Interview With John Burnett, Author of Uncivilized Beasts and Shameless Hellions: Travels with an NPR Correspondent

I have long been a fan of public radio, especially National Public Radio. I was excited last year at the opportunity to interview the author of a book in which she interviewed some of my favorite public radio personalities.
Around the same time I received a copy of a book by a correspondent, John Burnett, whose name I instantly recognized because he has covered Iraq, Katrina and other issues.
There is something somewhat magical about hearing good programming on the radio. Burnett describes it this way:

Radio is cool. There is something that happens when voice and natural sound come together to transport listeners out of their surroundings. It only happens with radio. NPR calls it "the driveway moment" – when people sit in the car to wait until the story is over….
After deadline, reporters don't talk about the who, what, when, where, why and when. We talk about the sixth W, the whoa – bizarre encounters, miserable journeys, horrible hotels, great fixers, dangerous highways, gruesome dead people, gruesome live people, and unsung heroes. This book is my attempt to make sense of it all, to sort through the beasts and the hellions.

As you might guess there is a story behind the title of the book, Uncivilized Beasts and Shameless Hellions: Travels with an NPR Correspondent but I'll save that for the second part, along with the questions and answers regarding the chapter about Hurricane Katrina.
One reason I'm making this interview into two parts is that Burnett is not just a reporter covering big stories but he's also quite good at analyzing what has happened to the news media:

The press has metamorphosed from a corps – connoting a sense of order and belonging – into what many people see as a giant octopus: massive, fleshy, many tentacled, and befogged in its own ink. It strikes me that oftentimes the more of us there are, the more likely we are to get it wrong.

This, as he eloquently describes, was the case in Iraq and Katrina to name two of the more visible recent examples.
I started my interview by asking him about Iraq, specifically about the embedding project.
Scott: Looking back on the embedded journalist experience do you think it was a success for both the military and the media, or just for the military?
I ask because of a point you speak of clearly and eloquently on page 41 where you wrote:

The pentagon implicitly understood what happens when journalists are inserted into war-fighting units. People who share adversity grow closer. We would sleep in the sand together, eat bad food together, and ride out sandstorms together. David Wood, the veteran national security correspondent for Newhouse News, cautions new combat reporters that the hardest thing about covering war is not the danger of incoming mortar rounds: 'It's remembering at all times that you're not one of them.'

Scott: Was that hard to remember at times?
John: It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. The Pentagon got all the coverage it wanted and we got intimate access to the biggest story in the world. Most of the media were happy. The defense department accommodated nearly everyone - 600 in all. That's a lot of journalists. But the whole thing had a triumphalist atmosphere to it—there was never any question that the invasion would be successful. It wasn't if, but when.
The thing you need to remember is that the entire embed adventure was a sideshow to the bigger story - how do we win the peace? Journalists were so revved up, at the time, covering the invasion that not enough of us were questioning whether the war planners had a plan to pacify and run the country after Saddam fell, which clearly they did not.
Scott:You spoke clearly on page 56 about your regret after you reported a scoop which turned out to inaccurate information.
You wrote:

The mistake was inexcusable. I felt professionally humiliated. I had given in to the temptation of 24-hours news cycles... NPR reported the denial and the war raced forward. Most people forgot about it, but not me. The misbegotten scoop haunted me. I'd played directly into the wishful thinking of a command that desperately wanted to find chemical weapons in order to justify the invasion.

I think it is difficult for non-journalists to understand why good, experienced, skilled reporters like yourself violate standard journalism rules in the rush for a good scoop. Can you speak to how this happens? Do you think this happens more during a war?
John: I put a lot of stock in the fact that I was talking to a brigadier general, and that he seemed to have so many specifics about the WMD scoop. I was with another veteran combat reporter at the time, and he told me if he were in my shoes he'd run with it I did. I should have waited.
Mistakes will always happen in war coverage. Our job is to correct them and move on. Information is unverified, facts can be hazy, the outcomes of operations unclear, reports inaccurate. There's an old saying that truth is the first casualty during war.
Scott: I found the chapter about Guatemala fascinating, especially this passage: "We looked forward to Holy Week, when young men went door-to-door, demanding tips to beat up a dummy Judas. How much do they charge?
John: Hah! That's not in my notes. A few centavos probably. They were somewhat menacing youngsters...sort of trick or treating. If we didn't pay them something we suspected the consequence would be mischief or mayhem.
Scott: Why do you think it is that Guatamela is not covered more extensively by the media?
John: There's not a compelling storyline out of Guatemala currently. The 36-year insurgency is over. Guatemala doesn't have the drug violence that Mexico does, though Guatemala's drug mafias are growing. It doesn't have the political violence that Colombia does, though evidence of old horrors keeps surfacing. It doesn't have a telegenic Castro wannabe for president who calls Bush a devil...like Venezuela does.
Guatemala still has lots of problems, but today it is more typical of a poor, underdeveloped Latin American country than a country in crisis. I, for one, continue to report from there as often as possible because it is a fascinating place ethnically, historically, and environmentally, whose scenery is beautiful and whose people are warm-hearted.
Scott: The chapter on Pakistan, especially the section about the idea of honor killings, reminded me of the book Revenge: A Story of Hope. Have you read it? I imagine it'd be hard to not feel and express outrage at the idea of killing someone innocent out of honor – was that a challenge?
John: I haven't read it. I thought honor killings involved other people, savage, uncivilized people, certainly not my own fixer, of whom I was so fond. It is truly hard for someone from our culture to understand them. I wished I'd had more time to delve into this, but it wasn't the lead story at the time.

I promised that for this part I would share the story about the title of this book. I am going to let him tell it in his own words. It comes at the start of a chapter on Pakistan. He describes a protest at which he, at 6'7", is the tallest person, where his fixer has told him to tell people he's Canadian, such is the anti-American sentiment.
While there Burnett notices something:

I noticed then that a pudgy, flush-faced student had hoisted a homemade sign directly over my head that read “Americans Are Uncivilized Beasts and Shameless Hellions." It was printed in English, no doubt for the benefit of CNN.
“Hasan, tell this man to take his sign down," I said.
“Just ignore it, John."
“It makes me nervous."
“No one will hurt you. It's okay."
I stared at the student and he stared back at me, expressionless.
“Then tell him I really like his sign and I'd like to have it," I continued.
“What?" Hasan glanced at me.
“Ask him if he will give it to me as a gift."
I'll never completely understand why the student complied. Perhaps he wanted to show me he was neither beast nor hellion like my countrymen, or maybe he thought I needed to meditate further on his message. For whatever reason, he rolled up the posterboard and handed it to me with a smile.
And then he said, “You are our brother, no problem." He extended his hand to shake mine. “You are our brother, no problem."
“I am your brother?" I asked.
“Yes, you are our brother," he repeated.
Dumbstruck, I wanted to visit further and find out why he was so friendly, but a crowd had gathered around us – never a good idea an emotional rally…"
“Hasan, what just happened back there?" I asked.
“Muslims hate U.S. foreign policy," he explained patiently, but people of the Northwest Frontier Province are very courteous to foreigners. We are Pashtuns. Our tradition is hospitality."

One last thought before we continue the interview: Burnett ends his introduction by quoting the same quote from Pete Hamill
One last thought before we continue the interview: Burnett ends his introduction by quoting the same quote from Pete Hamill I used in an analysis of journalism over the last 100 years ago, that being the important job journalists play: "The reporter is the member of the tribe who is sent to the back of the cave to find out what's there. The report must be accurate. If there's a rabbit hiding in the darkness it cannot be transformed into a dragon."
Scott: You wrote some sentences that made me laugh out loud, like this one about the army spokesman mad at you call for describing a man as "paunchy”: "I learned an important lesson that day. You can call a Latin American strongman a murderer; just don't slight his vanity.” Did such things make you laugh at the time or only later?
John: Oh, I always revel in the humor of my stories at the time, and for years later. I collect stories like this. That's why I wrote this book. Humor keeps me sane on a dark and dangerous story.
Scott: My favorite quote is this one, though, from the chapter about Pakistan: "I've stuck out in crowds all my life, but nothing compares to being the tallest American at a Death to America rally." How surreal was that?
John: It was uncomfortable in the extreme. I was glad when Hasan said it was time to go.
Scott: You describe hurricanes this way: “I used to love hurricanes... until Katrina. Hurricanes are the crystal meth of journalism. There's nothing like racing toward a big storm on a crowded highway while the opposite lanes are gridlocked with people trying to get out.” Can you elaborate?
John: When an approaching hurricane threatens a coastal city, we get paid to race into the eye of the storm when everyone else is fleeing from it. I've never convinced my worried mother why I love that sensation, but I do. Even after a "normal" hurricane, things always come a bit unglued—peoples' lives are upended, the cops often can't control their territory, normal life grinds to a halt, traffic lights are out, there's no one to tell you where you can and can't go. Destruction and debris may be everywhere.
None of this is a big deal in a developing country, where city life may be pretty raw in the best of times. But America is all about control and safety and rules and order. A hurricane brings about an existential pause in the life of a community. And we get to be there.
Scott: In your chapter about Hurricane Katrina, you wrote: "I experience the first wave of uselessness that will return again and again all week. Without a rescue boat, food, water, or helpful information, all we can do is take testimonies and promise to get the word out." Have you talked to other journalists about this feeling to see if that was a common sentiment? Was this one of the more difficult stories you have ever covered?
John: Yes, I've heard from other journalists who also questioned what they were doing, particularly if they had a boat to use for shooting pictures and not for rescue. And yes, this was a tough story, but I wouldn't trade the Katrina experience for anything in my career.
Scott: You were a key player in what was, to me, the most telling, memorable exchange during the Katrina coverage: The NPR interview with Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff where he was clearly clueless that anyone was at the New Orleans Convention Center. What was that like, letting the world - and him - know that approximately 15,000 people were at the convention center? And I'm going to use the f word (feel): How did it feel when you realized that supplies were being rushed to the convention center because of your report? Did that help assuage the survivor's guilt you and other reporters were probably dealing with?
John: Anne Hawke and I felt really great when our editor told us the (government) was choppering in supplies to the wretched masses at the convention center. That's one of the reasons we do this job—to get the word out, to affect change, to make things better. Frankly, journalists rarely do change the course of events, so it feels good when it happens.