Stephen Turnham: The Truth-Teller

That shift led you to CNN’s documentary and investigative unit. Why did you want to do long-form?

You get sick of the daily news after a while, because it is, it’s very transient. Because you do it and it’s gone and nobody remembers. And it’s great for that night, but it doesn’t have any real kind of lasting impact. Although you can build a show that has lasting impact, if you have a consistent voice. But documentaries or investigations in particular can actually have an impact.

Is there a particular story you worked on that had that kind of impact?

Sex trafficking, stories about the Internet and how websites like Craigslist and Backpage use the Communications Decency Act… so you can advertise an underage girl on your website, who is obviously underage by many people’s judgment, and nothing will ever happen to you. We investigated them very thoroughly and both of them -- well, Craigslist shut down their adult services section, and the Village Voice, which owned Backpage at the time, sold it. So that was good.

Do you think Al Jazeera America is doing that? Letting people turn the TV off to tell the story?

I don’t think there’s any restriction whatsoever. In fact, I think Al Jazeera America has all kinds of stories that you would never see anywhere else. And they tend to be sometimes very difficult to watch. [Our audience will] watch the story, that’s not the problem, because the story’s compelling.

But at the end of the story they may not want to watch any more television. And the business of traditional TV news is to keep people watching television.

When it comes to storytelling, are there any devices that you use frequently, which you could say are your trademarks?

No. I guess the absence of devices is more important. That stories get told very directly and very clearly is important… I’m not a big fan of TV news tricks. And there a lot of TV news tricks. Some of them you have to use, because you have to get a show on the air. But when they interfere with the story, or mislead the viewer in any way, I think they really don’t belong there.

What are the specific TV news tricks that really bother you?

Asking questions in a way that is designed to make the person cry, which is very, very easy to do when you have somebody who’s willing to open up to you about a difficult subject… Anything fake. Anything that looks and feels inauthentic. Or too clever. Or over-fake TV news. I think people are a little bit sick of that by now.

What’s a part of your job that’s hard, but other people might think is easy?

The technology. I think there’s a misconception that the cameras and the computers, they have democratized news a lot because they are powerful tools that a lot of people can use, but they’re also extraordinarily difficult to use because technology moves so quickly. I don’t think people understand how difficult it is to put a live television show on every night. Technically, it’s very, very difficult. Very expensive. Very difficult. A lot of manpower, a lot of expertise.

How did you get interested in the technical side of TV?

Shooting… I don’t like fake backgrounds. I don’t like over-lit situations. And you can’t always go out there and constantly be fighting with camera people who have been doing it that way for 15 years and trying to get them to stop. It just gets very tedious. So I just started to shoot myself a lot and edit a lot myself, because that way you can always be happy. Well, you’re never really happy with what you do, but you only have yourself to blame.

You have strong principles about authentic, honest journalism. What drives that?

In the course of doing stories, particularly stories about people who have had bad things happen to them, and either don’t have the power to do anything about it, or don’t feel like they’re in a position to do anything about it, because they’re basically downtrodden -- it does get me angry.

So telling those stories is important, because there are a lot of people out there who don’t even realize what a horrible injustice is being done, because they suffer through these injustices everyday of their lives. I think that’s really fundamentally outrageous.

That impulse to be outraged, and to get other people to be outraged, is that something you’ve always had?

Yeah. I find it outrageous, I do. Not only the somewhat cliche things now, like kids go hungry. We all know that, and people don’t seem to care. But that kids grow up in incredibly violent, destructive environments, and we don’t seem to care that much. We care a lot more about whether there’s a traffic jam at the Whole Foods, or some small detail of suburban public schools that irritate everybody… It’s just there are places that are very, very much forgotten.

And the rhetoric of what America stands for does not match in almost any case to the reality. Doesn’t match it legally, the legal system doesn’t work. The education system doesn’t work. The political system clearly doesn’t work. And yet, people are very happy to carry on thinking that everything is great and this is the greatest country in the world, without facing up to all the really embarrassing shortcomings that are right in front of us.

Is there a particular story, or injustice, that it upsets you that people aren’t more outraged by it?  

I think people very easily dismiss people who are in difficult circumstances, who are poor or lack a very basic education, without any understanding about what it would have been like for them to have grown up in that situation. I think the vast majority of people who are from comfortable backgrounds who believe that they somehow deserve the comforts that they have been given, or that they have earned it, really are dead wrong. There are a lot of people in this country who are more talented or equally talented, equally hard-working, who will never have a shot at the things many of us take for granted.

The media gets a lot of flack these days for stoking partisanship and not informing people about important issues. Do you think there’s any truth to those criticisms?

Sure, I mean most of the media’s absolute junk. It is. It’s unwatchable. Unless that’s your thing.

If you want to watch that debate, or if you come from that particular point of view, and you want to watch that, then you’ll watch it. That’s great. Good for you. Fine. But it doesn’t mean it’s good. It’s not good journalism to deliberately aggravate an issue and not get to the meat of it just because it’s better ratings.

Do you think TV news served the public better in the '50s and '60s when there were just a few trusted newscasters whom everybody watched?

There was certainly an elevated civic discourse… It was loftier. It was steadier. It was certainly less partisan. At the same time... you had police corruption, rampant racism, horrible sexism... So I’m not sure how helpful it was to give every politician a pass on everything, which they did, and really sort of ignore corruption. There was a lot of good investigative work too. But I don’t think men in suits behaving reasonably on television necessarily translated into a better society underneath it all. It translated into a more civil society for some.

Did you always want to work in the media?

No, it was just accidental.

What was the accident?

The Post was just a job that I somehow managed to get. That was that.

And at some point you fell in love with journalism?

Yeah, it was good. What’s not to love about journalism?

Why did you come to America Tonight?

The same old reasons everybody will say. It’s an opportunity to do something completely new and have a kind of a blank slate. And it really is that. And do long-form journalism about real things, and all that stuff is all true. It certainly is true even having been here six weeks, or however long we’ve been on TV, I think we start to take for granted that we can do these kinds of pieces. But honestly, no one else is doing them. And if you left this and stepped back into another news environment, you’d probably realize that very quickly, that this really is a very different kind of mission and news idea.

What’s the dullest part of your job?

Being stuck at a desk all day. I’ve never sat at a desk all day. Really, I’ve never worn a shirt with a collar all day.