hideous, swathe uniforms is a cop with a rifle shooting down into the crowd. And I looked around and I looked at all these faces. I said, oh my god, I am the oldest person on this street. What the hell am I doing here?

So I got off the street, it was a pretty scary feeling I found out later. So I didn't know it at the time. The cops were using these silly putty bullets that can give you a pretty good knock but not necessarily harm you very much. Did you ever have any desire to go to Vietnam? No, as a matter of fact I turned down a request to go over and spend two weeks in Cambodia and I just had a feeling this time of life, I was not ready to do it. I did have a feeling before you were born that I wanted to go over and cover the Korean War as there was something in my mind about the glory and the possibilities of being a war correspondent. And the wise ahead at the office prevailed and said, look, not only are you married

but your wife is pregnant. That was you. I think maybe you kept me from being a war correspondent. Oh, one other time I had a very big regret. This was in 1967. I was in Moscow and the six day war broke out in Israel and Washington said get Gordon over to Israel and my Munich boss said he's in Moscow and we can't get him out in time so they sent somebody else. That war was my type of war and it quickly and we won. Do you still feel that about being part of the way? How are you using the word we? Well, in terms of I just, whatever you meant by we. We, I identified with Israel.

Do you still feel that way? Absolutely. I would like to qualify that. I don't think Israel is all holy God and the Arabs are the devil incarnate by any means. I think there is great wrongdoing on both sides. I don't think it's an insuperable problem. I think it can be solved. But I do identify with Israel. Do you feel if you would go to cover, if you would cover the Middle East situation now for example? How would you react to the PLO? Well, my feeling about the PLO is that basically they're rather scummy bandits. It's a very strange feeling. But on the other hand, I don't like terrorists.

I don't like acts of terrorism. I don't like blind bombings where innocent people get hurt. And for that matter, I didn't care too much at the time of the fight for Israel's independence. For the Erguns' filet, umi, which was basically a terrorist organization but an Israeli one. Is that the people who are in power now? I think that these were not the same people. They're the same people but they're not the same people. That's allowing for change over 30 odd years. Let's see. Whatever I've been leaving out. I've been leaving out a lot of things.

You left out my philosophy. What's your philosophy? I'm glad you asked that question, Peter. I thought you'd never get to it. I'll have to think of one quick. I suspect it gives the other guy the benefit of the doubt, at least for the first time, but keep your balls covered. Keep your balls covered? Peter, you read me better than that. I said, keep your balls covered. How do you feel about the women's movement? I think it's great. I think it's a long time overdue. I think that there is some fanatics in it who drive me up the wall but there are minority. I think it's a very good idea. Do I think women should have total equal rights? Absolutely. Do I think they should get equal?

They absolutely do. I think they should have equal opportunity for advancement. Absolutely. Do I think they're an injured minority? No. But I think injured minorities, blacks and Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and Indians. Do you think that your life would be, that's a bad start, but how do you think that your life and your perceptions would differ? Had you not been basically steadily employed for the past 25, 26 years? Are you asking me what I think would have happened? I can't say how my perceptions would have changed. I have to admit that I opted for security if I had a real choice. I suspect that I would have remained a creative writer with all the problems that entailed.

But I did have a wife and a family and I had been raised as a youngster through the depression of the 1930s. I can tell you being without is not very pleasant. Well, you don't need to, I mean, that's true, but do you feel that this affects your worldview? Do you think you would be a different person? No, we'd all be different persons on the different circumstances. I don't know whether it would affect my worldview or whether it would affect my philosophy. I think being a newsman, I've seen some pretty crappy things in my life.

And I've perhaps become a little more aware of the sorted parts of the human soul, but much more so than if I've been working in a shoe store. I guess the only answer is if I had a different life, I might think differently, I can't say. I had a question I was just going to ask you, which just split my mind. Did that ever happen to you? It always happens to me, but I'm a very poor stand-up reporter, I get very uneasy. The last job that I did for the voice, I was on the air for about three hours straight when we had the Viking landing on Mars, and when I finished I was absolutely ill, physically ill.

Sure you forget things that you're going to say, but I think you have to backtrack and have other questions prepared and pick up on something that's been said by your subject and work from that. I don't charge for these lessons in interviewing Peter. Do you have models, or did you have models? I had models of the newsmen and going back to people like Elma Davis or Edward R. Morrow, like Eric Severide, very much. You know, holding that microphone, trying to think of another question, I'll give you an answer without the question.

What type of news reporting do I like? I like the new reporting, if you want to call it, that I think very highly, for example, of the Rolling Stone. I like, although that type of reporting, which is in-depth, I've been done years and years ago by the New Yorker. I think, for example, their continuing series on the annals of medicine with that type of reportage in-depth. What other question would you ask? Well, if I were doing the interview, I'd ask you about subjectivity or objectivity of the news media. And the effect of it, or whether it's, or whether the existence of such.

I don't know, do you think the news media is objective? I mean, the idea never really entered my mind. But I mean, it seems the fact that one has the choice of what stories go over the era and what ordered. And the amount of time allocated to each story seems to almost do not. I mean, it seems to imply such a subjectivity. Well, and a lot of ways that's bullshit to get the network television shows. Their judgment quite often is colored by what film is available. But that's pretty much outdated by the videotape now, do you think? No, not really.

It's also colored by what's going to grab the listener. We're talking about television news. And I think very lightly of television news. The old radio news was much better because they gave more time to individual stories. I enjoyed my particular position because while other reporters, the correspondents were limited to wrapping up their story in 30 or 40 seconds, I could run for two and a half minutes, which meant I could give some background. I could go into a few more developments than the others. You'll mention the placement of stories on a radio or television news show, which goes first, which goes last, the amount of time given. You have the same thing with a newspaper. What story gets the lead in the paper? What story gets the larger headline?

How is it placed as a go on the front page or is it buried someplace inside? That's all part of the process. So do you think that an objectivity can remain after all that? Are you talking about the organization or about the individual reporter? I guess at this point it would be an organization in terms of the individual reporter. I guess it would be somewhat different. Well, I think an organization in that way can handle the news. I just read of a recent case where Midwestern editor quit rather than print the story. It was a cardus mere story that the publisher wanted printed. What sort of information is most credible to you?

You mean print television? Well, it's awfully hard. What's most credible to me is eyewitness. But on the other hand, I've been on stories where I saw something, where I heard something. And I put that down in my notes. Other people saw different things, heard different things, and put that down in their notes. Your objectivity is in the end sifted through the senses of the observer. I'll give you an example. You did a tape program using a letter read by Patty Hearst. You wanted to describe how you did that? Well, just where I took the tape of SLA Communicate number eight,

which was the one where she announced that she had joined the Symbianese Liberation Army. And then I had eight people translated, final teniously, so to speak. So basically, you had eight voices, same words. And that was mixed out. Well, they actually the same words. There were some people giving different emphasis to different sentences. There were some people dropping sentences as they went on with some people paraphrasing. Not intentionally, but doing it. Yes. That's the same thing you get with paid reporters covering a story. I guess I should thank you. Customary. Who is the one who says thank you, Mr. President now?

It is the senior correspondent senior wire service correspondent in the White House press call. So then, by those standards, you should thank me. Well, you're not the president, but thank you anyway. Thank you.