Taylor Branch and Byron Pitts Share Their Unique Experiences with the APC
October 15th, 2009 Posted in UncategorizedTaylor Branch and Byron Pitts are storytellers — Branch in books and Pitts primarily on television – but their goals are essentially the same – to enlighten, educate and inform. They successfully do that without getting in the way, the hallmark of great storytellers.
Branch is the best-selling historian who earned a Pulitzer Prize for “Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63.” Pitts is the world-traveled CBS 60 Minutes correspondent who once was diagnosed as mentally retarded, and who did not begin to read until age 12.
Branch and Pitts discussed their new books this week during separate Atlanta Press Club luncheons at The Commerce Club in Atlanta. Here is a brief glimpse into their appearances.
Taylor Branch – The Clinton Tapes – Wrestling History with the President
Taylor Branch knew Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham when nobody knew them. All three political youngsters shared an apartment when they went to Texas to campaign for George McGovern during the 1972 presidential campaign. McGovern sustained a bad day at the electoral whipping post and the future was back to the drawing table for Taylor, Bill and Hillary.
Despite their friendship, it was nevertheless surprising when the former campaigner who became President of the United States told his journalist friend he wanted to record “an oral history to give people something to work with,” and something Clinton could use later to write memoirs. Not everyone was onboard. “Hillary was against the recordings,” Branch says today.
There were seventy-nine interviews during eight years. Branch’s notes form the basis for “The Clinton Tapes – Wrestling History with the President.” It is a remarkably detailed review of the man and events that built and threatened to tear down the President. This volume is history in large chunks, the innermost thoughts from Bill Clinton during his highest and lowest moments.
The actual audio recordings – there were two master copies — remain with Clinton who says they will not be released until after Hillary Clinton concludes her political career. The book was written from transcribed audio notes Branch made after each interview, including one that took place at the White House on the evening of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Branch told many stories about his interaction with Clinton, including this one. “He would pop off and ask me, ‘Do you think I should fire the CIA director?’ My tendency was to say, ‘I’m just here to ask questions. But I really couldn’t dodge those things.”
We never did find out whether Taylor Branch thought Bill Clinton should fire the CIA director!
Byron Pitts – Step Out on nothing – How Faith Helped Me Conquer Life’s Challenges
“There are many people on television who happen to write. I am a person who loves to write who happens to be on television.” Byron Pitts says there are three kinds of stories. Here to there stories, search for treasure stories and love stories. His life is all three wrapped into a package.
The Byron Pitts that viewers know from his stint at CBS 60 Minutes focuses on stories and people who tell them. “I am less interested in talking with people with big voices. I am more interested in finding small voices,” Pitts told APC luncheon guests on Tuesday. Those stories have taken him around the world from Ground Zero in New York on 9/11 to battlefields in distant places and New Orleans for Katrina. His is the mileage of the network newsman on the move.
Read his biography on the CBS News site and you find the usual biography stuff: Contributor to 60 Minutes along with chief national correspondent for The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. Before that, Pitts was a rising star in local television, including three years at WSB-TV Atlanta.
The official biography leaves out the complete Byron Pitts story. He was functionally illiterate until age 12 and stuttered until age 20. Nor does the official version recall his mother Clarice who raised three children alone, or the many people who believed in young Byron and encouraged him to believe all things are possible.
“My grandmother would say, ‘If I can get through today, there is a better day ahead tomorrow.’”
Today Pitts helps lead a 60 Minutes unit that includes four producers, four associate producers and two researchers. It is a competitive environment. All 60 Minutes correspondents are going after the same stories anywhere in the world. “The secret to 60 Minutes is finding a good story worth telling and then telling it,” Pitts said. And finding it first.
The late 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley gave Pitts this advice: “Read, read, read. Then listen, listen, listen.” He says, “If the person I am interviewing has written a book, I need to read it. If someone has written a book about the person I am interviewing, I need to read it.”
Pitts and his unit are currently producing a profile of Atlanta’s Tyler Perry, along with segments that discuss war from a child’s perspective, plus reports on IED teams in Afghanistan and the shortage of resources required to assist U.S. personnel who return from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Written by Mike Klein
APC Board Member