This interview was conducted by Taylor Collins, Griot Student Intern, with Eric Deggans, NPR’s first full-time TV critic, and a speaker for the 2022-2023 Spring Series.
TC: How did you become interested in journalism? What do you enjoy about being a journalist?
ED: Well, my dad was a columnist for the local newspaper where I live, the Post-Tribune in Gary, Indiana. So, I had a sense that writing for a newspaper was a job that you could have, and that I could have. I was pretty practical about it when I was in middle school, and I very much remember sort of sitting down and saying to myself, “What am I good at?” and, “What could I make money doing, what could I make a steady paycheck doing?” I realized I was good at writing, and I’m a musician, I play drums and the bass guitar. I dabbled in art, but I wasn’t as good at that as I was at the other two things, so I thought, if I could get a job as a pop music critic at a major publication, that’d be a great way to make a living while doing something that I care about, and then have a unique insight because I’m a player. So, pretty much I pursued that through high school and college, and when I was in Indiana University, I was in a band that got sent into Motown, so I took two and a half years off, and did that. Then when that sort of tethered out and we got dropped from our record deal, I went back to finish my journalism degree. In fact, in my last three credits, I did my correspondence while I was playing a gig. I came back from that gig and had a weekend where I played a prom with my band. On Sunday I had my graduation ceremony that Jane Pauley spoke at because she’s an alum for the IU journalism school. On Sunday night I threw all of my stuff in a U-haul and I drove to Pittsburg where I started working for the Pittsburgh Press, which existed at the time. So, journalism was always a sense where I could earn a steady paycheck, do something I love, and then eventually I realized I could tell stories in a way that I felt like nobody else could, or few other people could, and I could tell them about subjects that other people couldn’t talk about and would avoid talking about, and so that led me to focus more about talking about race and media in society. I was a music critic for a while in New Jersey and in Florida, then I realized that everything happens on television, so if I wanted to write about social movements, or gender, or race, I had to go somewhere on television where that stuff is happening, either news coverage or some documentary about it, or there’s a tv show that talks about those subjects, so I shifted over to cover television in 1997. And I have kind of done that off and on since.
TC: What led you to write Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation? What do you hope this work will contribute to public racial discourse in the U.S.?
ED: I had been doing a lot of stories about the intersection of race and media in different ways. For example, I write about this in the book, I watched the first season of Survivor, 40 something seasons ago, this would of been maybe early 2000s, and I realized there were some weird racial dynamics that played out in the show, you know, because they only had two people of color on the show, and there was a weird sort of exclusion that was happening there, and the two Black people, on of them was comfortable around white people and one of them wasn’t, so that led to weird dynamics, even within the group of Black people that were in the show. I remember at a press party for Survivor in LA, right after the first season concluded, I got to talk to the executive producer Mark Burnett about this. He jumped back like I was trying to touch him with a hot poker, and he just refused to engage in any discussion on the racial dynamics in Survivor, and when I wrote the book, I tried to interview him, and he would not agree to a face to face interview like we’re doing, I had to send him emailed questions, well, I sent his publicist the questions, and the publicist sent me back answers that I presume he wrote, I don’t really know that he wrote them. They allowed me to say that he wrote them. The upshot is for years I had been doing these stories about racial dynamics in scripted television, in reality tv, online, all these different things, and I realized that there wasn’t really a book that sort of pulled together what was happening in that modern moment, and how some of it is rooted in these media outlets that profit by playing on people’s racial fears, by referencing what I call racial panic, and using different kinds of racism in order to galvanize audiences, bring audiences to them, and also to keep those audiences from going to other platforms. And part of it was I had been adjunct professor, at a couple of colleges, University of Tampa and Eckerd college and I wanted to teach courses that taught this kind of stuff, but could’t find textbooks that discussed it in any real way and I would always have to peace together things that copy this story from this magazine, or I’d tell the students to read this chapter from one book where they talk about it a little bit and so part of me realized maybe I should just go out and write the textbook that I wish existed. I tried to write a book that the general public could read and enjoy, but that would talk about these issues and how they work. One chapter talks about scripted television, while another chapter talks about reality tv, one chapter talks about online platforms and I interviewed Andrew Breitbart, the person from Breitbart.com, the conservative websites name, I interviewed him five months before he died, I was probably one of his last interviews, so I tried to pull together all this work that I had been doing as a journalist for different stories in the St. Petersburg Times, newspapers mostly, but also for magazines, and put it all in one place, do extra reporting, fit in all the stuff that I couldn’t fit in the stories that I did for the newspaper, and also do extra interviews, so reach out to Mark Bernett, reach out to Yul Kwon, the first non-white winner of Survivor, ask him what his experience was, I interviewed Tucker Carlson, he’s in the book, before he was the presence that he is today. I even, Bill O’Reilly refused to give me an interview, but I found he was giving a press conference before he gave a speech at a facility in Sarasota, Florida, not too far from where I live, so I just went there and showed up at the press conference and asked him a few questions, so I was able to get a few quotes from him as well in the book. It was a great experience in a way to sort of really focus on the topic and I think that if you read the book now you see the early seeds of all the stuff that we’re experiencing now. What I hope the book did was give some people a sense of what was coming, and my hope back then was to try and convince people to stop it from getting worse, but what I didn’t realize then, I mean, I kind of realized it then, I talked about the money making strategy behind it, I mean a big influence of writing the book was seeing what Fox News was doing. Fox News channel was much less obvious about its strategy. It refused to admit it favored conservatives and right wing politicians and conservative ideology. They claimed they were “fair and balanced.” In particular, they didn’t admit a lot of the racist things they were doing on air, to speak to their viewers about what Black people were doing, how dangerous Black people might be, there was a lot of subtext, and not as much text as we see now. Now we see Tucker Carlson, and he says the things that Fox News channel used to just imply. In my book, I have a moment on Sean Hannity’s show where he interviews a top editor for Breitbart.com about critical race theory, and tries to scare people about what that means, even back then. This was 2012, eleven years ago, so if you read the book, you can’t see the early seeds of what we’re struggling with now, back when Fox News was less overt about its racism, less overt about its prejudices, less overt about its favoritism towards conservatives and the GOP. I was hoping that the book would sort of serve as a warning and a wakeup call and maybe people might take action to limit this stuff. As it turns out, it makes too much money – it’s too profitable for these outlets, you look at how much money the Daily Wire makes, how much money Newsmax makes, I’m not even talking about Fox News channel, where Tucker Carlson makes 10 million dollars a year. Sean Hannity probably makes that much, the news channel makes billions of dollars for news corporations for low cost programing, these are money making engines that are built on hate and fear and prejudice and it’s hard to get people to stop participating in them because they make so much money, and because they tell a certain segment of the population exactly what they want to hear, or exactly what they fear about how the world works. The hope was that the book would change peoples minds, but, you know, it didn’t do that.
TC: How has Black representation in the media changed in recent years? Or has it at all?
ED: Yeah, it’s changed. I think we’ve seen more people of color in positions of power in a lot of institutions. The struggle now is to deal with more subtle aspects of discrimination, and to empower those people of color who were in positions of power to act in ways that unwind systemic oppression without them being accused of being unfair to white people. Or being unfair to people who are not their ethnicity. One of the things that I think people of color (and I’m not talking just about Black people), I think one of the things that they found when they started to get access to jobs that have more influence and more power in the media is that all of a sudden, the people that you’re managing that don’t look like you will judge a lot of things that you do and try to see if you’re favoring one group over another because of your own background and your own experiences. So then you’re in this situation where you’re trying to create more opportunities and more diversity. If you’re an editor, you’re trying to increase coverage of undercover communities, trying to make sure that people are thinking about every community that they serve, and not just the people who subscribe to whatever platform you’re working for. Sometimes that can lead to accusations of favoritism, so that’s one problem. And the other problem is that the established way of doing things can be really resistant to change, and people can react without thinking in ways that perpetuate this systemic prejudice and oppression. For example, at the Philadelphia Inquirer, in the wake of the reckoning after George Floyd’s death, they published a story with a headline that said something about preserving building from protests, I forget the exact wording, but it was worded in a way that seemed to belittle the Black Live Matter movement, suggesting that these protests were destroying building and “here’s what we can do to save them.” Even non-people of color who worked at the Inquirer realized that the headline was terrible and that it was insulting to non-white readers. Particularly in newspapers, they get a sense of who their audience is and direct their coverage to the sensibilities of this imagined ideal consumer. Very often this imagined ideal consumer is a middle class, middle age white person, because those are the people making the decisions about coverage and focus. Even if you look at a city like Philadelphia, it’s half Black. So why is your ideal consumer someone who lives in the suburbs and has a middle class income, and is white? If that’s your average consumer, then you need to ask yourself, why aren’t more Black people reading your publication? If you’re focusing all your coverage on this idealized consumer that is white, are you sending this message to your non-white potential audience that you don’t care about what they care about? And that you don’t care about addressing their needs? This is a constant struggle, and even adding people of color in positions of authority in the media doesn’t necessarily solve it. Particularly if the people who are at the top of the food chain are not willing to do the work that is necessary to really unwind this issue. I think that struggle continues, I think there are still younger staff who are pushing establishment leaders to be better at these issues, and I think we’ve made some progress, but there’s still a lot of work to do.
TC: How has your time as a TV critic at NPR influenced you?
ED: Well, NPR is the first truly national outlet that I’ve worked for. I spent 14 years at the Tampa Bay Times newspaper, which is a well regarded regional newspaper in Florida, it has won many Pulitzers. It’s had something of a national influence at times. But NPR is truly an international news organization, so there’s a level of reach that comes with constantly having your work appear in a place where it instantly goes all over the world. That is really gratifying and is really important, so I’m always trying to be aware of the larger voice that I have now. It’s a great thing. I really enjoy speaking to NPR’s audience. What I love about NPR is that it’s public media. It operates in a very different way. Of course there’s a lot of challenges and NPR is far from a perfect media organization, but we’re not driven by the same commercial concerns as CNN or New York Times is driven by. We can make choices about the diversity of our newsroom and our news coverage and who’s reflected in the stories that we do. Whereas some of these big commercial news outlets have a hard time pulling the trigger on. I believe in the concept of public media where the bulk of our financing comes from our audience, it comes from grants from corporations, and it comes from individual donations from listeners. Whenever I write something that upsets people on Twitter, they’re always coming back to me and saying “My tax dollars aren’t paying for this, defund NPR!” I don’t answer that kind of stuff anymore because they’re trolls. But the reality is that a very small percentage of NPR’s budget comes directly from the government. Only about 1 or 2 percent of something like that. The vast majority of our funding comes from people who hear our coverage regularly, and choose to support it. These individual donors could listen to NPR for free, they could download the NPR app, experience all our podcasts and all our radio programing for free, they could come to our website and read all our wonderful stuff that is written in print on our website for free, but they still choose to pay for it. I don’t think a lot of these more commercial outlets can say, “If we didn’t charge people to read our posts, and we had to ask people to donate money to read our outlet, people would still pay for it.” I’m proud of what NPR has achieved, and I’m proud we are the voice of the people, in a way where a lot of institutions can’t be. I’m really grateful that NPR seems to value the things I’ve been writing or saying about race and media and society, and they’ve been nothing but encouraging and asking me to do more of it. They value when I write something that really connects with the world. I just feel I’m in a sort of space where my job is to just try to explain and figure out how to talk more precisely and more comprehensively about where all of this is going, because misinformation is getting worse. Racism and prejudices in the media is getting worse. It is getting harder and harder to have sensible conversations about race and difference in our generation, and not have people try to drown you out by getting hysterical. There’s so much involved now, and there’s a strategy to play to people’s fears now about race, and it’s so hard to unwind and pull people back, but I’m grateful that NPR is allowing me to try and do that in my work.
TC: You’re the recipient of many distinguishable awards; what do these honors mean to you? Does this recognition make you feel like you’re making a difference/impact on society and in your various professional worlds?
ED: I’m grateful for every award I’ve been given. When you’re talking to people about what I do, it’s like putting messages in a bottle. You take these messages and you send them out into the world, and you don’t really know who’s consuming them. You don’t really know how they’re affecting people. Sometimes you’re lucky and a story connects in some way that gets a big reaction, and you can see that people are really moved by it in one way or another. But most of the time what you’re doing, especially in public media, is you’re just working the job and you’re putting out material that is as high quality as you can make it. You’re telling people stories, and it’s hard to tell what impact it’s having on listeners, and what impact it’s having on the public. One thing an award can do is say, “Hey, we’ve noticed this, and we think it’s good.” That’s a wonderful message to get. Especially when you get in this mode and it’s just kind of putting things out there, and you’re hopeful, but you don’t really know. I got an award from the American Sociological Association for the Race Baiter book. The book has been a very modest book, it’s only sold about 5,000 copies. I’m gratified that some people are using it in their classrooms. I use it as a centerpiece of a class I teach at Duke University, and other people have used it at California State, University of Southern California, and places like that. You know, it wasn’t a huge book though. So to have the ASA sort of say, “The books been out for years, but we’ve read it, it was predictive in a lot of ways, a great piece of work, and we’re going to honor it with this award,” which I think I got either last year or the year before, so pretty recently. That’s just amazing, it blew my mind. I remain forever grateful for that kind of stuff because it’s one of the ways that you can gauge whether the stuff you’re putting out there is actually reaching people. I’m idealistic enough to just think that the most important thing is to keep putting those ideas out there and hope that they’re affecting people in ways that you don’t know or you won’t see, but that they are affecting people, and that it will bring change. You have to believe that things may be a little better now that you’re speaking up then they would be if you hadn’t spoken up.