News and Journalism Theme Analysis

Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a piece of “Gonzo journalism”—a form of “New journalism” invented by Thompson himself that rejects the objectivity of traditional journalism and instead relies on an individual, first-person account of any given event. Whereas traditional journalism seeks to disclose objective and absolute truth, Gonzo journalism assumes that absolute truth does not exist, which results in a strange blend of fact and fiction that reveals personal truth through a writer’s own experiences and emotions. In addition to its classification as journalism, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is full of references to newspapers and televised newscasts, and each bit of news reflects America’s torn and troubled society. News and journalism in Thompson’s book only serve to bolster and reinforce the violence and intolerance in American society, and it is in this way that Thompson argues that journalism has failed. His response is to reimagine journalism for a new and changing generation, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas represents an effort to do just that.

Thompson’s narrator, Raoul Duke, is a proud journalist, a profession Duke believes deserves respect. Whenever anyone speaks to Duke in a way he perceives as disrespectful, he invariably responds by mentioning his profession in some way. “You’re talking to a doctor of journalism!” Duke once yells at his attorney, Dr. Gonzo. Duke demands respect simply because he is a journalist, and he frequently uses his profession to get himself out of trouble. When Duke is approached by two dune-buggies full of angry American nationalists packing a machine-gun at the Mint 400, a dirt-bike race he is covering for Sports Illustrated, Duke introduces himself as “the sporting press. We’re friendlies—hired geeks.” Once the patriots realize Duke is a journalist with a popular sports magazine, they move on to harass the next person. Furthermore, when Duke tries to come up with a plausible reason for having an illegal .357 Magnum, he concocts a story in which a crazed madman had run up on him with a knife and gun, but after Duke told him he was a journalist, “his whole attitude changed.” The once-angry and homicidal man threw away his knife and gave Duke his gun. “Right,” says Duke, “he just shoved it into my hands, butt-first, and then he ran off into the darkness.” Obviously, Duke’s story is sarcastic, but his point is that journalists are important members of society and should be respected. Duke repeatedly refers to his “obligation” as a “professional journalist” to “cover the story, for good or ill.” He vows to “never lose sight of the primary responsibility,” which is to deliver the news to the masses. On the surface, Duke appears to be wholly dedicated to his chosen profession, and society seems to generally agree that journalism is a valued and trusted line of work.

However, Duke and the other journalists in Thompson’s book don’t behave in respectful ways and are hardly deserving of the respect they demand, which underscores Thompson’s disillusionment with traditional journalism. Before the start of the Mint 400, Duke goes to the hotel bar where he meets a reporter from Life magazine, who happens to be a drunken mess. The drunk reporter is “losing his grip on the bar, sinking slowly to his knees, but still speaking with definite authority.” Duke finds the display difficult to watch and turns away. “It is too horrible,” Duke says. “We are, after all, the absolute cream of the national sporting press,” although the Life man’s behavior obviously does not reflect this. Duke himself is constantly drunk and high on drugs, is “dangerously disorganized,” and repeatedly misses deadlines. He often doesn’t know what story he is supposed to cover, and by the end of the Mint 400, he can’t even remember who won the race. Duke loses sight of his “primary responsibility” and nervously looks for a copy of the L.A. Times to catch up on the story. “Get the details. Cover myself,” Duke says. “Even on the Run, in the grip of a serious Fear…” Thompson’s portrayal of journalists in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas does not place journalism in a flattering light. The drunken behavior of Duke and other reporters suggests that journalists are an irresponsible and despicable bunch, and their poor reporting is clearly reflected in the stories that cover newspapers and fill national television broadcasts.

Throughout his trip to Las Vegas, Duke is constantly looking for newspapers and broadcasts “for news of the outside world,” and each time he does, he is confronted with the violence and corruption of the Vietnam War, images of America’s deteriorating “Drug Culture,” and the criminalization of the 1960s counterculture. After reading a particularly disturbing story about the mass murder of an entire U.S. Naval fleet at the hands of China’s “Heroin Police,” Duke finally declares that “journalism is not a profession or trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector.” With Duke’s scathing and vivid critique of American journalism, Thompson seems to suggest that actual journalists have a lot of work to do, and Thompson’s own career as a journalist lends weight to this opinion. While Thompson does not come out and directly declare Gonzo journalism the solution to traditional journalism’s overall failure, he does imply that it couldn’t be much worse.