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Floyd Gibbons – an ideal reporter?
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If you had to nominate one reporter to save your skin by getting into a seemingly impossible situation and bringing out the story, then the person to send would be Raphael Floyd Phillip Gibbons, war correspondent, honorary member of the Marine Corps, and perhaps the supreme example of the amoral journalist in the pursuit of an assignment.
To get his story out first (or impede a rival – in Gibbons’ eyes they amounted to two sides of the same task), he had no second’s thought about breaking the law, damaging public property, defying a city fire brigade, putting terrorist threats to the test, booking himself on to a ship because it was likely to be torpedoed, out-bluffing the leadership of the Soviet Union, and sporting medals from dog shows to impersonate a war hero. He survived nine wars, two air crashes, a major shipwreck, being shot at by seven different armies, being bombed by four air forces, and encounters with less formal threats, such as Pancho Villa and his desperados. And all this, for the most part, equipped with only one eye, the other one being sacrificed when he was in pursuit of yet another exclusive.
Floyd Gibbons was born in Washington, DC almost within sight of the White House. Neither of his parents were literary people. His father ran a butter and egg company, but young Floyd showed no inclination to join his father in his ventures. Almost from childhood he had been determined to be a newspaper reporter, and when he went to Georgetown University was so keen to start behaving like one – drinking and playing craps in the college grounds – that he got himself swiftly expelled. Academia thus having been dealt with, in 1907 Floyd Gibbons signed on at the Minneapolis Daily News as a police reporter at $7 a week. Gibbons Senior was not happy – so much that he marched down to the paper’s offices, buttonholed the editor and asked him to give his son the sack. The editor replied: ‘No, Mr Gibbons. I won’t fire your son. He seems to have a natural nose for news!’
Indeed he did. By 1909 he was on the Minneapolis Tribune, his third paper in as many years, and, as the main man covering crime, had the pick of the city’s murders, fires, brawls and head-breakings. He spent his days and nights hanging around police stations and courts, periodically scuttling off to the scene of the more colorful crimes. These, inevitably, were committed in the city’s slums, a teeming wellhead of stories that rapidly gave Gibbons the kind of education in the rawer side of human nature that no college can provide.
Later he moved to Chicago and found a job in the Chicago Tribune.
The assignments were small at first, but when, in December 1914, war looked likely with Mexico, Gibbons was the man sent south. He was soon filing sharp stories on the poor equipment of the US forces, seeing his first battle, and, in Juarez, meeting the brother of Pancho Villa, at that stage the successful rebel leader. Villa had been angered by stories written by some American correspondents and he had sworn he would kill the first US newspaperman he set eyes on. This, to Gibbons, was as good as an invitation in gold lettering.
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Three days of hard riding, and the representative of the Chicago Tribune came face to face with Villa. As Gibbons had calculated, he got not a bullet, but an interview. Moreover, Gibbons was allowed to stay with the rebels and was with them when they captured Chihuahua. The city had large factories for railway rolling stock, and Villa was by this time so enamored of Gibbons that he ordered a private carriage made for him and coupled to his own train. Thus, in a car, marked in Spanish ‘The Chicago Tribune – Special Correspondent’ and staffed with two Chinese cooks and an interpreter, did Gibbons trail in the rebel leader’s wake for four months filing copy that the rest of the American press could only read and envy.
In 1917 the paper told him he was going to London to cover the Great War. He had received his new assignment in February, a month that had begun with a German threat that any ship entering the Atlantic approaches to the British Isles and France was liable to be sunk without warning. His paper therefore booked him a berth on the steamship Frederick VIII, which was taking home the discredited German ambassador to the United States. Gibbons was having none of this namby-pamby nonsense. He found out which would be the first boat out of New York to defy the German ultimatum and, in the hope of a sensational scoop, booked himself in on it. When the ship Laconia left New York, there was Gibbons, perhaps the only man ever to sail the Atlantic hoping that his ship would be sunk.
Eight days later he got his wish. Two hundred miles off the Irish coast, Laconia was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sank within the hour. Gibbons and most of the passengers and crew took to the lifeboats, were picked up by a British minesweeper, and, less than two days later, were deposited safely at Queenstown, North Ireland.
Gibbons’ report – including an account of how two American women were swept to their deaths by a wave – was printed in details across America, and read from the floor of both Houses of Congress.
Later he left for France as one of 18 American war correspondents attached to the US expeditionary force. Again and again Gibbons had the front page to himself.
Such good fortune was bound to run out at some stage, and in June 1918 it finally did. Gibbons had been warned that to go on patrol with the Fifth Marines in woods near Lucy-le-Bocage, 40 miles north of Paris, would be too risky, but he was undeterred. As major Berry and his men, accompanied by Gibbons, crossed a wheat field they came under heavy machinegun fire. Every man flattened himself on the ground, but Berry was hit in the hand, and Gibbons began to crawl towards him. He had not gone more than a yard or two when he was hit with a bullet which ricocheted off a rock, took out his left eye, fractured his skull and exited, ripping a three-inch hole in the right side of his helmet.
For the next three hours Gibbons lay here, losing blood and fully conscious, until light artillery knocked out the German machinegunners and he could be helped from the scene.
He recovered quickly, and, sporting the white eye patch that was to be part of his own mythology, was back at the front by July.
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In 1921 came his greatest triumph of all: the Russian Famine.
Some time that summer, word began to leak out of the new Soviet state that people in their millions were starving in the Volga region. Checking these rumors was easier said than done. The Bolshevik government allowed no Western journalists to be based in Moscow, and coverage of the country was in the hands of reporters who hung around Riga’s restaurants talking to émigrés, White Russians and other unreliable witnesses. But as sketchy reports of a fearful famine gained momentum, so did interest in the story back home, and soon Gibbons received the cable from Chicago: ‘Concentrate all available correspondents on Russia. It’s the greatest news story in the world today. We must have first exclusive eye-witness report from corr on the spot.’
He sent two reporters, who soon joined all the other correspondents milling about Latvia, waiting for permission to enter Russia. The Soviets were not letting them in; they wanted US food aid, but were afraid that the full extent of the tragedy would be revealed.
Gibbons came to Riga himself and hatched a plan that might get him into Russia. The rest of the press had dutifully filled out an application form for entry. Not Gibbons. Instead he told his German pilot to keep his plane primed for take-off, and let it to be known around the bars that he was thinking of making an illicit flight into Russia. Sure enough, informants picked up his story, and next day Gibbons was summoned to see Litvinov, the Soviet ambassador.
Litvinov said he knew about Gibbons’ plan, and warned him that if he tried to fly across the border, he would be shot down. Gibbons countered by pointing out that Russian border ran from the Baltic to the Black sea, and anti-aircraft guns covered a mere fraction of it. Litvinov then threatened to have Gibbons arrested, to which the reporter replied that the Soviets had just released all their US prisoners in order to secure food aid and were not likely to start incarcerating Americans again. Checkmate. That night, while the rest of the press fumed in Riga, Gibbons boarded a train for Moscow, and, after a few days in the capital, was on another train bound for the Volga. The ride took 40 hours, but the scene that greeted him in Samara was of such medieval degradation, it might as well have been a journey back through the centuries. So awful was the stench of death as he stepped from his carriage, and so high the risk of cholera and typhus, that he did his reporting with a towel soaked in disinfectant held to his face.
Writing was one thing; getting the story out was quite another, for when Gibbons got to the local telegraph station he saw that the keyboard used to transmit messages had, naturally enough, only Cyrillic letters. He had to write out his report again, changing each Latin letter to its nearest local equivalent. So, in this hybrid language was his report transmitted to Moscow, where it was translated and dispatched to America. It was the world’s first account of the famine from a non-Soviet source.
Not even a heart attack could stop him. He suffered one while on holiday in January 1943, but a year later accepted an offer from INS to cover the Italian campaign in Ethiopia. Gibbons, predictably, was the first correspondent to arrive at the front. He survived that, sailed for home, and began at last to spend some of the considerable fortune he had accumulated, buying two farms and a yacht. And it was at home, just over two years later, in the very bed that he had been born in, that Floyd Gibbons died of a heart attack at the age of 52.
(From ‘The Great Reporters’ by David Randall)
· Focus on vocabulary
| 1. nominate 2. impede 3. rival 4. defy 5. exclusive 6. nomadic 7. inclination 8. brawl 9. scuttle 10. ambush 11. insinuate 12. to be enamored 13. cover 14. scoop 15. chaff 16. hanker 17. jolt 18. sentry 19. drone 20. hatch |
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- Answer the following questions
1. What do we learn about the early years and the education of Floyd Gibbons?
2. Why was it important for Gibbons to meet Pancho Villa? Describe the circumstances of their meeting.
3. Why did Gibbons prefer to go to Germany by the ship Laconia?
4. How did Gibbons lose his eye?
5. Why was it difficult to cover the events in Russia?
6. How did Gibbons manage to talk the Russian ambassador into giving him permission to visit Russia?
7. Why was it difficult to send his stories from Russia back to America?
8. What do we learn about the last years of his life?
- Topics for discussion
a) What is a good war correspondent in your terms? What traits of character should a person possess to become a war correspondent?
b) How far should a journalist go to get an exclusive for his paper?
c) Do you think that there are cases when a journalist can break law to obtain information?
· Sharing ideas
ü If you had a chance to interview Floyd Gibbons, what questions would you ask him? What episode of his biography would be in the center of your interview?
ü Role-play an interview with Gibbons for your newspaper (TV program).
· From Russian into English
Summarize the extract from the journalist’s biography in English.
В 1982 году Артем Боровик окончил факультет международной журналистики Московского государственного института международных отношений. Но когда ему, как одному из лучших студентов МГИМО, предложили блестящее распределение в МИД, он, не раздумывая, отказался со словами: "Я всегда мечтал стать журналистом".
После окончания института, вместо Европы, окно в которую "прорубил" диплом МГИМО, Артем Боровик выбрал работу в Чернобыле, Никарагуа и Афганистане, в котором Артем и закалился как репортер.
Репортажи и очерки о правде "спрятанной войны", опубликованные в "Огоньке", вызвали небывалый резонанс, вместе с которым Артем нажил врагов, но и приобрел друзей. Автор романа "Сто лет одиночества" Габриэль Гарсиа Маркес, который был восхищен журналистской работой Боровика, сказал: "Я хотел бы познакомиться с этим храбрым репортером".
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В 1988 году Артём служил в Американской армии, в рамках экспериментального обмена, в ходе которого советский журналист направлялся в американскую армию, американский – в советскую. Об этом факте биографии Боровик написал книгу "Как я был солдатом армии США".
Приверженность к военной тематике и тяга к расследованиям сдружили Артема с журналистом и писателем Юлианом Семёновым, после смерти которого Боровик возглавил основанную Семёновым в 1992 году газету, а потом и холдинг "Совершенно секретно".
Как говорил Артем Боровик, “мы не партийная журналистика, мы журналистика, которая хочет избавить власть от тех неверных шагов, которые члены власти совершают. Мы пытаемся помочь власти – это конструктивная критика. Мне хочется, чтобы наши власти и на местах, и повыше понимали это и относились к журналистам как к своим помощникам".
Артём Боровик стал первым и единственным журналистом (не только в России, но и во всем мире), дважды удостоенным престижной премии имени американского журналиста "война справедливости" Эдварда Морроу (Edward R.Murrow): за репортаж "Комната 19" из секретной лаборатории, где хранится мозг Ленина, и за передачу из серии "Двойной портрет".
Во время последнего интервью в своей жизни, которое Артем дал на канале НТВ в ночь на 7 марта 2000 года, от одного из телезрителей пришел на пейджер вопрос: "Если вы такой честный, почему же вы до сих пор живы?.." Ровно через 56 часов, утром 9 марта 2000 г. самолет Як-40, выполнявший частный рейс в Киев, в котором находился Артем Боровик, разбился при взлете в московском аэропорту Шеремтьево-1.
Чтобы продолжить дело сына, Генрих Боровик с единомышленниками создали Благотворительный фонд имени Артёма, для помощи тем журналистам, которые работают в самом опасном жанре - журналистских расследований. В кругу журналистов, премию Боровика называют Премией совести.
ü Do you see any common traits in the characters of Floyd Gibbons and Artem Borovick?
· Writing
Write a short biography of a journalist whom you respect. (write 200-250 words)
Answer the following questions:
- Why did you choose this person for your essay?
- What facts of his/her biography seem important to you?
- What makes this person an outstanding journalist?
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