Eight-time Emmy Award-winning journalist ARMEN KETEYIAN in March ’06 was named chief investigative correspondent for CBS News by the CBS News & Sports President SEAN MCMANUS. A special features reporter for CBS Sports since ’97, Keteyian has also been a correspondent for HBO’s “Real Sports With BRYANT GUMBEL” and ABC’s “World News Tonight” and “Nightline,” as well as a writer and reporter for Sports Illustrated and NBC Sports. He has written or co-written nine books and is Executive Editor of Hall of Fame magazine. Keteyian spoke recently with SportsBusiness Journal New York bureau chief Jerry Kavanagh.
| Date & Place of Birth: 3-6-53 in Detroit, Michigan. |
| Education: B.A. San Diego State, 1976. |
| Favorite vacation spot: Hope Town in the Abaco Islands. |
| Favorite pieces of music: “Sky Blue and Black,” by JACKSON BROWNE; MARVIN GAYE’s “What’s Goin’ On.” |
| Favorite Book: Reading is one of my passions. For favorite book I would have to go with “The Best and the Brightest.” |
| Favorite authors: I’m a guy who loves the masters of mystery and suspense, so JOHN MACDONALD, LEE CHILD, ROBERT CRAIS, MICHAEL CONNELLY, HARLAN COBEN, GEORGE PELECANOS and DENNIS LEHANE. I read anything and everything they write. And I’ve kind of become buddies with Lee and Harlan and George. MacDonald is the master. I read everything that he wrote, and those other guys are right in his class. |
| Favorite movie: “The Great Escape.” |
| Favorite journalism movie: “The Insider.” |
| Favorite quote: My dad told me a long time ago, “Work hard and people will notice.” And they did. |
| Favorite sporting event: The Final Four. |
| Favorite extravagance: Automobiles. My latest was a BMW 645i convertible. |
| Regrets: Sure, but none I’m going to tell anybody. |
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CBS Chief Investigative
Correspondent Armen Keteyian |
Q: I read where you said, “We need a better definition of the phrase ‘the media.’” What did you mean by that?
Keteyian: The media now ranges from The National Enquirer and Star magazine and blogs to the highest level of journalism, network television and beyond. I think when people play the blame game, the easiest place to look is “the media.” And there are so many different components and people who have varying degrees of credibility, experience and integrity that when you paint with a very broad brush, it upsets me and others who treat this profession as a craft and who have been working at it for decades.
Q: Some years ago, GRAHAM GREENE wrote, “Media is a word that has come to mean bad journalism.”
Keteyian: You don’t have to look very far to find people who don’t have the respect and the training and the care about journalism that a lot of other people do. It pains me to read certain blogs where there are nothing less than libelous statements being made, or to listen to sports talk radio where there’s nothing less than slander being committed. And the excuse, or the reasoning, is that, “I’m an entertainer.” When it’s to their advantage, all of a sudden they become journalists. That’s the slippery slope here: people who on one hand are passing themselves off as journalists, or pretending to be entertainers and passing themselves off as journalists, or vice versa. And sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which.
Q: Talk radio and blogs don’t seem to carry the same responsibilities.
Keteyian: They don’t have the same responsibilities because there are no rules and regulations. It’s anything goes. And in our society, tearing other people apart has become almost a sport unto itself. I shudder at the thought sometimes of how in a span of one or two or three news cycles, people’s entire careers that they have worked decades to construct are blown up for the entertainment of America.
Q: Are there some blogs you consider reputable that you read regularly?
Keteyian: We have one here, “Primary Source,” at CBS News that the investigative unit contributes to daily. I’m extraordinarily careful about what I say, for a couple of reasons. One, I don’t want to spend any more time in court than a parking ticket. Two, I like to keep my personal opinions or my personal preferences to myself. You’d be surprised how people try to read between the lines, particularly when you’re the chief investigative correspondent for a network.
Q: Any other blogs?
Keteyian: I occasionally will read TV Newser, which is a place where a lot of good network gossip gets shared. I certainly will look at the competition, meaning the other networks’ investigative units’ blogs. I’ll look at politico.com because I want to keep up with what’s happening in Washington. But I have enough things to read on a daily basis that what people have to say about my hair or my personality are less than interesting to me at this point.
Q: You started out in print journalism and switched to TV. You said, “The daily demands of a network news broadcast are often at odds with the time needed to dig deep enough to uncover wholesale waste and corruption.” There are different press deadlines for each. Is that what you were referring to?
Keteyian: There are. And I just think they’re different kinds of storytelling: a bonus piece in Sports Illustrated, a “Nightline” piece, an hour-long documentary that I did for HBO on the riots in Detroit in ’67 and the Tigers winning the pennant in ’68. It’s an art form to be able to tell a story in two minutes on network television and to have it be clear and precise and have perspective and maybe an extra layer or two of texture to it. But it is a finite amount of time. There are 22 minutes here that we deal with every single night. There have been moments when I could have used an extra ten seconds to tell a story or to add a bit more substance to a sound bite. But in the same token there aren’t that many places left in this country where you have an audience that can be 8, 10, 12 million people a night to watch your work.
Q: You have been at CBS News a little over one year now.
Keteyian: This has been an incredible year of my life. In the first year, essentially from a standing start and building this investigative unit, we had 55 pieces on the air, which I think is a pretty extraordinary achievement. We had some very strong stories involving everything from airport insecurity to the cost of Katrina to post-traumatic stress in the military to any number of different kinds of stories.
Q: What are the high points?
Keteyian: I think the highlight for me was that we re-established CBS News as a player in this network news game from the investigative side of things. When Sean [McManus] offered me the position, I was honored, first of all, and I was thrilled and then a little overwhelmed. I’ve never worked as hard as I’ve worked in the last year -- and people who know me know that the last thing I’m afraid of is hard work. But this has been the most exhilarating and energizing and, at the same time, demanding thing I have ever attempted.
Q: Your bio notes your “uncommon” reporting. What’s so uncommon about it?
Keteyian: Those aren’t my words. They’re DAVID HALBERSTAM’s. I called him up one day when I was at ABC News to do a story about the baseball strike. I got him at home and I introduced myself. He said, “I know who you are. You’re an uncommon reporter.”
Q: Flattering, no?
Keteyian: To have those words come out of David Halberstam’s mouth was extraordinary for me. He’s the reason I got into this business in the first place, when I read the book that inspired me: “The Best and the Brightest.” I can still remember being blown away by the depth of the reporting. I remember thinking, “This is what I want to do.” And not to toot my horn too loudly, I do believe I have established a reputation as somebody who has tremendous preparation, who has a nose for the details, understands how to follow a paper trail and is not afraid to ask a fair, forthright question during an interview. But those were words that I’m proud to have associated with my name. He’s the guy, as far as I’m concerned.
Q: You were in college in the 1970s. Were you influenced by WOODWARD and BERNSTEIN?
Keteyian: I was. I came out of Watergate. And I had harbored hopes a long time ago. The other two passions I had in life basically were sports and baseball, and I was always sort of an inveterate reader. I guess I followed my nose over to sports journalism. But Watergate was certainly a watershed moment. I was a product of Woodward and Bernstein. Certainly you couldn’t be in journalism school in the ’70s and not be affected by that kind of story. You know, a bit of the glamour and excitement and thrill of it, but mostly just how accomplished they were in that kind of reporting. The doggedness of it.
Q: Are there individuals you wish you had had the opportunity to interview?
Keteyian: JOHN F. KENNEDY and MARTIN LUTHER KING.
Q: Anybody out there now you’d like to interview?
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Keteyian Would Like To Have Sit
Down With Tiger Woods In The Future |
Keteyian: I’d like to sit down and have a heart-to-heart talk with TIGER WOODS. No holds barred.
Q: You could make that happen.
Keteyian: I could. I just don’t know if Tiger would want to play, that’s all. I find him infinitely fascinating because he doesn’t give up a lot and he really prizes his privacy. There are parts of Tiger’s life growing up. ... I’d like to talk about what it was like growing up in southern California and to hear the taunts and to understand how that affected him as a kid.
Q: You discussed the deaths in wrestling with VINCE MCMAHON. That was a contentious interview.
Keteyian: I think Vince was tough because it was on his turf. And when you’re inside the WWE headquarters on his set, and any sort of level of intelligence tells you his cameras are running as well as our cameras, and you’re going nose-to-nose with him over an issue that is literally life and death, you know it’s not going to be real pretty at times. But I was prepared and he was prepared. Obviously he had his point of view and I was persistent.
Q: You respect that.
Keteyian: I do respect that. What I don’t like is when people don’t respect me or respect us -- meaning the profession -- and they think that we’re a little less smart or a little less prepared or a little less professional than they are. And that has a tendency to ruffle my feathers. The ones that look down their noses at you with an air of superiority have a tendency to make my blood boil a little bit. But part of it is keeping things cool, and I think I did in that respect.
Q: The disagreements are interesting.
Keteyian: JERRY COLANGELO and I had a real heart-to-heart discussion about the building of the Bank One Ballpark. GLEN SATHER and I, when I was at Sports Illustrated, had a real pointed conversation about some things. But, look, I respect those people, and I hope they respect the fact that I’m not coming in there asking questions that I don’t have a pretty damn good idea of what the answers are. And I’m going to ask the second question, and I’m going to ask the third question after their first answer and their second answer.
Q: The follow-up questions.
Keteyian: That, to me, is where the difference is: It’s in the second or third questions. And that’s what makes “Real Sports” the state of the art. The interviews drive everything. And it’s not question/answer. It’s question/answer/question/answer. ... And being able to wrap information into the question quickly and in real time drives the story ahead and, at the same time, you look like you’re not Elmer Fudd out there.
Q: It takes a lot of preparation for that.
Keteyian: It’s a tremendous amount of preparation that goes into those interviews. To do them right. ... The show has been long patterned after “60 Minutes.” And there’s nobody that does it better than “60,” and I don’t think there’s anybody who does it better than Bryant [Gumbel] when he is completely on his game, or [HBO Sports’] BERNIE [GOLDBERG] or FRANK [DEFORD] or MARY [CARILLO]. You’re trying to engage somebody in a conversation and forgetting about the cameras and the lights and everything that’s around you. The best ones are the ones where it’s just kind of cosmic. You just go.
Q: More of a conversation than a Q&A.
Keteyian: It’s not a Q&A. I’ve always believed it’s conversation. If someone doesn’t want to engage. ... The greatest one when he engages is LANCE [ARMSTRONG]. There’s nobody that I’ve ever interviewed that when he wants to engage -- and he often does, because we’ve known each other for more than ten years -- there’s nobody I’d rather sit down and talk to than Lance Armstrong. He has more to say about more things with more thought and more perspective than anybody I’ve ever interviewed -- short of JOHN WOODEN.
Q: You co-wrote (with ALEXANDER WOLFF) the book “Raw Recruits.” BOBBY KNIGHT has been outspoken about the rule that requires players be at least one year removed from high school before they can enter the NBA. He called it “the worst thing that’s happened to college basketball since I’ve been coaching.” What do you think of the rule?
Keteyian: I think he’s dead on about the fact that if somebody is going to be one and done, they only have to be eligible for one semester. Meaning they have to take 12 units of something to stay in school. And that’s a complete farce, as far as I’m concerned, and has been for a long time. If there’s no reason for a player to take classes in that second semester because they know they’re not coming back, the school benefits, the athlete benefits, I guess, financially. They certainly aren’t benefiting academically. I don’t see the reason that there needs to be a rule. Who are they trying to protect? This is a game of self-interest. The NBA’s self-interest is in not having problem children in their league and potentially dealing with public relations nightmares. The NCAA’s self-interest is in getting players like GREG ODEN or KEVIN DURANT to stick around for a year and then move on to bigger and better things. But the hypocrisy of it is big enough for everybody. Look, Coach Knight has seen a lot of basketball, and I see it the way he sees it in this case.
Q: Who’s the most influential person in sports history?
Keteyian: BABE RUTH and MUHAMMAD ALI.
Q: Who’s the most influential today?
Keteyian: I would say it’s the man who runs the most influential entity in sports: ROGER GOODELL.
Q: What in sports would you not miss if it were eliminated?
Keteyian: I wouldn’t miss poker on television if it left the planet. Nah, that’s not a sport. I wouldn’t miss the self-aggrandizement, the look-at-me culture that has long past crept in and has now buried in many respects what is really pure and good. And anything that has to do with sports and reality television. This, to me, is cringe TV.
Q: Who’s in your personal Hall of Fame?
Keteyian: Certainly my parents, ALBERT and VIRGINIA. MARTIN FRANCIS DARDIS, who was the chief criminal investigator for Sports Illustrated for 20-plus years and was a true American hero. He won a Silver Star at the Battle of the Bulge. Marty taught me more about interviewing and about working a story than anybody that I can ever hope to run across. ROONE ARLEDGE, who hired me at ABC News. That was a gift to me, and something that has never been forgotten. And my wife (of 27 years), DEDE, who understands my obsessions and puts up with them in ways that few would.
Q: RED HOLZMAN said, “The best feeling in the world is to wake up early in the morning when you don’t have to go anywhere.” What do you consider the best feeling in the world?
Keteyian: That’s a pretty good feeling right there, and that doesn’t happen too often in my life, where I don’t have to go anywhere. But I think it’s when I’m sitting on a beach at sunset with a cocktail in my hand and a book in my lap and my wife sitting next to me. That’s a pretty good afternoon.
