Quest for truth

development > listening post

QUEST FOR TRUTH

CNN ANCHOR RICHARD QUEST, WHO WAS IN DOHA RECENTLY, TALKS TO QATAR TODAY ABOUT HIS JOURNALISTIC JOURNEY, AND THE LESSONS LEARNT ALONG THE WAY.

BY AYSWARYA MURTHY 34 > QATAR TODAY > DECEMBER 2013

T

he panic arrived in full force about 50 minutes before the scheduled interview with Richard Quest. What could I possibly ask this titan of television who, through the course of his long, illustrious career, has hobnobbed with presidents and princes, business czars and rock stars? But as it turned out, I had worried myself sick for no reason. Quest’s affable manner, which puts his interviewees at ease on live TV, worked just as well on me in that quiet corner of the café. I ask him if he ever has pre-interview jitters. “Of course, all the time!” he says. “You try interviewing Jimmy Carter. It is intimidating and terrifying to talk to these great thinkers...

Bill Clinton, Warren Buffett, Richard Gere, Bill Gates, the late Margaret Thatcher. And I was a gibbering wreck at the thought of interviewing Julie Andrews. This is Mary Poppins! Every time I do an interview I get nervous. The interviewee doesn’t have to answer my questions. I am not a prosecutor; I don’t have the force of law. So when I sit down with them, I consider it a privilege. I am honoured that they have chosen to give me time to talk to them. "Gregarious and colourful, Quest’s personality and witty banter expands to fill time and space and all I have to do is sit back and bask in it.

He says he has had a great day. As CNN’s airlines and aviation correspondent, he was invited to moderate a panel at the Arab Air Carriers Organisation annual general meeting, and happily declares that it was among the best debates they have had in their conferences – honest, open and no holds barred. “A good debate is like ballroom dancing. All the parties should be ready to dance. And today, all of them came prepared to do exactly that,” he says.

After pouring himself some tea and tut-tutting at the teapot design for being “too clever for its own good,” Quest talks a little bit about his entry into journalism.

“Though I was trained as a lawyer, I made a very conscious decision to become a journalist. I had done hospital radio growing up and university and local radio later on. In 1985 the BBC offered me a traineeship, after which I joined them as a general journalist.

I had always enjoyed doing business stories.

It’s fascinating. It’s vibrant. It’s about money and choices and the economic decisions that people make constantly. Why did they buy these useless teapots, for instance,” he says, pointing at the offending crockery, “out of all the choices they had.

"After completing an internship within the BBC’s financial unit, Quest was shipped to the States to cover business news for the BBC in 1987. In 2001 he came back home, but to report on European business for CNN. He has now moved back to New York City and will continue to host his Quest Means Business programme from the studios there.

The successful show, which CNN claims is a bridge between hard economics and entertaining television, has also earned the ire of those who accuse it, and Quest personally, of making business news too simplistic. We broach the subject carefully, but he cuts right to the chase. “In other words, you are asking me if I am dumbing down the news. Don’t worry, you won’t ask me anything that I’ll be offended by,” he says reassuringly. “For too long, economics has been a boring subject that people roll their eyes at. But business is not about market numbers; it’s about people and the decisions they make. 12.2% of the population in Europe is unemployed. It’s a disgrace and obscenity. And yet in the same breath you have people queuing up around the block to buy the iPad Air. You have companies like BlackBerry and Nokia that were giants five years ago who have now disappeared or are in trouble. This city here, 10 years ago, was a desert.But look at it now. The stories behind these are fascinating. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know what they are talking about,” he says.

So every day he makes it his business to bring his audience the most important story of the day and the best speaker on that story. Being a global show, the formula isn’t always so simple. The key is to lead with a regional story as much as possible unless a global story of universal importance is unfolding. “For example, Europe’s horrific unemployment numbers. Of course we’d lead with that. We’d love to cover a lot more of Asia, ASEAN. The revolution is underway.

But coverage is expensive.”

"For too long, economics has been a boring subject that people roll their eyes at. But business is not about market numbers; it’s about people and the decisions they make."

QATAR TODAY > DECEMBER 2013 > 35

development > listening post

"The danger is self-censorship, which is more insidious and detrimental than real censorship."

RICHARD QUEST Achor, CNN

36 > QATAR TODAY > DECEMBER 2013

And speaking about revolution, although Quest agrees that the Internet is changing broadcast news consumption fundamentally, he admits he is a bit old school. He agrees that he has to embrace it (“Our CEO grabbed the organisation by the scruff of the neck and said we have to be available on any platform that people want–television, mobile, website. So it’s not an option for us.") but will do so kicking and screaming. “I have a digital subscription to the New York Times but I still like to read the hard copy in the morning on the subway. I have no evidence to support this, but the quality of comprehension online is not as great as that when you are reading it on paper. At least for me.

If I want to read a tricky or difficult article, I’d print it out,” he says.

While we are on the topic, he also has much to say about “the generation that has become obsessed with this incontinence of airing their views on every single blog known to man and every post and every tweet”. While journalists like Glenn Greenwald dream of a world where reporters “honestly disclose their subjective assumptions and political values as opposed to dishonestly pretend they have none or conceal them from their readers,” Quest firmly subscribes to the policy of leaving your private views with your hat and coat at the door. It’s the easiest thing in the world to reveal your opinion. But it’s much more difficult to just report. Of course personal biases might affect the way you tell a story but you try and guard against it. With experience you learn to ‘not show your slip’. It’s all very well to say, reveal your point of view. But the moment you do it, you are no longer a reporter, you are a protagonist.

We are curious to hear what this career journalist thinks about the journalism

scene in Qatar. He smiles. “Here you are in the home of Al Jazeera and yet some of your newspapers feel the need to pull their punches. The danger is of course self-censorship, which is more insidious and detrimental than real censorship. At least in the latter case you know when you are being censored. But when journalists don’t report because they fear what’ll happen to them or that it won’t be acceptable, that’s worse.

A new culture has to be created and that can only happen over time as newspapers constantly toe the line and realise they can get away with it. Of course, it has to be done responsibly,” he warns hinting at the dark side of journalism. “There’ll always be excesses like (UK papers) The Sun and News of the World but these are the stench we pay for having the freedom to do it in the first place.”

Since he brought up Al Jazeera, we can’t resist asking how he thought Al Jazeera America is faring, and true to his initial declaration that we could ask him absolutely anything on the planet, he gives us his opinion from the vantage point of being among the top echelon of the American media.

"From what I have seen, it’s a very credible product and that’s what I would expect from an organisation that has such good credentials. And AJAM’s journalists are ex-colleagues of mine from CNN and the BBC who are continuing to do quality journalism, only for a different organisation, in a different way. They have a different agenda, different coverage mentality, look, feel, everything. But the jury is out on whether they can make a success of it. They are not yet a competition to the likes of CNN, MSNBC and Fox, but can they be in the future?

We don’t know. It’s too soon to say. However,” he adds, “I will not sit and criticise another journalistic organisation that is doing a good job of increasing competition and output and giving us a different perspective.

As journalists we must celebrate that fact.”

But if AJAM doesn’t manage to get the audiences, then what? “They have the advantage of not having to make money. But I question how long the Qatari authorities would want to piss away money if there is no perceived benefit,” he shrugs. But how much money is too much money for soft power? Quest nods thoughtfully. “Soft power is wonderful, isn’t it? The BBC had that with its World Service radio. And if you consider its significance, you’d have thought the British government would have been prepared to pay whatever, the cost of a couple of nuclear missiles even, to keep that service going. But they didn’t,” he says quietly