By Joanne Zuhl
Staff Writer
No one would accuse public broadcasting of being sexy, but
fans of Ari Shapiro could make a pretty good case. The Beaverton High School
grad (and Yale magna cum laude) manages to make the airwaves a little more
tuned in, taking the title of NPR White House correspondent to its sassiest
heights when he croons the classics — center stage — with Portland band Pink
Martini.
But for nearly all of 2012, Shapiro was embedded with GOP
nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign for president, broadcasting from across the
country on both the candidate and the lives he touched. He didn’t just have a
front row seat to the spectacle of American politics; he was there, in the
wings, watching the most expensive presidential campaign in the country’s
history as it tripped, stumbled, and ultimately fell on its face.
Shapiro grew up in Portland, and he is now based in
Washington D.C. Before joining the White House press corps, he was NPR’s
justice correspondent for five years, covering among other issues the battles
over Guantanamo detainees, the crimes at Abu Ghraib prison and American
soldiers accused of abuse.
He has been awarded the American Bar Association’s Silver
Gavel for his coverage of lost prisoners after Hurricane Katrina, The Daniel
Schorr Journalism Prize for his investigation of methamphetamine use and HIV
transmission, and was recognized by the Columbia Journalism Review for his
investigation into disability benefits for injured veterans.
And of course, there’s the applause that comes with
performing with Pink Martini around the globe. And in the space between his
alter-egos is home with his husband in D.C.
It’s an otherwise normal life, with a fantastic view to
history.
Joanne Zuhl: You’ve seen how the sausage is
made in this election cycle. Do you leave feeling better or worse about the
democratic process?
Ari Shapiro: I think I appreciate its
imperfections. There’s a reason that at the end of the day it’s worked for as
many years as it has. There are lots of problems with the system. But focusing
only on the problems ignores the fact that on the whole, this is a really great
system of government that has endured for a really long time — for a reason.
And so I hope I have a realistic perspective. I don’t come away from the
election thinking what a mess, what a waste. But I also don’t come away from
the election thinking gosh everything is perfect.
J.Z.: Did you come away with any
unexpected lessons from the experience?
A.S.: I would say that what I learned the most
about was not politics but America; the differences between different parts of
the country and the issues that are important to Americans right now. I hope
this doesn’t sound tone deaf, but I think I was lucky to be covering an
election during a difficult time in the country, because no matter where the
campaign event was, I would talk to people in the audience and hear really
compelling stories about what people are going through right now.
J.Z.: How much did this campaign, the
most expensive in U.S. history, come face to face with that America that you’re
talking about?
A.S.: A lot of it. (Romney) would do campaign
events with tens of thousands of people, and many of them, if not most of them,
working class, blue collar. I mean, you can’t have 10,000 people without having
a huge slice across the demographic spectrum. One theme that I really took away
was that when people feel able to work but don’t have the opportunity to work,
it lessens their self-worth. It makes them feel like they are not able to
contribute in a way that they know they are able to contribute, and that’s
demoralizing.
J.Z.: Did you talk to a lot of people
in that situation?
A.S.: Oh yeah. I remember one woman in
Columbus, Ohio, who was 56 years old. She was laid off from her job at age 50.
She told me she had applied for 400 jobs. She’d had three interviews. She knows
that the longer she’s unemployed, the lower her chances of getting a job offer
are, and she says she sees people who are graduating from college who might
have a good 40 years of work ahead of them, she has maybe 10 years of work ahead
of her. And she told me “If I were hiring for a job, I might hire those college
graduates, too.” But, she says, “I feel like less of a person because I don’t
have the opportunity to do the work that I know that I’m able to do.”
J.Z.: You grew up in Portland and now
live in D.C. — two bubbles on either side of the country. Did you see a side of
America you were surprised at?
A.S.: D.C. really is a bubble. And living in
D.C., we hear and read a lot about the rest of the America. I think living
anywhere you hear a lot about the rest of America if you’re paying attention.
But there’s really no substitute for seeing it firsthand. And not just seeing
it firsthand, but walking up to strangers and saying, “Tell me your story,” and
then hearing those stories. I felt so privileged that people were willing to
talk to me about what was going on in their lives, sometimes in very personal
ways, all over the country. And I just don’t think you can get that experience
without going out there and having those conversations with people.
J.Z.: I was reading about your
conundrum on not standing during the pledge of allegiance. …
A.S.: Oh yeah. That caused a bit of a dust up.
J.Z.: Every reporter has been in that
position where you’re supposed to be just an observer, in this day and age when
reporters are looking to brand themselves, as destination personalities with
social media, etc. How do you balance your online personality with the
journalist?
A.S.: I try not to say anything on Twitter or
Facebook that I would not want broadcast publicly. The tone of Twitter and
Facebook is obviously different from the tone of NPR, but if I think there’s
something that would be inappropriate on NPR, then I’m not going to post it on
Twitter or Facebook. I should rephrase that — inappropriate can mean different
things. For example, on Twitter, yesterday, I used the phrase social disease,
which I probably would not use on the radio — an antiquated term for an STD.
But I’m never going to say on Twitter that was a terrible speech by Barack
Obama or I love this policy proposal by Mitt Romney unless I would also feel
comfortable saying that on the radio.
I think you can have more personality on social media, I
think you can sort of think aloud on social media and get those glimpses of things
that might not seem relevant on the radio. But I don’t think you can be
partisan on social media and be nonpartisan on the radio and pretend that
because there’s a distinction you’re somehow insulated from accusations of
partisanship.
J.Z.: Turning to media in general,
there has been a rising chorus of criticism that reporters have become mere
stenographers, and that the facts are now left to this new meme of fact
checkers, often with their own agenda. What is your assessment on how media
covers our government and politicians?
A.S.: Certainly in the Romney press corps, for
example, when Romney put out that completely bogus add about car manufacturers
shipping jobs to China, every news organization called it out as bogus, with
one or two exceptions.
We cover politics a lot better than we cover policy. I just
read this great book by Michael Grunwald of Time Magazine called the “New New
Deal” and the book is about the stimulus. The media paid so much attention to
the fight over passing the stimulus, but then after the stimulus passed,
everybody just sort of ignored what happened. And the story is what happens
when the law gets passed, when you allocate all of this money to these
different projects, and generally speaking, I think policy sometimes falls through
the cracks because it’s just so much easier to cover the political wrangling
over policy than the implementation of that policy.
J.Z.: Like the fiscal cliff.
A.S.: Or once we get a deal to avert the fiscal
cliff or go over it or whatever, what’s in that deal?
We know that there’s a huge package of spending cuts, but
what exactly will be cut and then once those cuts are made, let’s look at what
the impact is on those organizations that have gone through the cuts. Don’t
just report on the wrestling match.
J.Z.: With the election over, what are
you looking for as the big news ahead?
A.S.: I’m fascinated to see what happens to the
Republican Party in the next couple of years. Because they, by all accounts,
should have taken control of the Senate this year, and instead they lost seats
in the Senate. They had every opportunity to win the presidential race, and
instead lost big. They lost young people, they lost minorities, they lost
women. And there’s a part of the Republican Party that says we have got to
change our platform in order to win these demographic groups back. But there is
also a tea party base that says, no our problem was that we nominated a
Massachusetts moderate. So I think there’s going to be a real civil war in the
Republican Party. You could look specifically at the issue of immigration.
Where is the party going to go on this? To what extent are they going to play
ball with the White House and Democrats. That’s what I’m really interested in
the next couple of years.
J.Z.: But where is coverage on issues
of affordable housing, on issues of poverty, on the cuts to the Bureau of
Housing and Urban Development? You don’t see that covered at the federal level.
Where are those stories?
A.S.: I think they’re missing. We have a
reporter, Pam Fessler, who covers poverty, charity and philanthropy. And she
does stories that a lot of other people are not doing. And it’s striking to me
that on the federal level, there’s no dialogue about poverty. I can’t remember
the last time I heard President Obama talk about poverty. He talks a lot about
the middle class. And Mitt Romney even said, “I’m not concerned with the very
rich or the very poor, I’m concerned about the middle class.” I think that’s a
pervasive attitude in both parties throughout Washington. There’s almost a
sense that in boom times, everybody is doing fine except for the people at the
bottom of the ladder, so we should pay attention to them. And in rough times,
when the people at the middle of the ladder start suffering, there seems to be
this consensus in Washington that it’s OK to stop paying attention to the
people at the bottom of the ladder, but the fact is the people at the bottom of
the ladder are doing worse than they were before as well.
J.Z.: This may be a little strange, but
I remember a colleague of yours, Ann Garrels, who covered the Iraq war and
titled her memoirs about it “Naked In Baghdad” — a reference to filing reports
naked in her hotel room as part of her cover. Any similar anecdotes from the
trail we should know about?
A.S.: There are so many things. The song “Born
Free” played at the beginning and end of every Mitt Romney rally, so by the end
of the campaign, we all knew the lyrics. They were haunting our dreams. I never
broadcast naked, no. Frankly, our days were so long that we were on the bus and
the plane the whole time, and if anyone had been naked in those venues there
would have been a real problem with the Secret Service.
J.Z.: How do you keep your singing
chops when you’re on an assignment like that?
A.S.: I did not. I’m just getting back into
that. In the past year, the only shows that I did with Pink Martini were in
Europe over the summer. I took a couple weeks off and traveled with them. And
this weekend I’m going to perform in Philadelphia, which will be my first show
with them in six months. So I’m really excited to be back doing that.
J.Z.: That’s got to be such a release
after the time on the campaign.
A.S.: It’s the best to be able to do such a
creative thing with such talented musicians. It’s such a different world from
my day job. I love what I do at NPR, but to be able to do something that is
completely different from it is so refreshing.
J.Z.: And yet your moniker is “NPR
correspondent.”
A.S.: I was worried about performing in Europe,
because when I perform in the States, there’s always this sense of novelty —
“Oh, it’s the guy we’ve heard on NPR, now he’s up there singing” — so it didn’t
really matter if I was any good or not. But in Europe, nobody’s ever heard of
me, so I kind of had to hold my own, and I was really delighted that it went
well.
J.Z.: No one could have blamed you for
getting away from it all after the election, but one of the first things you did
after the campaign ended was participate in a fund raiser on the 10th
anniversary of OutLoud Radio. Tell me about that and why that’s important to
you.
A.S.: They are doing such important work. They
are giving LGBT teenagers, many of whom are — disenfranchised is such an
academic word – but many of them feel like they are not part of a community,
they’re not part of society. In some cases they’ve been kicked out of the
house, in some cases they’re homeless. In most cases they feel like they don’t
have a voice. And OutLoud Radio is quite literally giving them a voice, and
giving them an opportunity to tell their stories. And they have one project
that I think is just so amazing, an intergenerational project, where they will
pair an LGBT young person with a senior citizen in the LGBT community. And the
young people will interview the elders and it values the experience of our
elders in a way that society often does not. It gives young people an
experience to see themselves as part of this intergenerational continuity, and
just think it’s such a great project. I was really happy to be able to support
it.
J.Z.: Was this something that you
related to?
A.S.: I came out as a teenager in Portland, at
the end of my junior year at Beaverton High School. And, on the whole, had a
very good experience. But of course, I relate to gay teenagers who are figuring
out where they fit in the world. And as a gay adult who is doing radio, a group
doing radio for gay teens seems like a natural fit.
J.Z.: It reminds me of what Dan Savage
did with the It Gets Better campaign.
A.S.: I admire what Dan did with the It Gets
Better campaign so much. He created a global movement that in some ways has
become almost the brand of the gay rights movement today. In such a powerful
way that everybody can get behind. From the president to celebrities to
ordinary people. It’s remarkable what he was able to do with that.
J.Z.: The past few years have not been
kind to news outlets. What do you see of the future of public radio?
A.S.: It’s funny, I think in some ways public
broadcasting and Street Roots have not-that-different business models, which is
basically saying to people do you like what we do? If so, will you open your
wallets for us? It’s the same basic fundamental premise, which is: Here is what
we’ll do and if you like it, we hope you will support it.
This article appears in 2012-12-07.