Revisiting: A Stranger With a Microphone
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It's possible you may have heard me use the phrase stranger with a microphone from time to time. I invoke the phrase usually when I'm talking about ethics, about the relationship between a reporter and the people they're reporting on. Because for all intents and purposes, an audio reporter is a stranger with a microphone.

Well, truth be told, I stole the phrase from a movie, Stranger with a Camera. It's a remarkable documentary film from 2000. Broadly, it's about media exploitation of people living in poverty in Appalachia, and it raises valuable questions about the relationship between media makers and the people they report on.

Back in 2007, Jay and Nathan found themselves in a situation where they felt very much like a stranger with a microphone, questioning their role as a radio reporter. In fact, on Sound School, I featured the story they made as a student, and they didn't want to be interviewed for the show. Jay couldn't talk about it. It feels like a mistake that I made in my life instead of something that I wanted to do.

Well, five years later in 2012, Jay agreed to talk with me because they'd finally recovered from the experience. And even then, Jay still believed they trespassed on the lives of the two people featured in the story. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it and convince myself that this was a positive experience for them.

But I'm not sure it was a positive experience for me. On this episode of Sound School, I'm revisiting my conversation with Jay and how they came to terms with the story they reported, at least mostly. I should mention, at the time I spoke with Jay, they were known as Jen. Jay said it was okay for me to feature this episode using their previous name and pronouns. From PRX and Transom, this is Sound School. I'm Rob.

In the course of hunting for a story, Jen stumbled across two widowers, Cedric Chambers and John Gallagher. Cedric and John had been best friends for decades, and they were about to do something extraordinary, something beyond friendship.

Jen discovered them in an unusual place, an ad for a yard sale. It said, everything must go firewood. And for someone to sell their firewood in September in Maine was just really surprising. John was dying from cancer, and he had no family nearby.

In order to help, Cedric sold his home and everything in it so he could move in with John and guide him through his final days. To Jen, that sounded like a remarkable story. So Jen recorded the yard sale and their moving day. Then she interviewed them at John's trailer and documented their lives together. It went fairly well at first. But once John got sicker, it was really hard to convince them that I should come back because

You know, he felt like this was his time with John and that it wasn't something he wanted to share with the world anymore. And it was my job to convince him that he should.

And, you know, I felt I wasn't sure it was my place to get involved in such a, you know, difficult part of their life. Picture it. This is a remarkably private moment for John and Cedric. And there's Jen, a stranger with a microphone. And this I will never forget. He was coughing and he had this just intense lung cancer cough. And it was so loud and it was so long.

And there I was just putting my microphone up to his face. And it was probably one of the hardest things I've ever done just to hold that microphone and not flinch and not move back and not give him a space, but just really be there for every gasp. And then Cedric knew that I was there not to be with them, but to record them. And that was kind of intrusive.

That is about me needing something. And they didn't need any more people in their lives who needed anything. People should have been giving to them. And there I was taking. It was really difficult.

So Jen would call and Cedric would say, not today. She'd call again. Not today. And again. Until she remembered that John liked strawberry ice cream. So I went and got some strawberry ice cream and convinced them to let me bring it over. And when I got there, I saw that they had an entire freezer of strawberry ice cream that everyone they knew had come over and brought John ice cream. And here I was eating.

trying to do something nice that they already had provided for each other. And really, I didn't have a place there. Did it feel like you were buying access with the ice cream? I don't know if it was buying access, but it got me in the door. And I just felt like I was bringing them something to show that I cared.

As Jen talked, I was reminded of a book by Janet Malcolm. It's called The Journalist and the Murderer. In short, it's the story of a journalist who conned a murderer into telling his story. Now, I don't believe at all that Jen conned anyone into telling their story, but I read the opening paragraphs of the book to her just to get her response. Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.

He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. Like the credulous widow who wakes up one day to find the charming young man and all her savings gone, so the consenting subject of a piece of nonfiction writing learns, when the article or book appears, his hard lesson.

Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and the public's right to know. The least talented talk about art. The seemliest murmur about earning a living. Yeah, that's exactly how I feel, actually, that what I did was morally wrong. And I don't always feel like that. And sometimes I feel very proud of the work.

but that in general, I was not there to help. I was there to gain something myself. And that the merit of their story didn't equal the time that I took from them. We should listen to the story, A Square Meal Regardless, by Jen Nathan. Cedric Chambers paces across his nearly empty living room. His longtime friend, John Gallagher Jr., leans against the window, waiting. ♪

How you doing? Hi, how are you? Probably fine for that one. A customer has stopped by to pick through the pots and pans, old televisions, and piles of coffee mugs spread out on two tables in the front yard. These are remnants of Cedric's life, all for sale.

Cedric is selling the house, too, the home in Jonesboro, Maine, where he was born. I grew up here in this house in 1932. There was nine of us children, eight of us children born here in this room. No running water, no electricity. Really rugged. Cedric has spent more than 20 years fixing up the house his father built nearly a century ago. I hate to leave here, you know, but I have to do it. I've come to terms that I have to.

Last month, Cedric's friend John was diagnosed with lung cancer. John has decided to spend his final days in his mobile home, three and a half hours down the coast in Edgecombe, Maine. Choosing comfort over chemotherapy, John has asked Cedric, a former nurse, to stay by his side. He is going to move and stay with me until the day I go. The way it's planned, if it works out that way, I'm going to die at home. And the home is his until he wants to leave.

It's here until he wants to leave or until he dies. The two old men met by chance 45 years ago when John's wife was a customer at a beauty salon that Cedric used to own. They lost touch over the years, reconnecting when John's wife was sick, and a few months after she died, Cedric called him up one night. I said, what are you having for supper? And he says, a can of SpaghettiOs. And he was eating it out of the can. I said, make damn sure it's your last one because you'll never get another one. So...

I went out and I started cooking and stuff for him. He wouldn't have been around if he hadn't been here this long. I don't cook. I did when my wife was sick, but when he came over, I quit. No more cooking. And he's a firm believer in a square meal. Every night was a square meal, regardless. Eleven years later, it's time for Cedric to leave his family home to care for John full-time. They sit on the couch in John's trailer, surrounded by hundreds of ceramic figurines and half a dozen cuckoo clocks.

The two old friends haven't slowed down since they moved in last week. We're on the road all the time to the doctor's, to the grocery store, to Walmart. The doctor's, the doctor's, the Walmart doctor's. It's a routine. Then I cook. I've got to cook. We eat better than most families, I think, at our age.

Most people their age have families to care for them. But Cedric never married, and John's four children are scattered across the country. Years ago, they never thought they'd end up taking care of each other. Never dreamed it. We never dreamed that we'd get old. At that time, we were never going to get old. With no one else to turn to, it's up to them to plan for the end of John's life. I've been to the funeral parlor. I paid for my funeral. I picked out my own casket.

and I even wrote my own obituary. And it's all down to the hour. If I die tomorrow, all he's got to do is call the undertaker. He's got everything. It's going to be rough. I know. I've been there before with people. But he's a friend, and so I wouldn't do any other thing, you know, but to take care of him. He knows all about death and things, you know, and so we're not afraid.

Three weeks later, it's a sweltering late September day. A plastic fan hums, pushing stagnant air around the room. Beads of sweat slalom down the creases and Cedric's skin. Hey, I've just gone down the hill. He's having a hard time now breathing, I think, so I'm going to have to give him some more morphine. John is naked to the waist, wearing little more than a bed sheet. He lies on a metal hospital bed by the living room window. He had an awful night last night. He started...

He's getting off restless and he's hallucinating and I stayed with him all night. But he's calmed down a little bit. Do you want to lie down or do you want to sit up a while? - I'll go down, yes. - You'll lay down, okay. - Yeah. - Okay, that's good right there. - Slide right back down. - Yeah, that's all we do. We slide down and back. Okay, good, get it up.

Try to get some sleep. I'm shaking, I don't know why. I'll cut out this page, this part and this page, and then I'll glue it together. John R. Gallagher, Jr., 85, of Edgecombe, Maine, died at his residence on Tuesday, October 2nd.

Cedric sits alone on the long, empty couch. The hospital bed is gone now, replaced by a small lamp with a string of rosary beads hanging from the shade. Survivors include two sons, John R. Gallagher, the third of Arizona, and his daughters came on Sunday. They didn't get to the funeral. A lot of people didn't know about it, you know, so quiet and quick and quiet, but he didn't suffer. John was a good seamstress also. Not a seamstress, a tailor.

He could hem pants, do anything. I can't buy any more pants because I can't afford to have them done. Nobody to cook for, just myself, you know. One night I had crackers and cheese and some grapes. That's all I felt like eating. I don't feel hungry at all. I know I've got to force myself to eat. I used to cook John beef stews, fish chowder, pork chops and sauerkraut, bake it in the oven and boil dinner. ♪

He said he wanted me to stay here in the place until I die. Well, that's what I'm doing. That story is called A Square Meal Regardless. It was produced in 2007 by Jen Nathan. As Jen said earlier, she had a lot of ethical concerns during the production of the story, but she's finally reconciled those misgivings. It took a really long time, and...

Once I listened to it again for the first time after a couple years, I realized what an important piece it was, that it really mattered that people heard this piece. People needed to understand that two people can do this for each other, and that when someone's family is all spread out across the country, this is what it means to live far away from your family. This is what it means to have that connection

that modern predicament of living across the country, not being able to visit, not being there. And it meant that someone else other than his family had to step up and do it. And every couple years, somebody finds this piece and wants to air it. And I'm always a little bit proud and a little bit uncomfortable.

Especially since I am no longer in touch with Cedric. I can't find his number. He's moved. He was in a nursing home as far as I know, but now I don't know where he is. And so I would want to tell him that someone else was going to hear his story, that it was going to be aired again, but I can't do that. Did you say that Cedric heard the piece? He did hear the piece. He didn't have a CD player, so I made a cassette tape for him. And he did listen to it about a year later. And what did he say?

You know, he never really told me. We talked once and he didn't want to talk for a long time. I didn't want to press him with questions. I never really found out what he thought about the piece. So it just sort of lays there, sort of unanswered, if you will. Definitely. But at this point, it's just too late and I need to feel secure about the work that I did and that it stands alone on its own merit. And you don't feel that?

I do feel like that. It just takes some convincing every time I hear it. Jay recently told me in an email that despite finally coming to terms with their reporting and the story, they are still on occasion haunted by Cedric and John, even 12 years on. As for Cedric, he passed away some years ago. He was 77 years old. Jay never heard what he thought about the story.

I very much, very much want to hear your feedback on this story. Please share about times when you felt like a stranger with a microphone and you questioned what you were doing. Post your thoughts on X at SoundschoolPod or at Transom.org. This is Sound School from PRX and Transom. Genevieve Sponsler gives me an edit. So does Jay Allison. I record in Woods Hole at WCAI. This is Rob Rosenthal. Thank you for listening. From PRX.

and transom.org.