NYT’s Nicholas Kristof: “Utterly Inspired” by Humanity’s Capacity for Progress

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And we had that conversation earlier this week, just ahead of when the film comes out, which is tomorrow. We turn next to someone who spent his career reporting on death and darkness around the world. And yet, in his new memoir, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof says he is chasing hope. He speaks to Walter Isaacson about that, and the people that he’s met along the way who help him to remain optimistic.

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WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And Nick Kristof, welcome back to the show.

NICHOLAS KRISTOF, AUTHOR, “CHASING HOPE: A REPORTER’S LIFE” AND OPINION COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Great to be with you.

ISAACSON: For 40 years you’ve been covering everything from sex trafficking to child health issues and genocide and yet you got this new memoir out and you say chasing hope. What do you mean by the chasing hope?

KRISTOF: So, you know, people meet me for the first time because I’ve been covering all these grim topics, they always expect I’m going to be this dour pessimist. But the truth is that the backdrop that we don’t always acknowledge in journalism is an extraordinary improvement in the human condition around the world. You know, fewer kids dying, fewer people malnourished, fewer people disabled by disease, more people literate, women more empowered. And also, I think at the same time, you know, you side by side with the worst of humanity, Walter, you invariably find the very best. You find people of just amazing courage, strength, resilience, who have left me utterly inspired about our capacity to still take on all these very real challenges around us.

ISAACSON: Your journalism has had a crusading aspect without necessarily being partisan or political or even ideological. And in some ways, I see your journalism as in the tradition of a hundred years ago with Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair. Are those the models for you?

KRISTOF: Yes, I think that’s exactly right. It’s not so much trying to change people’s views about issues that are on the agenda, but rather trying to cover issues that are off the agenda and thereby, project them onto the agenda in ways that will lead them to be resolved. And, you know, I think that mimics changes in the way history has unfolded. That we used to think of history as what kings did. And then there was this, you know, revolution in history writing. So, it was about what happened to societies, to women, to kids, et cetera. And I think, likewise, that journalism needs to be a little less about what presidents did yesterday, and more about the broad changes happening in society, and including those left behind.

ISAACSON: You made your name in some ways by covering Tiananmen Square, by rushing into it when you were there for “The New York Times.” And yet, I read in your book, there was an interesting thing that you say, one of the things I learned is that victims sometimes lie. Walk me through how you got that realization.

KRISTOF: So, I was on Tiananmen Square that night when troops opened fire, and I knew that they had slaughtered unarmed protesters, but I also knew, for example, that they had not sent tanks through the tents with a lot of students inside them, that the Tiananmen Square had not been knee-deep in blood et cetera, and that — and I had been very careful to get figures from each of the hospitals about how many people had died, my estimate was 400 to 800 people dying in Beijing. And then, in the days after, there were all this talk about, you know, tens of thousands of people dying at Tiananmen and the Square being knee-deep in blood. And, you know, I realized that we in journalism, it’s intuitive of us to be skeptical and to challenge accounts by perpetrators of massacres by dictators. But it’s also, I think, natural for us to be sympathetic and less skeptical of victims. But victims exaggerate, they lie. And when you have suffered terribly, you’re incentivized to say that, you know, something you heard about that you actually witnessed it. And one of the things that I learned from that terrible night is that it’s important for us as journalists, if we care deeply about getting the truth to actually, you know, be as skeptical of victims as we are perpetrators.

ISAACSON: When you covered Darfur, you got in there, I think, using United Airlines mileage card. You kind of snuck in, broke the rules, and it actually started a global movement to focus on the atrocities that were happening in Darfur. How did you learn about those and how did you decide to embrace that as a sort of journalistic cause?

KRISTOF: So, a lot of what I have done has really been about serendipity. You know, I made one trip in which I saw this, you know, horrible sex trafficking and then that led me to more coverage of it. And likewise, I may — I’d heard rumors about atrocities in Darfur. I didn’t know if they were true. I made one trip to the Chad-Sudan border where I was able to interview refugees who described what had happened, who described villages being destroyed, bodies thrown into wells, so those villages would become uninhabitable, you know, met a four-year-old girl who carried her baby sister eight days to get there after her parents had been killed. And I was horrified. And you can’t just go back to your family and hug your kids and then just forget about what happened. It haunts you. And so, the way we fight back is with our laptops and our cameras, but that means going back and getting more stories and trying to figure out what can, you know, make — can spill people’s coffee in the morning and get them to call their member of Congress or call the White House. And so, that meant trying to sneak into Darfur. And it did become kind of an obsession with me that, you know, the more victims I met, the more I actually saw firsthand those villages. It just — it did become something of an obsession.

ISAACSON: And one of the things you do is you personalize, in other words, an atrocity in Darfur is a concept and people can’t get, but if you meet one or two people and they become very personal, you can relate to it. Explain to me the role of personalizing a tragedy like that.

KRISTOF: Yes, then — and frankly, that came out of a frustration that my early reporting about Darfur just did not seem terribly effective. And in particular, at that time, in New York City, there were these two hawks, these two red tailed hawks who had been nesting in a building and then they’re — the building pushed them out of the — broke — took apart their nests because they didn’t like the bird droppings. And all New York City was up in arms about these two homeless hawks. And I thought, how is it that I can’t generate the same outrage about hundreds of thousands of people being slaughtered? And so, that led me to the work in social psychology and neuroscience about what makes people care. And it turns out it’s basically about two things, it’s about individual stories, it’s an emotional connection, not a rational one. And secondly, it’s about some possibility that if people do care about it, there can be a better outcome. And I think these are things we journalists do wrong. We talk about millions of people suffering from some crisis and we often focus so much on all that is going wrong that we don’t acknowledge the possibility of better outcomes. And so, I’ve since then really tried to tell individual stories and likewise, to look at this backdrop of progress just so that, look, we can do better. And if people do get engaged, we can save lives.

ISAACSON: One of the things I love about your journalism is that in an era of hot takes, when everybody’s got to be a hero or villain and know exactly which side they’re on, you’re often conflicted and you lay out the reasons you’re conflicted. And recently, it’s been on the Gaza-Israel war front. And you say that sometimes a just war can turn unjust. Tell me, do you think that’s what’s happened now, that the Israeli war in Gaza has become unjust?

KRISTOF: That’s exactly what I think. I think that on October 7th, Israel had every right to use military means to go after Hamas. And indeed, not just they’re right to go after Hamas, but really an obligation to do so, to re-establish deterrence, which I think had had failed. But that did not mean using 2,000-pound bombs to destroy entire neighborhoods in Gaza. That did not mean cutting off the flow of food in particular, and, you know, things like birthing kits, because birthing kits have little tiny scissors in them to cut a umbilical cord. And I think then the U.S. became complicit in that brutality in Gaza because President Biden was too slow to use the leverage that we had, which was essentially protecting Israel and the U.N. and shipping offensive weapons to Israel. So, you know, there’s no doubt about the horror of October 7th, but I think there’s also no doubt about the horror of what followed. And while I don’t believe that there is a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas, I do believe that there is a moral equivalence between the children of Israel and the children of Gaza, and I think we’ve neglected that.

ISAACSON: You covered the horrors of Darfur. And you became a fan of Senator Joe Biden then, because he was a person of compassion. But you say, I wonder, where has Joe — that Joe Biden gone? Gaza’s become the albatross around Biden’s neck. It’ll be part of his legacy, an element of his obituary, a blot on his campaign. What are you driving at, that Joe Biden has lost the compassion that he had before when it comes to Gaza?

KRISTOF: I don’t think that he’s lost his compassion. I think that’s actually deep within him. And he also showed it during the Bosnia genocide. But I think that he has just preternaturally — I think it’s in his DNA to side with Israel whenever there is some kind of a conflict. I think he is of an age of a generation where he thinks of Israel as enormously fragile and vulnerable. And I had — just rushes to embrace its leader, and I think that has made him too slow and using the leverage that we have, such as the flow of weapons to pressure Israel to do what he’s asked it to do from the beginning. So, you know, Biden was, I think, very good right from his first trip to Israel to call on Israel, to show restraint to remind Israel that the U.S. made mistakes after 9/11 in ways that did not advance their own security. But when Netanyahu rebuffed him and ignored him, then at that point, I think Biden was way too slow to create consequences and to use that leverage. And diplomacy, as you know, is not just about making requests, it’s also about twisting arms. Biden has been unwilling to do that. And I think that is what has made — has aggravated the crisis in Gaza and led to our own complicity in that — in those results.

ISAACSON: You’ve written about, you know, your father’s example is a refugee seeking asylum here. And yet, recently, I’ve noticed that you’ve turned against having borders that would allow a lot of asylum. You’ve supported Joe Biden’s new rule cracking down on the borders. How tough was it for you to wrestle with that?

KRISTOF: You know, it’s a little, hard for the son of a refugee who benefited from America’s generosity toward refugees to feel a little bit like you’re pulling up the ladder after you’re here. But I think that the – – what was going on with the asylum system in the U.S. was unsustainable, both in the U.S. and in Europe. It laid the groundwork for extreme right- wing populists who are bad for refugees, for asylum seekers, for absolutely everybody. And I think another thing that shaped my thinking was coming from Rural Oregon, Yamhill, Oregon, a working-class area. It was evident that, you know, there are costs to rising immigration and those who struggle are those who are high school dropouts, or certainly who haven’t got to college, who are competing with immigrant laborers. And there — these are folks who have already suffered enormously, and we need to be careful about inflicting more damage on them. So, for that kind of combination of reasons, I thought that it was important to back Biden in trying to bring back some order to the asylum process.

ISAACSON: I’m going to read you a sentence in the book that struck me. In a way that I had never imagined at the beginning of my career, I now felt that reporting on international crises helped me better understand my own country and the risks it faced. Tell me what it helped you understand what risks are we facing?

KRISTOF: I think that comes partly out of the struggles of my own community in Rural Oregon, which, like a lot of working-class communities around the country, lost jobs. Then, meth arrived. At this point, more than a third of the kids in my old school bus are gone from drugs, alcohol, and suicide. That led to a deep hostility to what people would call elites, to conspiracy theories. A lot of, you know, my friends didn’t want to get vaccinated. They became prone to demagogues, to people pointing towards scapegoats. A couple of friends have talked about taking up arms to get their country back. And I’ve seen in other countries how things can fall apart and become unglued when there are scapegoats, when people feel disenfranchised and dispossessed. And in Europe, we’ve seen how the extreme right, a bigoted extreme right can gain ground remarkably quickly.

ISAACSON: But let’s focus on Oregon and Yamhill, Oregon, which is where you now live. That’s a striking thing, that one third of the kids you rode the school bus with have died of either suicide, depression or drug overdoses or addiction. And that’s tied in to the — both mistrust of the elites and the populist backlash. Most journalists in America are out of touch with things like that. Why is it that this is not better understood? And we don’t even seem to have a good language to write about it.

KRISTOF: I think that — look, I spent a lot of time in Iraq and Afghanistan covering those wars, and they were important to cover. But every two and a half weeks, we lose more Americans to drugs, alcohol, and suicide than we lost in 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I don’t think that we in journalism, I don’t think our elective leaders, I don’t think the public has come to grips with the pain across the country in so many homes, the devastation, in so many communities, nor have we devoted the resources to try to get these places back on their feet. And so, when people feel neglected and ignored, and in some cases betrayed, they’re not entirely wrong. And if we are going to heal the divisions and address these conspiracy theories and make this soil less fertile for demagogues, then we also have to address that broader opportunity gap. And I think there’s some — you know, people think this is just the white working-class. I think that it was initially most obvious in the white working-class. But increasingly, we’ve seen people of color, likewise — working-class people of color, likewise feeling the same sense of betrayal and neglect. And this is fundamentally, I think, about lack of opportunity. And I think we can do a lot better. Education, I think, is the best antidote to this. If we try to figure out how people can become competitive, you know, we’ve got to do a better job educating, giving them a skill set so they can compete in the 21st century. And when one in seven kids still doesn’t graduate from high school, we are failing them. We fail them before they fail us.

ISAACSON: Nick Kristof, thank you so much for joining us.

KRISTOF: Good to be with you, Walter.