Nicholas Kristof Interview (page: 2 / 7) Journalist, Author & Columnist	Print Interview

Once you left China, how did you get back in? They let you back?

Nicholas Kristof: They let me back in. I did have a multiple-entry visa, but the foreign ministry and the state security ministry were debating whether to expel me from China.

That was a hard-won Pulitzer Prize.

Nicholas Kristof: It was, but it also made us feel kind of guilty. Sheryl and I were delighted that we'd won it, of course, but we'd had an awful lot of help from a tremendous number of Chinese. We had won this great glory, but a lot of Chinese were in prison. They certainly weren't getting any of the credit. And that was kind of difficult. Things became better in subsequent years when more people were released and were able to help some people in some ways. It's an incredibly difficult situation, to try to figure out what your ethical responsibilities are in a dictatorial regime where you do have some obligation to follow the law, and yet you also have an obligation to other human beings to be decent to them and to help them where you can -- navigating that, figuring out to what degree to put Chinese friends at risk.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I remember there was a man who contacted me, he was involved in the defense establishment. And one of the stories that I covered very aggressively was Chinese military sales, missile sales. He had photos and copies of contracts and other data showing sales by China of certain long-range missiles to Pakistan, which China had denied were taking place. He had all the goods on it, and he wanted money for these materials. One of the principles of journalism is you don't pay for material. So we met many times, and I was trying to convince him to give me the material free, and he was trying to convince me to pay for it. But one of the things you do as a journalist, you try to build a rapport with people, so I would talk about his kids and my kids. He had a wife and a son, a small son. He had a wife and a small son, and he was doing this so that his son would have a little more money and have better toys and have a better future. And it really nagged at me. Finally, I remember at our last meeting, I wasn't trying to get these materials out of him any more, because I knew that if I published my story that there was a real risk that somehow the source would be tracked down and that he'd be executed. That's just how it would end. So I was telling him, "Just go home. Go back. Forget about this. Don't try to sell it to the U.S. Embassy or anybody else. Just go home and forget about it." It was a very non-journalistic thing to do, but I really didn't -- having made that bond with him for my own benefit -- I didn't want to think about that kid growing up without a father.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

In journalism classes, you're told to be objective and not put yourself into it. Clearly you found that you couldn't stay completely out of the story.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Nicholas Kristof: Journalistic ethics often don't work in the real world. They're important principles, but there are times when principles just don't work. For example, you should obey the law, but not if that is going to lead to the execution of somebody who's helped you. One of the principles of journalism is you don't lie. You never lie. You're in the truth business. In the Congo, I was once caught by a Tutsi leader who was busy massacring Hutu. I shouldn't have been there. I was very worried about my own safety, and I lied through my teeth to this guy. I told him that his commander, General Kabila, had authorized me to be there and sent his greetings. Well, this commander didn't believe a word of it. Why would the commander send me into an area where he's busy exterminating one tribe? But he couldn't reach his commander on the radio, and didn't quite know what to do. So finally, after about 45 minutes or an hour, he let me go. Well, it was at some level utterly inappropriate to lie. On the other hand, if you're trying to save your own life or somebody else's, absolutely. Lie.

[ Key to Success ] Courage

How did you become interested in journalism?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Nicholas Kristof: In the eighth grade, there was an organizational meeting to have a school newspaper. I didn't show up. A bunch of other kids did. I think a bunch of them wanted to actually work on a paper, but none of them really wanted to edit it. They were trying to figure out how to reconcile that, and what they decided to do was they elected me editor in my absence! Since I wasn't there to protest, I became editor. And then I found I really liked it, and really enjoyed both, just the aesthetic of writing, and also the ego thrill of the byline. And so that was my beginnings as a journalist.

How did you start writing professionally?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Nicholas Kristof: There's a local newspaper that came out initially twice a week, later three times a week, called the News Register in McMinnville, Oregon. And when I turned 16 and got my driver's license, then I signed up to write for them. And the editor of it, he knew that -- it's a farming area -- that he needed to cover farming, but he didn't know anything about it. And as a result, he couldn't actually determine I didn't know anything about it either. So as a high school student I covered farming in the area, and again, I just found it extraordinary to run around, talk to people, find out about things that were interesting, and then get paid for it. So that was a major step along my road to being a journalist.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

One of your old classmates said you were raised to be self-reliant. Do you think that's true?

Nicholas Kristof: Yeah, I do think that is true.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. My parents in general had a lot of confidence that I would always -- that things would work out. When I was at Oxford, I happened to be taking a vacation in Poland when martial law was declared, so all communications were severed. There I was in Poland, and a local TV station heard about this and came out to do an interview with my dad. And the story they were looking for was, "Local family grieves as son lost behind in martial law Poland." It was a very unsatisfying interview for them, because my dad kept saying, "Oh, he'll be fine. He'll get out okay." And they kept saying, "You must be worried!" and "No. He'll be fine." So I think that my parents did manage to instill in me the idea that you can look after yourself and get through problems.

Could you describe your experience in Poland? Talk about being at the right place at the wrong time!

Nicholas Kristof: If you're a journalist, it was the right place at the right time.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I'd been traveling through Poland, partly because I had some relatives there, and then we just arrived in the town of Krakow when martial law was declared. I had worked for The Washington Post as a summer intern, so I knew that they would want stories. So I went out to the big steel plant, where there were a lot of workers facing off with a bunch of soldiers, and I explained that I wanted to write about things. They took me around the fence, away from the soldiers, and showed me how to climb over the fence. I got inside, went around and talked to people and I got some very good stories. And I was able to get them out of Poland to The Washington Post by having people carry them out. Other reporters, the real reporters, weren't able for the most part to get stories out. So The Washington Post was very grateful. My stories attracted a certain amount of interest at a time when there was tremendous curiosity about what was going on and very little information. So that certainly helped my journalism career as well.

[ Key to Success ] Courage

Did you worry about your safety?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Nicholas Kristof: There was one point when we were inside the steel mill, when suddenly the word spread that the army's going to attack in ten minutes. There was a moment there that was scary. But by and large, I'd say it felt reasonably orderly, and in general I found that when you're in a nasty country where there's order, where there are police and soldiers and a dictator who controls things, that then you tend to be rather safer. The places that scare me are those where there is no rule of anybody, just a bunch of drunken soldiers. When I was at Oxford I had another trip, my first real trip through sub-Saharan Africa with a friend there, Dan Esty. And we kind of backpacked through West Africa. And there was one occasion when we were traveling through Ghana, which had just had a coup and was under military control. We were stopped at a roadblock by two drunken soldiers, and that was very, very scary, because you realized that these soldiers, they might let you go, or they might kill you and throw your bodies in the underbrush.

[ Key to Success ] Courage

They were drunk and they had weapons?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Nicholas Kristof: They had guns. There was really nothing we could do about it. We could try to influence that decision at the margins, we might or might not succeed. And in the end they robbed us, but they did let us go. But I think that that was a very useful lesson early in my journalism career, that things can go very badly wrong. At one moment you can be going down a road and things are perfect, and the next moment you've got some drunk soldiers who just may kill you. That fear that I felt when they were holding us for maybe 45 minutes or so in the jungle, that has never entirely left me. And that lesson, that things can go very badly wrong very quickly, I've always remembered that. And I've tried to use the lesson of that, the need to be as safe as one can, in difficult situations.

[ Key to Success ] Courage

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