Kerrie Davies







'An eye in the eye of the hurricane': Fire and fury, immersion and ethics in political literary journalism

One of the first reviews of Fire and fury (Wolff 2018) appeared via Twitter, '@realDonaldTrump: I authorized zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book!' President Trump's emphasis on access highlights the literary journalism method of immersion in the controversial book's construction and ethics. Immersion requires a journalist to spend time with a subject, 'eating with them, traveling with them, breathing their air' (Conover 2016: 11). This paper discusses Wolff's immersive techniques alongside Gay Talese's feature 'Frank Sinatra has a cold' (1966) together with the work of Joe McGinniss (1969) and Hunter S. Thompson (1973). It critiques Wolff's relationships with key political strategists within the immersive literary journalism framework that requires a consideration of a 'special set of ethical questions' (Conover 2016: 60). Whilst Wolff maintains he adopted an observer immersive stance and removed himself from the text, he does not seem to have followed Talese's rigour in verification with all minor characters (Green 2013), pivotally the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. This, combined with non-disclosure of participation in key scenes and the volatile, reactive 'fake news' environment of the White House, resulted in suggestions of ethical transgressions in the wider media as well as those quoted in the book

Keywords: Trump, immersion, literary journalism, Hunter S. Thompson, Michael Wolff


References

  1. ABC News (2018) Attorneys for Fire and fury publisher push back against Trump team’s cease and desist letter, 8 January. Available online at https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/attorneys-fire-fury-publisher-push-back-trump-teams/story?id=52217633 accessed on 1 July 2018
  2. Borchers, Callum (2018) It’s almost as though Michael Wolff is trying to make journalists look bad, Washington Post, 10 January. Available online at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/01/10/its-almost-like-michael-wolff-is-trying-to-make-journalists-look-bad/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7be5e5022249, accessed on 1 July 2018
  3. Bradfield, Scott (2018) Journalism’s Lord of Misrule, The gonzo philosophy of Hunter S. Thompson, newstatesman.com, 9 May. Available online at https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/05/journalism-s-lord-misrule-gonzo-philosophy-hunter-s-thompson, accessed on 1 July 2018
  4. Brockes, Emma (2018) My problem with Fire and Fury? The behind the scenes toadying it took, Guardian, 12 January. Available online at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/11/wolff-fire-and-fury-administration-author accessed July 2018
  5. Capote, Truman (1994 [1965]) In cold blood, New York, Vintage International
  6. CNN Opinion (2018) Fact-checking Michael Wolff, 8 January. Available online at https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/08/opinions/michael-wolff-donald-trump-roundup-opinion/index.html, accessed on 1 July 2018
  7. Conover, Ted (1987) Coyotes, New York, Random House
  8. Conover, Ted (2001 [2000]) NewJack: Guarding Sing Sing, New York, Random House
  9. Conover, Ted (2001 [1984]) Rolling nowhere, New York, Random House
  10. Conover, Ted (2016) Immersion: A writer’s guide to going deep, Chicago, University of Chicago Press
  11. Green, Elon (2013) Annotation Tuesday! Gay Talese and ‘Frank Sinatra has a cold’, Neiman Storyboard. Available online at http://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/annotation-tuesday-gay-talese-and-frank-sinatra-has-a-cold/, accessed on 1 July 2018
  12. Hartsock, John (2000) A history of American literary journalism, Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press
  13. Holan, Angie Drobnic (2018) A fact checker’s guide to Fire and fury: Inside the Trump White House, PolitiFact.com, 9 January. Available online at http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/jan/09/fact-checking-read-fire-and-fury-michael-wolff/, accessed on 1 July 2018
  14. Hollywood Reporter (2018) Michael Wolff reflects on a wild week: I have no side here, 6 January. Available online at https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/michael-wolff-reflects-a-wild-week-trumps-anger-i-have-no-side-q-a-1072106, accessed on 1 July 2018
  15. Kramer, Mark (1995) Breakable rules for literary journalists, Nieman Storyboard. Available online at http://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/breakable-rules-for-literary-journalists/, accessed on 1 July 2018
  16. Malcolm, Janet (1990) The journalist and the murderer, New York, Alfred Knopf
  17. Martin, Jonathan (2018) From Fire and fury to political firestorm, 8 January. Available online at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/08/books/review/michael-wolff-fire-and-fury-trump-white-house.html, accessed on 12 August 2018
  18. McGinnis, Joe (1969) The selling of the President 1968, New York, Trident Press
  19. McGinnis, Joe (2012 [1983]) Fatal vision, New York, Penguin
  20. McNair, Brian, (2003 [1995]) An introduction to political communication, New York, Routledge
  21. NBC (2018) Full Michael Wolff: Meet the press with Chuck Todd, 8 January. Available online at https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/full-michael-wolff-trump-white-house-facing-25th-amendment-kind-of-stuff-1131256387787, accessed on 1 July 2018
  22. Newsweek (2018) ‘Who is Katie Walsh?’, January 4. Available online at https://www.newsweek.com/who-katie-walsh-former-trump-deputy-chief-staff-was-only-pro-white-house-770506, accessed on 1 July 2018
  23. Palmer, Ruth (2016) The journalist and the murderer revisited: What interview subjects reveal about a modern classic, Journalism, Vol. 18, No. 5 pp 575-591
  24. Richardson, Peter (2018) Michael Wolff and Hunter S. Thompson, peterrichardson.blogspot.com. Available online at http://peterrichardson.blogspot.com/2018/02/michael-wolff-and-hunter-s-thompson.html, accessed on 1 July 2018
  25. Ricketson, Matthew (2006) Reassessing Janet Malcolm’s Journalist and the murderer, Australian Journalism Review, Vol. 28, No. 1 pp 219-226
  26. Seymour, Corey and Wenner, Jann (2007) Gonzo: The life of Hunter S. Thompson, New York, Little Brown
  27. Sims, Norman (1984) The literary journalists, New York, Ballantine Books. Available online at http://normansims.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/The-Literary-Journalists.pdf, accessed on 1 July 2018
  28. Tapper, Jake (2018) Jake Tapper shares his thoughts on Michael Wolff’s book, Late night with Seth Meyers, 12 January. Available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L51U-KIVay0, accessed on 1 July 2018
  29. Talese, Gay (2003 [1966]) Frank Sinatra has a cold, Lounsberry, Barbara (ed.) The Gay Talese reader, New York, Bloomsbury pp 18-63
  30. Thompson, Hunter S. (2005 [1973]) Fear and loathing on the campaign trail ’72, New York, HarperCollins
  31. Walters, Patrick (2015) Cracking a closed culture as an immersion journalist, Teaching Journalism and Mass Communication, Vol 5. No. 1. Available online at http://aejmc.us/spig/2015/cracking-a-closed-culture-as-an-immersion-journalist/
  32. Winson, Stephen (2018) Fear and loathing in the White House ’17, Medium, 6 January. Available online at https://medium.com/@analogline/fear-and-loathing-in-the-white-house-17-8f617077ef61, accessed on 1 July 2018
  33. Wolfe, Tom (1975 [1973]) Seizing the power, Wolfe, Tom and Johnson, E. W. (eds) The new journalism, New York, Picador pp 38-51
  34. Wolff, Michael (2009) The power and the story, Vanity Fair, July. Available online at https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/07/wolff200907 accessed on 1 July 2018
  35. Wolff, Michael (2018a) Fire and fury: Inside the Trump White House, New York, Henry Holt and Co.
  36. Wolff, Michael (2018b) You can’t make this s…t up: My insane year inside Trump’s White House, Hollywood Reporter, 4 January. Available online at https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/michael-wolff-my-insane-year-inside-trumps-white-house-1071504, accessed on 1 July 2018
  37. Wolff, Michael (2018c) Michael Wolff’s Fire and fury diaries, Hollywood Reporter, 11 April. Available online at https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/michael-wolffs-fire-fury-diaries-what-media-still-gets-wrong-trump-1100978, accessed on 1 July 2018
  38. Wolff, Michael (2018d) Michael Wolff on Meet the Press: Donald Trump ‘not a good father’, realclearpolitics.com, 7 January. Available online at https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/01/07/michael_wolff_on_meet_the_press_donald_trump_not_a_very_good_father.html, accessed on 26 August 2018
  39. Wolpe, Bruce (2018) Fire and fury review: Michael Wolff confirms the worst fears about Donald Trump, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 January. Available online at https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/fire-and-fury-review-michael-wolff-confirms-the-worst-fears-about-donald-trump-20180122-h0m0d2.html, accessed on 1 July 2018

Note on the contributor

Dr Kerrie Davies is a lecturer at the School of the Arts and Media, UNSW, Sydney, Australia, and the author of A wife's heart (2017), a work of auto/biography about poet Henry Lawson's wife Bertha Lawson.