Media Curmudgeon: A Garfield Too Far

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March 20, 2007

A Garfield Too Far

In its March 12, issue, Advertising Age featured an interview with Bill Gates by Bob Garfield, its columnist who reviews television commercials and co-host of NPR’s “On the Media.” It was an ambush interview that made the acerbic Garfield look like a self-absorbed reporter trying to be clever, and was a good example of the kind of “gotcha” journalism that has been increasing over the last few years. Too many cocky reporters like Garfield are more interested in trying to be cute, impress their peers, and get a better-placed byline than covering a story. In the era of the iPod and iPhoto, they are the iReporters—totally ego centered.

The first insult to fairness was the title of the interview, “Garfield VS. Gates,” with the subhead “World’s richest man sits down with our most ornery.” The headline was about a conflict, a battle. The second insult to fairness was Ad Age’s choice of pictures—Garfield looking calm and benign and Gates looking dogmatic and angry. The pictures communicated the message that in the conflict trumpeted in the headline, the “ornery” Garfield was the winner.

The final insult occurred when Garfield asked Gates, “I want to ask you one more thing: Those Mac ads—how do you feel about the John Hodgman character?” Gates replied, “I can’t comment on someone else’s ad.” Then Garfield said, “OK…but he’s you,” to which Gates replied, “Yeah, I’m not gonna comment on someone else’s ad.” Then Garfield said, “OK, well, Bill Gates, thank you so much for joining us.” There was silence. Garfield then said, “Can I just have a clean goodbye?’ There was silence. Garfield: “OK, can you just say goodbye? Thank you or goodbye or something like that?” Gates: “Goodbye.”

It didn’t read too acerbic in the article, but listening to the podcast of the interview, you got a different sense—a sense that Garfield was being a smartass who wanted to make Gates uncomfortable with a question that had nothing whatsoever to do with the subject of the interview, but was asked in order to feed the reporter’s huge ego and show how smart and ornery he was. “Look at me, I can stand up to and badger the world’s richest man,” seems to have been the underlying message.

It was a cheap shot on a man who has received a knighthood from the queen of England for his services in reducing poverty and improving health in the developing countries of the world. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gives over $1 billion a year to worthy causes and does it so well that Warren Buffett has pledged the vast majority of his $40 billion fortune to the Gates’ foundation. You’d think Gates was due some respect, even from Mac users. I’d like to know how much Bob Garfield gives to help the world be a better place to live. He might be a cheap-shot artist in more ways than one.

This type of self-absorbed, macho chest thumping is all too common with reporters and news anchorpeople who crave celebrity as opposed to learning something and getting a story right. They seem to ask long, complicated questions in a way that makes them look smart and the interviewee look dumb or duplicitous — “have-you-stopped-beating-your wife” questions. Wolf Blitzer was guilty of this type of gotcha questioning in a recent interview with Dick Cheney. Blitzer asked how Cheney felt about his stand against gay marriage when his daughter, an avowed lesbian, was pregnant. Now, I hate Dick Cheney, but this type of questioning was out of bounds because it had nothing to do with the basic subject of the interview, just as Garfield’s asking Gates to comment on an Apple television commercial was.

Advertising Age, in playing Garfield’s interview about the changing media landscape as a good-versus-evil conflict, was lowering itself to tabloid journalism—the kind you see on Page Six of the New York Post, not in a respected trade publication. But I suppose even trade publications must stoop to celebrity journalism and cheap shots to entice readership and genuflect to celebrity-seeking reporters as their business model is being turned upside down by readers’ departure to the Internet (Ad Age’s website, RSS feeds, and podcasts are pretty good, by the way).

Finally, I believe my contention that Garfield’s spoiled-brat badgering of Gates to say goodbye was out of line is supported by the fact that that portion of the interview was not included in the broadcast and podcast of NPR’s “On the Media” over the weekend. If Garfield hadn’t gone too far, the section would have been included in “On the Media.”

Posted by Charles Warner at March 20, 2007 11:42 AM

Comments

Media Curmudgeon at March 26, 2007 10:57 PM writes:

Bill Grimes writes:

"I have never heard of Bob Garfield and after reading your analysis of his interview with Bill Gates I have no interest in knowing anything about him.

My only comment is that Gates, like everyone of note (this excludes Garfield), can be criticized for something he or she has or has not done in their public life. The fact that Gates has given five times more money to charity than anyone else in history (and this considers the impact of inflation when compared to Carnegie, Rockefeller(s), and Mellons) qualifies him as one of the most important people in history. Giving $10 billion already--and with more coming each year--Gates has already invested more money in Africa and its poorest citizens than all foreign aid last year. And his giving to Africa has involved large funds to create new medicial remedies for the diseases to which Africa (and the world's poor) are most vulnerable.

So, I am not interested in some guy named Garfield and his attempts to gain notoriety and advance his career. But I give Gates my MVP (Person) award for work and contributions unmatched by anyone in the world, except for his buddy, Mr. Buffet. And in that case Bill gets a huge assist.

Paul Talbot at March 24, 2007 11:18 AM writes:

I read the Garfield Gates piece. I did not hear the audio. I read Mr. Garfield’s response.

And what comes to mind is something Bob Woodward once said;

“I think journalism gets measured by the quality of information it presents, not the drama or the pyrotechnics associated with us.”

Mr. Garfield’s defense of his Gates piece is punctuated with pyrotechnics;

”Badger? BADGER? Are you out of your mind?”

It is marinated in self-absorbtion;

”The subject of the intervew was whatever I wished to inquire of Bill Gates.”

But perhaps the most glaring evidence of the weakness of Mr. Garfield’s position is his attempt to use interview content none of us have read or heard to defend himself.

“The interview, of which you have seen only excerpts on both AdAge.com and onthemedia.org, was actually a fairly technical discussion of the intersection of media and marketing with technology.”

Mr. Garfield knows full well that we can only judge this piece by what was presented to us. Content swept away on the cutting room floor is simply not germaine.

How should we measure the quality of Mr. Garfield’s journalism? Bob Woodward’s “quality of information” is as good a benchmark as any.

Mr. Garfield’s decision to inject drama, invective and ego into both his story and this dicsussion of the story are unfortunate and extraneous elements, which do nothing to help us better understand the subject matter.

Media Curmudgeon at March 23, 2007 11:14 PM writes:

Thanks, Bob, for taking the time to respond to my blog entry. I have read and enjoyed your TV commercial reviews in Advertising Age for many years and I enjoy NPR's "On the Media," which I believe is the best radio program (and podcast) that is a media watchdog.

You wrote above, "I asked a good-natured question good naturedly." Your attitude may not have come across in print, but in the Ad Age and "On the Media" podcasts, I believe your attitude was cocky and smart-assed.

You also wrote, "I suppose a question from Advertising Age about an ad campaign lampooning the interview subject is completely beyond the pale." Yes, I believe it was beyond the pale--that you went too far. I also believe that you badgered Gates to get him to say goodbye--no need to do that, it made you sound rude and self-absorbed--more interested in your having a gotcha than showing any respect for Bill Gates.

I don't think the whole interview was an ambush interview, just the questions about the Red campaign and, especially, the Apple ad. So, I'll give you that one.

The term "celebrity-seeking reporter" was meant to refer to you--that I felt you were seeking celebrity and that you wanted to be known as Ad Age's ornery reporter (the headline got that right) and Gates, who is no dummy, must have felt that way, too.

Also, you bring up an ethical question about the audio editing. You say in your comment that Gates was "agitated" about the Red campaign question, which is why he was silent after the Apple ad question. Why didn't the interview in print indicate that and why was that question left out of the two audio versions of the interview?

Finally, I think your Ad Age editors did you more harm than I did. They are the ones that chose the pictures and wrote the headline, "Bob Garfield vs. Bill Gates: World's Richest Man Interviewed by 'Ad Age's' Most Ornery" that made your interview seem like a fight and who labeled you as "ornery," which is exactly how you came across.

Bob Garfield at March 22, 2007 02:55 AM writes:

Let's see: ambush, gotcha, cocky, self-absorbed, ego-centered, (un)fair, badger, smart-ass, cheap shot, macho chest-thumping, spoiled brat.

That's a lot of name-calling. Now, as a media critic my ownself, I usually give wide berth to others' outrage. I promise that under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn't trouble myself to respond, but as i see you have 17 other blogs linked to yours, I thought I might just clear up a few things for any innocent bystanders:

1)This was not an ambush interview. It was pre-arranged with Gates through his company, Corbis. I had just finished moderating a 75-minute panel including Gates on a wide variety of subjects -- most of which I touched on again in the subsequent 30-minute interview.

2)What question, or clause, or syllable, did you find cocky or unfair? The interview, of which you have seen only excerpts on both AdAge.com and onthemedia.org, was actually a fairly technical discussion of the intersection of media and marketing with technology.

3) How could anyone with a media background such as your own even imagine that I had anything whatsoever to do with the headline, graphic treatment, edit or play of the Ad Age story? In fact, I had nothing to do with any of that. I handed the editors raw tape. Period.

4) Badger? BADGER? Are you out of your mind? At the end of a wide-ranging interview, I asked a good-natured question good naturedly, and got a petulant response. (More on this momentarily). I tried a second time, good-naturedly. Same irritable response. So, out of time, I moved on. What the queen of England has to do with anything is a mystery to me.

5) "...this had nothing to do with the subject" Oh, really? Says who? The subject of the interview was whatever I wished to inquire of Bill Gates. I suppose a question from Advertising Age about an ad campaign lampooning the interview subject is completely beyond the pale.

6) "Celebrity seeking reporter?" Just curious, what in my 30-year career as a reporter, columnist, essayist, critic and broadcaster makes you think I'm "celebrity seeking?" I know this for sure: I've done many thousands of interviews, and 99% of those subjects weren't celebrities. But as you haven't even taken the trouble to find out who I am or what my life's work has been before your ad hominem attack, maybe you were just...oh, I don't know...guessing?

7)Why did I ask him for a goodbye or thank you? Did you perhaps not notice at NBC and CBS that interviews always end that way? If Gates doesn't say thank you or goodbye, he looks foolish. So I asked him for one, even though he was steaming, so he wouldn't look foolish.

8) You correctly noticed that the end of the radio story was different than the end of the Ad Age one. In the AdAge.com audio, he gives a clipped and sullen "goodbye." On NPR, he says, pleasantly, "thank you." Here's why: The Ad Age piece included, at least in the accompanying transcript, the exchange that in fact was the main cause of Gates's irritation. That question concerned the so-called "Red Campaign," a cause-marketing effort to raise money for the Gates Foundation's main beneficiary: the Global Fund, which fights AIDS in the Third World. An Ad Age story published the day before observed that "Red" had generated only $18 million for the fund, despite a cumulative marketing budget of $500 million. I asked Gates if that apparent imbalance affected his views on "branded philantropy." THAT's when he got agitated. He (as others have done since) questioned the premise of the Ad Age story, and got angry with me -- though I was doing the journalistically obvious by seeking his reaction to controversial reportage on a subject of intense concern to him. In any case, he was fuming.
However, in the On the Media version interview, which excerpted a different set of questions and answers, none of the "Red" exchange was included. Therefore, we had an awful choice: to use his actual curt, grudging "goodbye" (which would have come off as a ridiculous overreaction to the benign Mac-ad question), or to lift the "thank you" from the opening greeting. Out of absolutely no motivation but essential fairness to our subject, we bit our tongues and edited in the "thank you."
Because the Ad Age coverage included BOTH the "Red Campaign" and Mac-ad questions, no such measure was necessary. His angry parting words were presented in context.

Now, Mr. Curmudgeon, let's recap: You have called me a number of names which get directly to my integrity as a journalist. And you have done so without making any attempt to determine whether there was factual basis behind them. It's not just that you offered your opinion; you actually misstated the facts and accused me of wrongdoing. Did they by any chance, in your years of media executiveness, tell you the legal term for that?

Media Curmudgeon

Charles Warner writes about the media from a management, strategic, and ethical point of view.

March 20, 2007

A Garfield Too Far

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