Rough Draft: A Memoir

by Katy Tur

easy in the knowledge that everyone here thought like them.

It was a little like a Facebook fan page come to life.

I found that it didn’t matter to people whether the president had improved their lives. They supported his fight unconditionally.

at least these people were engaging with a reality we could both recognize. Other people were not. They just were not.

Our job is to elevate the facts that matter regardless of who they benefit. But to people like these Trump supporters, we’re out to hurt Trump and help the Democrats. Because of that perception the president gets a free pass from his fans. He could in theory (or fact) screw up 90 percent of the time and they wouldn’t blame him. They’d blame us. They’d say we were shading reality, not reflecting it. Then they’d loathe us even more. And the cycle would continue. In that way, the worse the president performed, the more we’d be hated by covering it, and the more he’d be forgiven his failures.

“The news should make you uncomfortable,” I said. “If everything you read or watch gives you comfort, you’re doing it wrong.”

I don’t care what year it is, or where you work, or what your status is, if you’re a woman disappearing for five months to be a mom, you will have some worries about how it affects your career. Are the worries helpful? No. But they’re real.

Either the competition would do it and we’d be in a losing situation in terms of viewership which is an ugly truth of for-profit media companies. Or an outlet with the interests of the president in mind would do it and then accuse us, the “mainstream media,” of silencing the Justice Department.

They say it’s like a really heavy period. That’s being cute about it. What comes out is not cute.

There had always been a certain amount of distance I could put between myself and the news.

Julia was full of well-meaning “they shoulds” about my bosses.

even when everyone agrees, even when the well-being of families, and parents, and babies is at stake, Washington still doesn’t work.

The pandemic was scaring the shit of me but the country was even scarier.

The day reminded me how much I truly value this job and how much I love breaking news. But this was a new level of breaking news. This was breaking news about our country breaking.

He was laying the groundwork to call it all rigged, if he needed to, even back then. Why were any of us surprised he would do it again in 2020 and that doing it again would summon a violent mob?

Maybe that’s what had lulled us a little. The common humanity of it all. The thought that for all the rhetoric from the president, and all the rhetoric from his allies in Congress, our elected officials would do the right thing in the end. Because they’re us. We the people.

We knew there were always going to be House Republicans willing to make the objection no matter what—people like Matt Gaetz and Mo Brooks whose entire political livelihood was tied to showboating for President Trump.

a speech that sounded like history as soon as you heard it.

I felt like I was getting played. That’s part of what made Trump so hard to cover. He could be literally incredible. As in: not credible. As in: impossible to believe. And yet.

wanted to cry but I also didn’t. I wanted to feel but I also didn’t. Instead, I did what I’ve done so many times in my life, and especially the past five years. I balled up the entire disgusting day and put it into a little compartment for later. I have a warehouse or two somewhere in my brain full of these balls of trauma delayed, feelings denied.

All the stuff I’ve had to take in and translate to a public, half of whom don’t want to hear it, don’t want to see it, hate me for mentioning it.

I understand why it turned out this way. I’ll never understand why it had to.

No one can choose the gifts of their childhood. But everyone can work to reject its worst lessons. That’s what I’m trying to do.

Back then I remember thinking, who would want to quit journalism?

I’ve come to realize that journalism really is the worst job on the planet like motherhood is the worst job on the planet. It’s messy and often absurdly unpleasant and you’re constantly judged by strangers and, yes, there must be many other wonderful ways to lead your life. But I’ve written a whole book at this point and I can’t think of any.

All we can do is try.