Hats off to the Rye Arts Festival for bringing us Emily Maitlis!
Intrigued by extraordinary stories highlighted in her interview in Rye, her journalistic writing did not disappoint. Emily both speaks and writes with razor sharp clarity, heartfelt empathy and journalistic cool in stressful situations that most of us mortals would find intolerable.
Her book, as she says, “is an attempt to explain what goes on in those moments of utter panic: living, breathing, hyperventilating and overthinking the seconds when you are about to go live on air – and you don’t have a clue how it will turn out.”
Emily also admits, as a mother, that she has written this book for her children to better
understand why she couldn’t attend their “Carol Concert or her class bake sale lemon cake looked as if the dog had got to it first (it had)”.
In person and throughout her book she is refreshingly down to earth, honest and full of compassion for the people she is interviewing whether she personally likes them or not. She does her homework for each interview with utmost care. She has a trusted team around her, loves being at the cut and thrust in the centre of world events and she records historic moments and significant people with consummate skill.
All the time Emily is in the thick of covering stories for Newsnight, however, she is very aware of the diminishing effect of gathering and presenting the news on television. No matter how much preparation she and her team do to thoroughly research and fact check their stories, as she says, “interpreting moments of history whilst they are still unfolding is both deeply rewarding and endlessly challenging.”
“Television news is messy. It gets things wrong.. it is imperfect…sometimes laughably so… and then sometimes you just nail it.”
For all of us who are trying to find out what is really going on in the world in these confusing times, as consumers of mainstream news in particular, we know now we are getting a very superficial glimpse at best of what is actually happening. We see the effects of human interaction in ‘events’ but rarely do we find the time or have the means by which to access the depth of analysis needed to begin understand the real causes of ‘events’. We often find out the truth long after an event has been reported.
Sometimes we never know. But we have unprecedented amounts of information available on the web (true or otherwise). We can listen to ‘alternative’ online investigative news sources like Open Democracy, Declassified, The Canary and Democracy Now to mention a few conscientious reporters who try to dig deeper behind what is reported in mainstream media. But as Emily says “interpreting statements…in the most rational…and benevolent way possible…is becoming harder and harder in the age of social media and the hyper rapid shared response.”
So apart from reading her book Airhead: The Imperfect Art of Making News, to inspire us all to become more aware of how to scrutinise what we hear daily on radio and TV, Emily’s back stories are a welcome entertaining revelation. As she says in her concluding paragraph “the jumble of noise, the whistle of silence, the blind panic and the ecstasy of adrenalin when the camera starts rolling – and it’s all falling apart.”
Image Credits: Kt bruce .