CNN Journalist Soledad O'Brien Comes to Stony Brook

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By Michelle Trauring
SBU J-School Reporter

Soledad O’Brien, a former CNN anchor now attached to the network’s investigations unit, said at Stony Brook University that it was healthy for the public to question the news media.

“I don’t mind when people say they don’t trust the news,” O’Brien said at the Oct. 3 lecture. “They should doubt a lot.”

O’Brien said she sometimes has issues herself.

“I used to believe everything in The New York Times,” O’Brien said. But as she covered more assignments with Times reporters, O’Brien said, she said found herself thinking, “Well, I wouldn’t have put it that way” upon reading accounts in the newspaper.

O’Brien made clear, however, that she likes “how there’s many different voices and perspectives” available to news consumers. “Inherently for society, I think it’s a good thing, not a bad thing,” she said.

The definition of “news” varies, she said, and is subject to interpretation. “It troubles me when people say, ‘This is news.’ I think it’s a wide range,” O’Brien said.

Speaking in the Student Union auditorium as part of the “My Life As…” lecture series sponsored by the SBU School of Journalism, O’Brien said it was necessary to strike a balance between significant news events and lighter, personality-oriented material.

The “inner workings of Congress” can be “incredibly boring,” O’Brien said, but “we can’t only listen to the market or we’d have a show of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.” Too often, she said, the emphasis on celebrity coverage is “appalling.”

Whether covering a story on a pop culture icon or powerful political figure, O’Brien said, she tries to be an aggressive interviewer. “My job isn’t to make people happy,” she said. “It’s to do a respectable interview. Go straight for the jugular,” she said.

Reporting is an “awesome responsibility” that demands preparation, honesty and an objective approach, O’Brien said. “My job is to ask questions, and I don’t let my opinions influence my stories,” she said. “Why do people want to know my opinion?”

Most recently, O’Brien completed a documentary, “Children of the Storm,” with director Spike Lee. The report deals with young Hurricane Katrina survivors and their lives after the storm.

“I like being the outsider and letting other people tell their stories,” O’Brien said. “My job is to ask questions that aren’t asked, and tell stories that aren’t told,” she said.

O’Brien didn’t always have the luxury to choose her stories. She started off at a Boston television station running for coffee and fetching scripts. “I was happy if I did that for the rest of my life,” she said.

O’Brien, who is from St. James in Suffolk County, once intended to study medicine. But, she said, she was smitten by journalism and switched career tracks. “I loved dealing with people, in both medicine and the media,” O’Brien said. “But I didn’t understand the science.” News, O’Brien said, she understood.

Of Afro-Cuban, Australian and Irish descent, O’Brien had a hard time “pitching herself” at first. “They couldn’t figure out what box to put me in,” O’Brien said, “so I’d float in between teams, in between worlds.”

In retrospect, O’Brien said her ethnicity never held her back. “It’s simple,” she said. “ I always pushed and made sure I had all the skills. You just keep trying to get the story.”

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