Author Max Brooks urges journalists to educate Americans

Author Max Brooks at a Club Newsmaker. Photo: Alan Kotok

Max Brooks, author of the recently released Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre, implored journalists Thursday “to get away from the rants and the opinions” and teach American voters why institutions exist.

“As a citizen, as a voter, as a taxpayer, when I turn on the news, I need to be told what I need to hear instead of just what want to hear,” Brooks said at a National Press Club Headliners Virtual Newsmaker.

He said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., having her hair done in a salon is not news. Neither is someone calling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. "a lewd word."

Americans need to be educated because they don’t trust the institutions that were specifically created to help us through crises, such as the current covid-19 pandemic, Brooks said.

They need to know what life was like before vaccines, Brooks said. They need to know why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was created and how it is funded.

“You can help do this as journalists," he said. "Educate me. Tell me what I need to know rather than what I want to know.”

“We don’t believe in these systems anymore because we don’t see benefits anymore,” he said.

That lack of trust in American institutions has led to a lack of willingness to work together to solve problems. If the country would lock down “from Nome, Alaska ,to the Florida Keys, for three to four weeks, we could knock out this virus,” Brooks said.

Involving citizens instead of isolating them is the key, Brooks said, noting that Americans planted victory gardens and accepted rationing during World War II because that is how they participated in the war effort.

Getting Americans to work together for the common good has to happen but the change will not happen overnight, Brooks said.

“It took us 50 years to get to this point, where it is every man for himself," Brooks said. "I am sorry to say it will take another 50 years” for it to change.

“If we turn around, maybe our children and grandchildren can live in the world that our grandparents lived in.”