James Fallows on how the press failed America

In 1996, James Fallows warned that journalism would fail if it treated politics as sport and tried to compete with entertainment. In this conversation with David Deming, he explains why he thinks that prediction has come true.

Fallows discusses the difference between reporting for the public and protecting one’s access to powerful insiders. He recalls serving as Jimmy Carter’s chief White House speechwriter and then publishing a critical account of the administration after he left.

The conversation begins with Fallows’ earliest experiences as student journalist: covering Harvard’s anti-war protests in 1969, watching police remove activists from University Hall, and watching the Vietnam draft lottery on television, then losing enough weight to fail his military physical. In a separately recorded follow-up at the end, Fallows returns to The Crimson and an attempt to take editorial control away from its student during the 1969 upheaval.

James Fallows is a longtime journalist and writer. At age 27, he became the chief White House speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, the youngest person to hold the job. He spent four decades at The Atlantic as Washington editor and national correspondent, was the editor of US News & World Report from 1996 to 1998, and worked on the design of Microsoft Word. He is the author of twelve books, including National Defense (1981), winner of a National Book Award, Breaking the News (1996), and Our Towns (2018), written with his wife, Deborah Fallows. He received the National Magazine Award in 2003. Fallows writes the Substack Breaking the News.

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