He's with the Band   

How close to a source is too close?

BACK WHEN GENE SIMMONS and I were both younger and thinner and therefore better suited to such foolishness, I scammed a backstage pass to cover a Kiss concert. This was about as close as I ever came to being a rock writer, and just as well; like most boomers raised on "American Bandstand," my critical sensibilities pretty much began and ended with "It's got a good beat, and you can dance to it."
Indeed I recollect nothing of the evening's musical entertainment per se. My lone vivid memory is of a huge single spotlight crashing onto the stage in the middle of the set, nearly snuffing a technician. It even scared the guy in the cat makeup.
This flashback was triggered by a recent viewing of "Almost Famous," director Cameron Crowe's sweetly evocative movie of that same era. Crowe was a rock-writing prodigy, and the film's 15-year-old protagonist, William Miller, is his fictional alter ego. It's a lovely journey back to those pre-MTV days of big hair and languorous Jimmy Page solos. Praise God, I don't think there's a jump-cut in the whole movie.
Not to worry; I'm no more a film critic than a rock critic. I only bring this up because to the extent the story of "Almost Famous" is driven by a particular intellectual idea, it is one that goes to the core of journalism--the relationship between a reporter and his or her subject. It asks hard questions that we don't often stop to ask ourselves: Where is the line between having great access and getting too close? When does persuading turn into co-opting? Is it ethical to sell out a source in the interest of the Ultimate Truth, or is it the greater sin to shade said truth to protect said source?
Virginal William, on assignment for Rolling Stone (you'll just have to see the movie to appreciate how), finds himself touring the country with a ragtag, up-and-coming band that pulls him into its confidence and, better yet, its woozy world of groupies and substance abuse. The band members are using William as surely as he is using them, and they all know they are using one another, yet they all seem to be having a fine time along the way.
Eventually, though, it dawns on one of the band members what a tremendous risk they are taking, as a backstage exposé from William could be devastating. "He's not a person," the guy screams to a bandmate, trying to make him understand. "He's a journalist."
A decade ago Janet Malcolm covered this same idea at more length, and with considerably more vitriol, in a two-part essay in The New Yorker. The immediate purpose of her piece was to dissect the tortured relationship between writer Joe McGinniss and convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald, the subject of McGinniss' book "Fatal Vision." But the piece was also a broadside against the Fourth Estate and journalistic practices generally.
"Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows what he does is morally indefensible," went Malcolm's notorious opening. "He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse."
Much yelping from injured journalists ensued, and more than a few correctly pointed out that the case of a celebrity journalist cutting a business deal with the principal in a nonfiction book scarcely equates to daily journalism. Nonetheless, no thinking journalist could read Malcolm's piece without being a little unsettled, especially in light of her own journalistic virtuosity. There's nothing like being told off by one of your own.
Having said that, let me assert that good reporters don't lie or misrepresent themselves. They don't have to. At the same time, what journalist doesn't know the feeling, setting out on what promises to be a career-making story, of cultivating sources he knows full well will be left in ashes when the story is written? It's a paradox, but to do substantial journalism reporters sometimes must be disingenuous, manipulative and less than candid--just as they must often parry similar behavior from their subjects. Or worse, run the risk of getting too close for their own good.
The climax of "Almost Famous," for instance, turns on whether William will honestly recount what he has seen on the road, with the hangovers and infidelities and withering dissension, or instead submit a puff piece, a gloss on the truth, so as not to betray people he has developed genuine affection for.
It's a dicey business, journalism, and there are human consequences to what we do in its name. Seems to me it's not a bad thing to be reminded of that from time to time.