J4450: Reporting and Idealism

This post is about idealism, which tends to be a pretty negative word. “Realists” always make fun of the “idealists.” We don’t understand how the world works, they say. But at least we believe in something, I say.

We watched the documentary Reporter in lecture this week. A camera crew follows New York Times columnist Nick Kristof as he ventures into one of the most poverty- and disease-stricken parts of Africa. While hundreds of people suffer around him at each place he visits, Kristof continues to look for the saddest sad story to make the suffering hit home to more privileged readers.

In the film, he listens with almost no emotion as starving Africans tell him their stories, and keeps asking them where the sickest person is. It’s a strange thing to see because he fills his columns with such emotion and outrage about the suffering in the world.

This practice of not showing emotion doesn’t mean he doesn’t care though. I think he has to shield his emotions to be able to deal with the stuff he sees. I blinked back tears just watching the documentary! I can’t even imagine having to experience it and report back on it coherently. Personally, I’ve only really faced this dilemma of staying emotionless or wearing them on your sleeve once, and I wrote about that here.

Now, I would say Kristof’s an idealist. He wouldn’t keep writing columns if he thought they couldn’t make some difference, as the narrator of Reporter says near the end of the film. From what I gather, he’s one of a few reporters who covers the “beat” of human tragedy in undeveloped or developing countries, who’s constantly reporting on it.

And I think a lot of journalists (me included) think what he’s doing is noble but at the same time would have a hard time doing what he does. I think part of it is the potential to become desensitized to what you’re reporting on, to appear like you don’t care. Also, though, I think part of it is that it’s incredibly hard.

I found this article a while back about one reporter’s struggle with his idealism and his realism. (I highly recommend it.) Mike Deri Smith, an editor at The Morning News, writes that he wanted to help people who were suffering in North Korean concentration camps. He wanted to do something immediately, to feel like he was, indeed, doing something to help.

So, he goes to the North Korean embassy in London (where he lives) and inquires about visas to the country so he “can come and help the people of North Korea.” He also “wanted to stick it to the North Korean Man” during this visit. To do that, he hopes to get one of the diplomats to admit, in some form, to the suffering of their people.

He doesn’t get very far, so he “slinks” back home.

Smith is an idealist — he admits as much — and he seems sincere in his feelings towards the suffering of people in concentration camps. But he only goes to the embassy in his hometown…Kristof goes to Congo! It’s just incredible what Kristof does and what he experiences.

That’s not meant to disparage Smith — that’s meant to praise Kristof. I don’t really need to praise him, I guess, his work speaks for itself. In his article, Smith writes a “Manifesto for the Modern Idealist;” here’s his fifth line:

V. Watching a documentary does not an expert make thee.

Being there probably does, though. And through it all, I think Kristof has maintained his idealism in the face of intense reality.