American Magazine | Spring 2006
http://www.american.edu/american/fall06_housereporter.hml
The White House: This Reporter’s Beat
Emerging from his closet-sized office at a quarter til noon, the reporter walks down a narrow hallway and takes his seat in the front row of the cramped briefing room. David Gregory’s one of the lucky ones; as White House correspondent for NBC News, he has a prime seat reserved among the 48 in the small auditorium. Many of the print journalists, bloggers, cameramen, and photographers here for this January 25 briefing stand.
For more than a month now Washington has been awash in controversy surrounding the revelation that in 2002 President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on American citizens and foreign nationals inside the United States. About 20 minutes into Scott McClellan’s daily sparring session with the press, Gregory ’92, wearing a blue dress shirt and metallic tie without a jacket, begins to probe the White House press secretary on this subject. All morning McClellan has been insisting that the program is perfectly legal and that referring to it as “domestic spying” is misleading.
Gregory’s initial question prompts a curt response from McClellan, who then turns the tables on the journalist.
The fireworks have begun.
“Let me ask you this,” McClellan says to Gregory. “Is an international communication overseas by an al Qaeda member coming into the United States, that is monitored overseas, is that a domestic communication?”
Suffice it to say, Gregory is not pleased.
“Well, first of all, I ask the questions, I don’t answer them,” he shoots back, his voice clearly audible above the rising murmur in the room. “Number two . . .”
“I’m sure you don’t want to answer that question,” McClellan interjects.
“No, because I’m not in the business of setting the rules on this. I’m a reporter, I’m not responsible for authorizing these things. You speak for the president, so that’s why I ask the questions.”
“Okay, you don’t want to answer that,” McClellan says, preparing to solicit another question and end this confrontation. “Got it. It’s international communications. And I gave you a very clear example of international phone calls. We’re talking about international communications. So I think I answered that question.”
Ten minutes later, the crescendoing sound of a helicopter landing outside signals the end of the briefing, and the media members disperse to their various cubbyholes and desktops in the aged West Wing press facility to begin feeding the public’s right to know.
Just another day at the office.
Gregory heads back to his desk, ready to work the phones and begin tapping sources for information on the story he’s assembling for tonight’s NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams: will Washington pay to transform New Orleans from ruin to rebirth?
“This president has really diminished the role of press secretary,” he says. “He’s still the public face of this administration, but he’s not really forthcoming. He tries to push us around and it’s our job to push back. But I have a good relationship with the president, he’s told me that he thinks I’m fair. And I have a good relationship with Scott. They know I don’t have an agenda.”
Indeed, despite Gregory’s aggressive style and occasionally contentious attitude toward McClellan, the press secretary still clearly respects his work.
“He can be combative at times, but I think he works hard to get to the bottom of the story and report it in a fair manner,” McClellan says. “David is a really good reporter.”
Ever since he was a boy growing up in Los Angeles, that’s all David Gregory ever wanted to be.
Then he’s not filling in for Matt Lauer as host of the Today show or subbing for Don Imus on the radio, Gregory, 35, usually rises shortly after the sun. Today he’s up around seven with his son Max, three, and one-year-old twins, Jed and Ava, helping his wife, Beth, get them breakfast and off to play dates. Striking the right balance between his demanding career and his roles as a husband and a father is critical to Gregory.
“It’s a real juggling act,” he says. “It’s not easy, but being a family man really matters to me. It’s something I work at all the time.”
Just before 10, he hops into his car for the 15-minute drive from his Northwest Washington house, neighboring AU, to his professional home at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
While Gregory’s job might be glamorous, his working environs most certainly are not. The West Wing space above the White House’s old indoor swimming pool was constructed for the media in 1970, and the paint that adorns the walls, the carpeting that blankets the floors, the antiquated vending machines in the break room don’t hide their age well. The press corps long since has outgrown the digs.
Gregory slides his 6-foot-5-inch frame into a desk chair in a seven-foot-wide “office” that houses up to three other NBC News reporters and producers. When the room is filled to capacity, one gets the sensation of trying to negotiate an airplane bathroom.
Yet, there is nowhere he would rather be.
“It is still kind of surreal to me,” he says. “I’m working in the same booth where Tom Brokaw was our White House correspondent. It’s sort of a daily reminder that this is an important beat with a lot of responsibility. It’s an honor and a thrill.”
Gregory first was bit by the reportorial bug at age 15. So focused was he on a career in television news that he taught himself to mimic Brokaw and the late ABC World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings.
“I really sort of fell in love with the news,” Gregory says. “Just the intensive urgency of it and all the places it took you. I really became enamored with that.”
Realizing that Washington was the nexus of the political and the media worlds, Gregory decided to head East from L.A. for college and enrolled at AU.
“The interesting thing was I immediately decided not to study journalism,” he recalls. “I had international interests, so I thought it would make more sense to study international affairs. But I was constantly thinking about how to get started in my [broadcasting] career. In fact, I spent too much time doing that. I remember sitting in my dorm room during the day calling people, trying to network.”
He did find time to work at the AU television station, reporting and anchoring the news, an experience he calls “formative.”
Gregory’s drive was evident to anyone who came in contact with him. After his freshman year at AU, he landed an internship at KGUN-TV in Tucson, Arizona.
“That summer he got every crappy job you can think of in the news room,” says Ray Depa, KGUN’s vice president and general manager and the first person to put Gregory on the air. “He was more or less a gopher, but the way he handled himself, he never complained, just did what he was told. By the end of his internship we gave him some meaningful things to do. As little of an opportunity as he had, he took advantage of it. Before the summer ended I said, ‘David, you’re going back to Washington, every now and then we’d like you to cover some stories for us.’ He just didn’t wait for us to call him. He’d go get a bite with a congressman or a senator. He made contacts. Here he is in college, taking the initiative. The stuff he did for us in Washington was top-notch.”
A paid journalist at age 19, Gregory never looked back. The next summer he returned to KGUN, where he filed investigative reports on Tucson Electric Power, which was going through bankruptcy.
“There was never a doubt in my mind that this guy was someday going to be the president of the network news division,” Depa says. “He had a picture of Peter Jennings on his desk. Here’s somebody who is 20 years old running circles around most reporters in this market. There wasn’t a story that he couldn’t do or go get.”
After graduating from AU’s School of International Service in 1992, Gregory returned to the southwest to work for a station in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
“I toned my broadcasting abilities,” he says. “I think it was important to learn about life. The problem I had starting so young is I didn’t have a lot of adult experiences like owning a house or having a credit card or a mortgage. I learned a lot about judgments, about how to be responsible about the news. I started to develop a style and to learn the craft a bit. I covered a story about a real tragedy in a family, a drunk driver who had killed a family in New Mexico. That taught me the importance of empathy and compassion for the people that you’re covering. Understanding that we’re talking about things that really impact people’s lives. Even though as a professional I would do things differently because I’ve learned a lot, I still think that story stands up over time as work that I’m proud of.”
At the ripe old age of 24, Gregory joined NBC News in 1995, covering the O.J. Simpson trial for the network’s affiliates. Three years later he was shifted to Washington, D.C., to cover the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and after chronicling George W. Bush’s victorious 2000 presidential campaign, he was named White House correspondent at the age of 29.
Phil Griffin, senior vice president for NBC News, was struck by Gregory’s passion and versatility and championed his rise to the top.
“Whatever David does, whether it’s work-wise or his interests in life, he gets totally involved,” Griffin says. “He enjoys it. He brings that quality to everything he does. Whether he’s at a White House press conference and he’s grilling the spokesman or he’s doing a cooking segment on the third hour of the Today show, he’s just into it and that comes across to the viewer. David puts himself out there, he brings his own curiosity to everything he does. If you’re going to be a reporter, you’ve got to be curious. Many reporters don’t want to seem silly or ask the wrong question, but David says, ‘Look, I’m just going to go for it.’ It’s impressive how he approaches his work. He’s what you want in a reporter.”
Lunch is Gregory’s time to fill his stomach and free his mind. At about 1 p.m., he exits the White House grounds through the northwest gate and walks a block down Pennsylvania Avenue to a bustling café called Breadline.
“I come here every day for lunch,” he says. “I’m very ritualistic. It helps me clear my head and think about the story.”
Today’s is turning out to be particularly tough. In addition to the financial aspects of the Katrina story, the Bush administration, citing executive privilege, recently has refused to turn over e-mails and other documents about its response to the disaster to a congressional committee investigating the matter.
“The challenge is to synchronize all of these complex things in a way that viewers can understand,” Gregory says.
Lunch, potato leek soup and an orange, is eaten back at his desk, where he participates in a 2 p.m. conference call with Don Powell, the federal coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding, and Alphonso Jackson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Thirty minutes later Gregory calls his bosses at NBC News in New York to apprise them of the depth and direction of his story.
“There’s actually a rhythm I’ve developed that I feel confident in,” he says of his workdays, filled with deadlines and intense time pressures.
From about 2:45 to 4 p.m. Gregory crafts the story, choosing the video images and graphics for the piece with the help of his producer who’s working from NBC’s Washington bureau on Nebraska Avenue. At 4:30, he begins writing his script and checks in with Nightly News anchor Brian Williams to discuss the report.
After the script is approved by producers in New York, he records the voice-over, which is beamed directly to the bureau in Northwest D.C.
It’s 6 p.m. now, a half hour until show time, and Gregory is pleading with Nightly News executive producer John Reiss for an additional few seconds of air time. The broadcast is plotted down to the second.
“In a 30-minute newscast, vital time is measured in seconds,” Gregory says.
The clock ticking, Gregory reaches above his computer and pulls down a small bin filled with make-up. He scurries around the corner into a bathroom to apply some, exactly what products he won’t reveal.
“I have to keep a few secrets,” he quips.
As he walks through the cold January darkness to the northwest lawn of the White House, where reporters do their stand-ups and live shots from an area known as “Pebble Beach,” he reminisces.
“I’ve had some big nights,” he says. “State of the Unions, 9/11. The most exciting night was the election in 2004. As I was walking out to do my live shot, there were still some questions about the exit polls. I was rewriting as I walked. That was intense.”
This evening is far more routine. Standing before the camera, Gregory adjusts his tie, fidgets with his scarf, and applies hair spray to protect his gray coiffure from the blustery winter wind.
After stumbling on his opening line three times, Gregory nails it on take number four, only to be told by producers back at the bureau that it’s two seconds too long. Undaunted, he speeds up his bold and deliberate delivery, finishing with a fraction of a second to spare.
Back at the NBC booth inside the White House, Gregory settles in to watch his report, second on tonight’s broadcast. Just to the side of the five-inch monitor is a wedding picture of his wife, Beth, a shot of their son, Max, and a Halloween photo of the twins, Jed and Ava. He’s dressed as a pumpkin, she as a pea pod. In about a half hour their daddy will be home, eating dinner and spending time with his family like millions of the people who have just watched his report on television. Tomorrow, like them, he’ll be back at work, doing it all over again.
“Two debates tonight about what happened before the storm and the still uncertain road to recovery,” Gregory hears himself saying to 10 million viewers across the country, as a picture of a lone SUV driving down a hurricane-ravaged Louisiana street flashes on the screen. “David Gregory, NBC News, the White House.”
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