My thoughts for journalism students

From address I gave to the 2022 graduating class at the Columbia School of Journalism in New York

If I might first offer an explanation for choosing to share this address:

I am posting this as my first post because it explains my deep belief in the value of our profession but also in the need to examine both how we see ourselves and how we see the world around us; the need to examine how we do our job, how we listen and how empathy and independent thinking must be fundamental to what we do.

Feel free to breeze through the first three -four-five grafs, but please if I may ask beyond that if you could read closer.

Here is the address I gave virtually:

It is beyond an honor for me to be speaking to you, even if it is virtually. I truly wish I was standing in front of you so I could see each of your faces, try to understand what you are thinking as I am speaking , and also as you wrestle with what comes next.

The pandemic __ out of necessity ___has made virtual communication common place. We have become accustomed to seeing faces, familiar and strange, on the screen. It has been a gift at least to be able to stay connected but more I hope it has also served to re-enforce the value of face-to-face communication

I also want to say I am truly grateful and , while it is often an over -used expression, I am indeed humbled to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Columbia School of Journalism.

I also have to say I really like having a next generation of journalists as a captive audience __ you might not like everything I have to say and you most certainly will disagree with some of what I have to say, but I hope you listen and I hope it makes you think.

I have covered many conflicts.

I covered Afghanistan’s many wars and invasions, first by the former Soviet Union in the 1980s, and later by the U.S.-led coalition in 2001.

I also covered the 2006 war in south Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah . . . travelled to each Central Asian nation as they emerged as independent states and reported on their political machinations as well as witness Islamic extremism evolve and morph into radical groups.

 In northern Iraq I saw a Kurdish majority demand more autonomy, even embedding with the Kurdish rebels of the PKK as they pressed their demands for outright independence.

It’s been a gift to have the career I have had and I hope__ through my stories __ I have helped to make our world and the people in it more connected, more aware of each other and while our differences are many, there is an extraordinary amount we share.

Still today our world is deeply polarized __ not just in America, nor in Europe but also here where I live in Pakistan, in Afghanistan in most every part of our world today.

And if you take nothing away from my talk today I hope you leave with an understanding that politics in this part of the world is no less or no more unfathomable than in America. That you are no smarter, no more capable, no more sophisticated than people here in Pakistan or in Afghanistan. While your opportunities may be greater, and are indeed greater, there is no difference between who you are and who the people here are , one is not better than the other, nor worse than the other.

This is so important and while it might sound simple __ and obvious __ it  takes real effort to truly believe  and to practice.

I say this because how you see people reflects how you listen.

For example if you look at a burly Afghan man, a Taliban say, with a turban and a long black beard and immediately you  see someone to fear, to resent, to even dislike, then you can’t hear what he says .

You can listen, take notes, do a story, but you won’t really have heard what he had to say and your story most likely will reinforce popular perceptions. Your perceptions of him will have clouded your mind, narrowed your focus and the truly interesting questions, those questions necessary to understand the person behind the beard and turban, behind the label “Taliban” will be lost to you.

Having an open mind allows us to be curious, to be empathetic, it gives us a freedom to challenge our own assumptions, and because we will have asked so many more questions, and received answers we might never have expected, we will also have a much greater understanding.

For me how you listen and the questions you ask and the open mind with which you approach each and every person you encounter is fundamental to being a good journalist, to honestly and accurately record history, to not perpetuate stereotypes,  to not reinforce narratives established in western capitals, narratives that speak not to the people of these countries but to the perceptions and concerns of those in the western capitals crafting the narratives.

We as journalists don’t work for them. We work to tell the stories of the people we cover. Our job is to search out their narrative, understand their thinking, their concerns.

We have no right to look with derision on people or situations we might not understand. If ever you find yourself saying about other places and cultures things like “that’s crazy stuff’ and my goodness understanding Pakistani politics: it’s impossible.

Stop yourself.  Put yourself there. Be empathetic. What if it were you there? What would you be thinking? What would you be worried about? What are they worried about?

Don’t ever jump on a soap box, don’t think you have answers. You don’t.

If you are a good journalist, you have ONLY questions.

Another thing to remember: Because people are poorer, less educated does not make them in need of your pity. You must always remember that what you have is not the result of any great doings on your part and what they do not have is not the result of great ‘undoings’ on their part.

History shows us that those who can in this world have basically taken and often stolen, from those who have not. Whether it was the World Bank turning self-sufficient nations into Banana republics to produce what the more affluent world wanted in exchange for dollars, or whether it was invaders ____  America in Iraq or Russia in Ukraine, propelled by self -interest , destroying rich diverse cultures, taking countless lives, entering into countries in which they have no right to be ___ only to rewrite history in their image and make their invasions less abhorrent because well the leader was a ‘bad guy’.

Our polarized world of today is flush with those who are certain of their rightness. Our enemy is evil and our friend can do no wrong

But the reality is there is no monopoly on rightness and there is no enemy that is truly evil and there is no friend that can do no wrong.

Our world is so much more complicated.

I have sat with a mother clinging to the picture of her son killed in a brutal explosion in Kabul, mourning his loss, fearing for her other children; I have also walked with a young Taliban fighter who cried when he spoke of the love he had for his mother and how he worried each time he left her that American bombs might kill her in her village deep in Taliban territory.

In a prison, I sat for hours alone without any guards or police with a young boy, barely 19  years old who had killed his sister because he felt shame at her decision to marry for love . He was heartbroken inside. He had loved his sister yet he still kept trying to explain but ‘I had to ‘ everyone was talking. Everyone was laughing. “ He wanted so much to explain.

And let me say here listening and explaining what is on the minds of those who commit what are indeed horrific crimes, does not justify, does not say it is right. It ONLY EXPLAINS. That is an important difference. And those who think we should not give space to those who commit horrific crimes keeps the world a little more ignorant. Our job is to find the questions that provide the knowledge to understand so that through understanding those empowered to make changes can make them, so that perhaps those horrific crimes can be prevented.

Knowledge is power not selective knowledge.

I also spoke to the man this young boy’s sister was to marry and listened as his pain rushed forward and I told his story.

Our profession, the one you have chosen to join, faces some remarkable challenges and while we do some things spectacularly well, we also do some things amazingly poorly.

Journalism is not about us, not about journalists. It is also not about advocacy. That is a job for others, not for those who profess to be journalists, to be chroniclers of history.  

It is not about what you think is right or wrong, good or evil. You have no moral high ground. You do not come from a moral high ground or any ground for that matter into  an interview. You are not allowed to judge and if you do find yourself judging I ask only that you  remember you have no right. 

You have only the right to listen, to learn, to try to understand, to ask questions, ask. Ask and then ask some more.

I am not saying we don’t have opinions, sets of beliefs, and our own perceptions of right and wrong and we do indeed have the right to judge what is right and wrong for us, how we define good and not so good.

But they are ours and not for us to impose on others. There is a real need for journalists to refocus away from ourselves and back to those whom we cover.

Sometimes it seems even as we dig deep to tell the story of suffering or war what we end up doing is somehow reflecting more about our pain at what we are seeing and hearing rather than telling it in a way that our reader or our listener or our viewer will see the pain of the person we are interviewing, or their joy or their frustration __ not about how it impacts us, how it moves us.

It isn’t necessary for our feelings to come through, in fact our feelings should be focused on how to tell what we are witnessing.

When you reflect on how you feel it assumes everyone feels as you do, but when you tell only what the person to whom you are talking is suffering, feeling and you have the open mind to let them tell all they are feeling THEN your reader, your viewer takes all their own emotions and processes it and finds a conclusion. We are not supposed to tell people how to feel we are supposed to be telling our reader how others feel.

Let our readers process it and decide then how they feel.

I am going to end (not immediately of course)  with a story I hope explains why how we look at people is so important to how we hear them:

I was shot in Afghanistan and my close friend and amazing AP colleague Anja Niedringhaus was killed. She was sitting by my side in the back seat of a vehicle when an Afghan police opened fire on us, emptying his AK-47 into the back of the car. I was struck by seven bullets and Anja by as many but two were fatal and she died at my side.

It took two years and 18 operations before I was physically able to consider returning to work.

I had to think long and hard about returning to work.

Of course on a personal level, not in reference to my job as a journalist, it was important I return to be sure I was not held hostage to fear. If I had never returned __ that was eight years ago __ I would have forever been unsure and afraid of my environment, whatever that environment might me so I had to conquer that fear so that I could move freely, without fear.

But even more important __ and this is in reference to my job as a journalist __ I needed to return to be sure I didn’t look at people differently because I knew if I did I could no longer continue to do my work.

If each time I sat with someone my mind wondered at their motives. Could I trust them?  Do they want to do me harm? Do I offend them? Will that anger them? So many questions it would be endless and I would have no room left in my head or even an ability to think of the questions I needed to ask so that I could tell their story.

If that had been the case, I would have had to leave journalism, call it quits because I could no longer tell their story honestly, freely, with empathy, with the open mind I need to come up with the questions to ask, questions that would reflect a mindset which genuinely and without fear wanted to hear their story, dig deep into their story, and most especially leave mine behind.

It was a gift when I returned and was with the woman I spoke to you about earlier who had lost her son and as I sat there I felt such gratitude to her for opening her home and I felt so privileged to be able to hear her story, to tell her story. I knew then I was OK. I could be a reporter again.

Thank you so much for listening to me, for honoring me with the lifetime achievement award and for wanting to be journalists, who I hope (because I can’t see your faces) want nothing more than to tell the stories of others.

If I can leave you with the words of my friend Anja when she won the 2005 International Women’s Courage in Journalism Award:

“I'm not here today to tell you my difficulties covering conflicts, the real difficulties and the real courage belong to those who are subjected against their will to conflict. I do my job simply to report people's courage with my camera and with my heart.”

Thank you