MONDAY
E-mail a friendVictor Navasky
airdate June 23, 2006
After helming The Nation for almost 30 years, professor, publisher and editor Victor Navasky became its publisher emeritus last year. He's also director of Columbia University's George Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism. He was previously an editor at the New York Times Magazine. Navasky is the author of several books, including Kennedy Justice, the award-winning Naming Names and A Matter of Opinion. A Yale Law grad, he's contributed articles and reviews to numerous magazines and journals of opinion.
Victor Navasky
Tavis: Victor Navasky is an award-winning writer who served as editor and then publisher of "The Nation.' He is now the Publisher Emeritus of the influential opinion magazine. His most notable books include "Naming Names" and "Kennedy Justice.' His most recent book, though, is "A Matter of Opinion" and it is now out in paperback. It is my measured opinion that it's a good read. Mr. Navasky, what an honor to have you on the program.
Victor Navasky: My honor to be here.
Tavis: Nice to see you. Let me start with what is puzzling I think a lot of people. Although there are signs that maybe there's some life in the left here in California where we sit tonight - the Democrats in this state picked Phil Angelides, the more liberal of the two Democratic candidates, as you know, to take on Arnold Schwarzenegger - that said, though, and that notwithstanding, what's wrong with the left?
Navasky: Why would you ask that question rather than what's wrong with the right (laughter)?
Tavis: See, that's why I like you (laughter).
Navasky: The country has - I see the nation as an independent magazine. The country has drifted so far to the right that it appears to be way over on the left. Actually, it's a place where you debate the arguments between the liberals and the radicals. And, you know, what's wrong with the left? The left said we shouldn't go into Iraq. Is that wrong or does that turn out to be right?
Or you go back in history and the function of a magazine like "The Nation" or journals of opinion as a genre is really to look at the underlying meaning of the news and to figure out ahead of its time what the right position is. Not to play some kind of game about that, but it's in the morality business.
Tavis: But then there is a certain level, I think you'd agree, of conviction and commitment and courage required to make that case, to make it consistently, and not just that, but to have a message that, on some level, appeals to the American voter.
Navasky: Well, you know, someone once said to me about "The Nation" that "The Nation" is a magazine for the permanent minority. At first, I thought that was an insult. Who wants to be a member of a permanent minority? Then I thought, well, just a minute. What it really means is that it's a magazine that's ahead of its time because "The Nation" was founded by people in and around the abolitionist movement.
It started in 1865, the year the Civil War ended, and "The Nation" was right about the importance of abolishing slavery. "The Nation" was right about racial integration. "The Nation,' I think, was right about the importance of establishing a United Nations; that we're moving into an era where you need an international agency to deal with international problems like terrorism. So that's not what's wrong with the left or the right with the left. That's something that transcends conventional political categories.
Tavis: To the point you made a moment ago, when a magazine represents that permanent minority, those who don't have a voice, oftentimes that means not making a lot of money. It's pretty well-known lore now that "The Nation" has never been rolling in the dough, as it were.
Navasky: Understatement.
Tavis: The understatement (laughter). How does one stay committed to a project, a concept, an idea that you might be right about, but they ain't bringing home the bacon?
Navasky: Look, in the magazine business, survival is the ultimate test of success. "The Nation" is America's oldest weekly magazine founded the year the Civil War ended. "The Nation" has survived where magazines with circulations in the millions - "Life,' "Colliers,' Saturday Evening Post,' "Look" - have gone under.
The secret of its survival, in my view, is that it's lost money for virtually every one of those hundred thirty-five years. We made a little money last year and the year before that, but the reason that it has survived all those years is that it is as much a cause as it is a business.
Had we been trying to make a profit in the way that conventional businesses do and try to respond to the demands of the market the way you're suggesting, I think we would have become more and more like everybody else and there would have been less and less need for or function for "The Nation" magazine.
Tavis: You have what many would consider, Mr. Navasky, a unique, different point of view about the role of journalism and journalists. You argue unapologetically that journalists ought to have opinions and that journalists ought to write about those opinions. That is counter-intuitive to what many people think of when they think of journalists.
Navasky: Well, look. I went to, at the last Democratic convention, a panel where they had all the anchors from all of the mainstream - then anchors, Brokaw, Peter - and someone got up from the audience and asked, you know, "Why is it that young people say they get their news from Jon Stewart and none of them watch The Nightly News?" They all agreed because young people are too stupid to know the difference between satire and the real thing.
I'm sitting there thinking, hey, just a minute. Young people watch Jon Stewart because he's very funny, but the fact is, the difference between all of those anchors and Stewart is they pretend to narrative neutrality. They pretend they have no politics. Everybody has politics.
Stewart never says anything he doesn't believe because he's in the business of exposing hypocrisy and that's something that those folks can identify with. The advantage of being open about your political values is that people know where you're coming from and they can take them or leave them, but you have to argue them, defend them, mobilize the information to support them.
Opinion journalism has a bad name because, you know, the president of ABC News goes around making a speech saying, "Opinion is driving out objectivity." Leave aside the question about whether there is such a thing as objectivity, about which I have many questions, but the fact is that what he's talking about is Bill O'Reilly. He's talking about Rush Limbaugh. He's not talking about the serious, moral and political argument that you find in journals of opinion as a class, not just "The Nation.'
Tavis: You dropped a tasty morsel that I got to go back and get right quick. When you suggested that you have concerns about whether or not there is objectivity, talk to me more about that.
Navasky: Okay. Well, you know, Molly Ivins, who's very funny, a marvelous journalist who writes a lot for "The Nation,' among many other places, once said the following. She said, "I'm a forty-nine year old wife, Texas college graduate, and there's no way I'm going to see things the same way as a fifteen year old Black high school dropout and anyone who has ever covered an automobile accident and spoken to five eyewitnesses knows that there's no such thing as objectivity."
I think that says a lot. That doesn't mean you don't try to get reliable information. That doesn't mean you don't strive for accuracy. It does mean that you don't do this spurious balance and report what he said and then what she said and think that you're closer to the truth because that has nothing to do with what reality is.
Tavis: So if there are questions that you are raising for us about what it means to be objective and about the notion of objectivity, what ought the goal be? If not objectivity, what ought the goal be?
Navasky: Okay. The goal ought to be that the better argument should prevail and you get as close to the truth as you possibly can. You know, objectivity is one of these words that is generally used to mean something that I think of as pseudo objectivity which is you give the appearance of balance. You give the appearance that you can be fair, but that has nothing to do with true fairness or accuracy.
Tavis: I got my own answer, but this ain't my interview. You tell me, then, how you think we ascertain what the better argument is.
Navasky: Well, first of all, you be open about your political values. You don't pretend that you don't have any. That's a big step forward already. Secondly, that you have as many different voices out there, which means a lot of small magazines, a lot of independent publishing operations, the internet, but also you don't want the sort of concentrated ownership that we have right now where fewer and fewer mega corporations dominate the media environment, which means that you homogenize the arguments that viewers and readers and listeners get to hear and see.
Tavis: What is the biggest danger to journalism as we know it or should want to know it? Is it that conglomeration?
Navasky: I think that's a big one. I think that's a big one. It's uniformity of opinion. I mean, we're supposed to live in a free society. You know, if you have everything in the same handful of corporations, how free is that?
Tavis: This is like taking a master class (laughter). Well, Victor Navasky, I wish class was not out yet, but it is. Lucky for me, I'll get a chance to continue this off-air. The new book - well, actually now out in paperback - from Victor Navasky, "A Matter of Opinion.' I highly recommend it. Mr. Navasky, an honor to have you on the program.
Navasky: It's great to be here.
Tavis: Nice to see you.
Up next, Emmy-winning actor, Stanley Tucci. Stay with us.
Back to June 23, 2006