E-mail a friendNicholas Kristof
airdate May 3, 2006
An Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof's pieces have focused attention on human rights abuses in Asia and Africa. He joined the paper in '84, covering economics, and has served as bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. Kristoff is a Harvard grad and Rhodes Scholar, has lived on four continents, traveled to more than 140 countries and written several books. He's won Pulitzers for journalism and for commentary. He's also a pioneer in multimedia and was the first blogger on the NYT Web site.
Nicholas Kristof
Tavis: Nicholas Kristof is a widely-read columnist for "The New York Times" who perhaps more than any other journalist in the country has consistently covered the tragedy in Darfur. Recently, he was awarded his second Pulitzer Prize, this one for commentary. His first came for his reporting on the uprisings at Tiananmen Square. He joins us tonight from the 'Times' newsroom in New York City. Mr. Kristof, it's an honor to have you on, and congratulations, sir.
Nicholas Kristof: Thank you. I'm delighted to be on.
Tavis: We're pleased to have the opportunity to talk to you about the crisis in Darfur. Let me start by asking what one makes of the rallies last weekend in Washington and across the country, given that you've been calling for this for month after month after month. And last weekend, I saw at least a somewhat crystallization of the issue with the American public. What did Nick Kristof make of that moment last weekend?
Kristof: I really think that now we are having a crystallization, and there was something toward that a little more than a year ago. And then the tsunami happened in Asia, and the upshot was that people were distracted and turned away. And then as a result, Sudan increased the level of killing in Darfur. But kind of the irony is that right now we have this mass interest in Darfur. But it, ironically, may be too late. Unless a peace deal is worked out, things are gonna downhill very badly, I think, in Darfur and in Chad.
Tavis: Speaking of the peace deal, we, at this sitting, hear that perhaps as early as Thursday, but certainly in the coming days, we are hopeful that the government of Sudan will in fact affix its signature to a peace deal. What do you know about that, and what are your hopes for that?
Kristof: There is a real hope that we are going to have a peace deal between the government of Sudan and the rebels. And that is necessary to go ahead and stop the slaughter. It's not enough. Both sides have pledged nice things in the past, and they haven't fulfilled it. But that would be one step toward a solution. On the other hand, if we don't get that step, if those peace talks fall apart, then this is one genocide that is going to get worse.
Tavis: Speaking of the word genocide, assess for me, from your perspective, why and how, in fact, it took so long for the Bush administration to eventually call what is happening in Darfur a genocide. How did you read that moment?
Kristof: Well, it took a long time for everybody to focus on that, and that was partly the fault of those of us in the media. We dropped the ball. And the Bush administration did, in September ‘04, in the election season, they did call it a genocide. That was partly to the credit of Colin Powell, but also President Bush also called it the same thing. But the problem was after we called it genocide, we found this to be genocide, we didn't do anything.
Instead of it being a spur to further action, it became the substitute for action. And so, as I see it, the problem wasn't delay in calling it genocide. It was just the failure to follow through.
Tavis: You are living proof that one person can, in fact, make a difference. You have used your column, pardon the phrase here, as a drum beat about this particular issue. Let me take you back to when you first started writing about the crisis in Darfur, and I'm particularly interested in what moved you, what motivated you, what convinced you that this was something you needed to not just write about, but to write about consistently, in fact?
Kristof: Two years ago, I was in an oasis on the Darfur-Chad border. It was an area where there were about 30,000 people who had fled their villages. They'd been burned out of their villages, and they were sheltering under trees, getting no international help. And the first tree where I went to, I spoke to two brothers, one who'd been shot in the jaw, his jaw had been shot off.
His other brother carried him 49 days to get there. Under the next tree, I talked to a woman whose parents had been shot in front of her and stuffed in the village well to poison it. Under the next tree, there were two orphans, a 4 year old girl and her one year old brother. And their parents had been shot in front of them.
Under the very next tree, there was a woman whose children had been killed in front of her, and then she'd been gang raped and mutilated to stigmatize her forever. Those were the first four trees where I did my interviews, and in every direction, as far as I looked, there were more people who told exactly the same kinds of stories. And it just took my breath away, and I couldn't get those people out of my mind.
And especially those orphans. And the idea that I could just leave that and then go on to write about Democrats quarreling with the Republicans, it just was not in, it's something that haunts you, and you can't just leave it behind you.
Tavis: Is there anything in your lifetime, at least, that you think parallels this story?
Kristof: There's nothing that I've covered, and I've wondered about it a lot. The numbers here aren't so huge. It's maybe 300,000 or 400,000 people killed. And there are an awful lot more people who die of malaria or even diarrhea. But I've held kids dying with malaria, and it's awful. And I've seen soldiers shoot pro-Democracy protesters. But there's nothing to gets to you quite so much as a government like Sudan's choosing people on the basis of their skin color or their tribe and deciding to wipe them out.
And sending out militias to grab babies from their mothers' arms and throw them into bonfires because of the color of their skin. That just seems to me such a violation of who we are, of humanity. But I think the only way we can respond and assert our own humanity is to stand up against it. And that's what we're not doing.
Tavis: Let me ask you how it is, and for that matter, whether or not you, in fact, have to convince your editors at the "New York Times" that this is something that you want to and must, in fact, write about consistently. And I raise that because there is no bully pulpit like the opinion pages of the "New York Times," the editorial page, I should say, of the "New York Times," no bully pulpit like that in the world.
So let me in on a little secret. Did you have to convince your editors? Or do they say, Nick, you've written about that enough, or what about this? How does that work?
Kristof: Well, my editors have been actually very supportive. There is very little adult supervision that we get here. (Laughs) And so I think probably a lot of readers thought I was kind of wacky to go back to this one obscure place in the world time and again and write about this issue. But people thought maybe it was a little strange. But there was no, certainly my editors were very supportive.
And in general, I'd say newspapers have done an okay job on Darfur. It's really television, network television, that has completely dropped the ball and is partly responsible for this mess going on.
Tavis: One of the stats that got my attention, and I was, quite frankly, dumbfounded by it when I actually saw it. It's one thing to watch the news every night as I do and those of us who, I guess, host shows have to stay on top of the news to some degree. It's one thing to watch these shows. It's another thing to look at what you had to say in black and white.
And it literally stopped me in my tracks with regard to what the media has done or more accurately has not done where this issue is concerned. One stat in your column just dumbfounded me. You talked specifically about CBS News. I'm not casting aspersion on them. This is what you had to say.
"CBS News, in one year, in one full calendar year, if I recall this correctly, gave two minutes, a full two minutes, to the crisis in Darfur. And in that very same year, Michael Jackson received 36 minutes of CBS Evening News time." Do you recall that stat? Did I get that right?
Kristof: You got it exactly right. And if we in the news media want to ask for special privileges, then we also have to show some kind of special responsibility. And I can't think of anything that greater defines our responsibility than covering genocide.
Tavis: Let me ask you, then, at this point, what do you think needs to happen? What is Nick Kristof suggesting in his column that ought to happen as we speak on this crisis?
Kristof: We desperately need a U.N. force on the ground in Darfur to stop the slaughter. Right now, we've been great at handing out Band-Aids and handing out food. But that just feels really unsatisfying when every day there are new kids brought into the clinics with bullet wounds. So, we need a U.N. force. And that would not be U.S. troops; that would be international troops.
We need a no-fly zone. And we also need a much greater public diplomacy effort. And President Bush, I think, can lead the way by bringing refugees to the White House, by shining a spotlight on this issue, by giving a speech about Darfur, for example.
Tavis: Let me ask you as an exit question here, and I didn't start with this because I sensed coming through this satellite monitor your humility around winning this Pulitzer Prize for writing about something like genocide. But let me ask you how it makes one feel when one writes about something with passion and with purpose, and one wins a Pulitzer for doing so?
Kristof: Well, I must say that the person I keep thinking about is one of my interpreters in Darfur. He's a kid. He's 19 years old. And he took risks far greater than anything I took. And at one checkpoint in particular, the secret police, they told me I could go on, but they grabbed him and they said they were going to hold him for investigation. And it was clear that five minutes after I drove away, the investigation was going to end with him getting a bullet in the head.
And it was just terrifying. And finally, I managed to negotiate this out. And he came with me, and he's okay. But it's people like that who did much of the work, who took all of the risks and got none of the credit.
Tavis: Well, I'm honored to have you on the program. I could not be more pleased for and you and the "New York Times" with your winning the Pulitzer for your passionate work on the subject of Darfur. It's because of you that the rest of us are staying on top of it. So thank you for coming on, and all the best to you.
Kristof: Thank you so much, Tavis.
Tavis: Up next on this program, multi-platinum recording artist Jewel. Stay with us.
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