"The Reporter" - Kristoff

Watching the HBO/Sundance documentary “Reporter”, about the work of NY Times reporter Nicholas Kristoff, I came back to old questions I have had about how compassion works in the human heart and how difficult it is to gather enough resistance to stop war and quiet the struggles for power.  Our human history is crowded with stories of our brutality to one another, to the cold disregard for others that we summon in the face of fear.  “Reporter” takes a hard look at the job of finding stories of importance and risking one’s own life at times to bring those stories to light. Mr. Kristoff doesn’t chase the story of the minute, the headline of the hour, instead he works to continually shine a light on the places were people are suffering the most from the neglect of the rest of the world. At the end of the documentary Mr. Kristoff muses on the future of his type of reporting. Where will the money come from to support investigative reporting, to send knowledgeable journalists to those places in the world that deserve to be understood and helped? The distraction of today’s instant media sources is one more nail in the coffin of

thoughtful measured reporting. Money follows viewers and readers, and viewers and readers today follow the firestorm of the moment, the newest drama that appears to threaten their world. “Reporter” is worth watching, worth learning from.  Journalism is evolving, as all things are. Evolving doesn’t have to mean letting go, though, of calm, critical thinking about issues and events. My hope is the pendulum will swing back again in the direction of the type of journalism practiced by Mr. Kristoff  - and when it does we will energize again our human capacity for true compassion.