Anywhere but Washington: an eye-opening journey in a deeply divided nation
Oliver Laughland, US southern bureau chief: It was somewhere along the 700-mile night-time drive from Tampa, Florida, to my home in New Orleans that I realized filming the Anywhere But Washington series was becoming one of the hardest assignments in my career.
Hours earlier, my colleague Tom Silverstone and I had interviewed a conservative radio host spreading baseless conspiracy theories about Covid-19 to a crowd of at-risk, Donald Trumpsupporting senior citizens. We had been forced to make a sharp exit, and got caught in the middle of a powerful thunderstorm that drenched us through. Thankfully, we’d managed to keep the camera dry and preserve the footage, but the whole day became a precursor to the rest of our two and half month long trip through America.
Fiery interactions, pervasive disinformation and mammoth car journeys became normality. Alongside countless nasal swabs, hundreds of disposable face masks, and seemingly endless nights editing the films over Zoom on increasingly tight deadlines, while preparing for shoots in the coming days.
It was not only an immense logistical challenge and a constant battle to establish facts, but an eye-opening journey into a bitterly divided country during the most important election in a generation.
Tom Silverstone, senior video producer: For many months, I’d been confined to making short videos through Skype – fuzzy webcam interviews that make it hard to go deep into a story. So it was with some relief, and a bit of a trepidation, that Oliver and I, along with our video-editor colleague Noah PayneFrank, who is based in London, were given the go-ahead for the series.
Trying to encompass how an entire country feels about its election is tricky at the best of times. America’s deep complexities, size and diversity have always made singular narratives hard to find. But the pandemic made everything a lot more difficult. As we travelled from state to state, we found empty streets and cancelled public events, and few political events to attend – particularly on the Democratic side as the party toed a stricter, safer line on the pandemic.
This meant that canvassing public opinion became a harder task and we had to organize almost every element of each episode, days – sometimes weeks – beforehand.
OL: It was clear throughout our journey that two diametrical forces were underpinning this election and it was vital for any viewer seeking to understand the state of US politics to encounter both in our films.
We made a commitment to visit as many diverse communities as possible to examine how Joe Biden’s candidacy was viewed, and interrogate his platform as best we could. We were interested in how progressive politics and rapidly diversifying populaces in once conservative strongholds might tip the outcome of the election, prompting trips to Georgia, Texas and North Carolina.
But we were also determined to robustly engage with the post-factual, conspiracy-tinged world ushered in by the Trump presidency, as well as to hold him accountable for the numerous policy failures of his tenure.
TS: Four years ago I filmed our 2016 version of the series and watched as Trump successfullymotivated his base with cultural and racial narratives to create anger and division.
This time, what Oliver and I encountered was even more extreme. At mainstream Republican events we came into contact with groups like the Proud
Boys – the far-right “western supremacists” who now patrol Maga [Make America Great Again] marches across the country. We interviewed Republican candidates running for Congress who pushed baseless conspiracy theories tied to QAnon.
After years of Trump repeating cries of “fake news”, his rallies have become hostile places for reporters, and we were often met with deep distrust. On one occasion a small group of his supporters followed us back to our car, labelling us “agitators” as we tried to film their public event. It did not always feel safe.
But away from these rallies, we found people who were curious about two reporters roaming across the country, eager to speak to us about their lives. We met unemployed factory workers in Ohio, let down by Trump’s broken promises; evangelical Christians in North Carolina, loyal to the president despite his transgressions; and progressive Latina Democrats looking to flip a historically conservative Texas. After four years of Trump, this is a country in a passionate and frequently angry debate about what it was, what it is – and what it could be.
OL: We ended the series as the news networks eventually called the election for Joe Biden, acutely aware that this was far from the end of the story.
The shocking events in Washington last week, a mob invasion of the US Congress, only serve to emphasize this further. Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud alongside four years of extremist rhetoric and policy have fundamentally altered the fabric of American democracy. And the end of Trump’s presidency is far from the end of Trumpism.
So Tom and I will continue to produce new Anywhere But Washington episodes, starting from Biden’s inauguration later this month. We want to examine if the 46th president will deliver for the communities he promised, what efforts he makes to restore faith in institutions, and what the long-term legacy of Trump’s four years in office will be. It all starts from day one, when Biden’s desk will be landed with a public health crisis, a humanitarian disaster on the southern border, and a host of other national and geopolitical issues stemming from the past four years.
We’ve been blown away by the support from Guardian viewers in the US, UK and around the world, and appreciated the dozens of encouraging emails and direct messages sent to us over the course of the series.
We’d love to hear more suggestions about where to visit next, the sort of stories you’d like to see us engage with. We’re keen to visit new areas of the country and revisit many of the communities we spent time with last year, and we hope you’ll continue with us throughout the journey.