Nicholas Kristoff visits SMU

On Tuesday Nicholas Kristoff from the New York Times came to SMU to share with us his on-going coverage of the genocide occurring in Darfur right now as I type this blog. When I first saw him, he looked just like any other Caucasian middle-aged male reporter but as soon as he began to speak, I noticed a fire in his eyes for the people of Darfur. I noticed he has charisma and a talent to go into the middle of no where and get complete strangers to tell him the atrocious things they have endured.

As he showed us picture after picture, and told us story after story, I realized we as the media of the US are not paying much lip service to this crisis. Kristoff did commend college students to being the most passionate and helpful in ending and aiding Darfur, but until the national media gets a true hold on this and stops the obsession with Anna Nicole Smith, thousands of people will keep dying while we await paternity tests.

Granted, the Bush administration is doing more than Clinton ever thought of doing. We have given about $2 million dollars in relief aid, but does this stop the killings and rapes of the innocent? No, we're just providing a band-aid to a wound so deep we haven't begun to understand.

One thing Kristoff said that hit me about the relief we offer is, we can keep handing out food and plastic blankets but in the grand scheme of this genocide it seems "incredibly hallow."

Throughout our history, we as a country have offered aid in many genocides, but we as the media have done little to give it the exposure it deserves. First with the Holocaust, then with Rowanda, and now with Darfur, our media coverage is minimal and the media has the potential to apply the pressures needed to the leaders of our nation and other nations to stop these awful killings and torture.

Kristoff said that each time our media has given coverage to Darfur, the killings decrease and once we turn our eyes to another topic, they increase once again. So, whats a good solution? Cover the raped women, tell the stories of their husbands deaths, and show the orphaned children, and then maybe, this will stop.

I, too, have begun to do my part. After the lecture, I watched as many of Kristoff's multimedia packages given on the New York Times Website. And, I am embarrassed to say that this was the first time I ever saw anything of the sort.

The packages were real. They were raw, filled with natural sounds, hard cuts, close-ups with shaky zooms and pans, but they did more than any smooth, pretty, edited piece I have on broadcast TV news, and that's hard for me to say because my heart lies with broadcast news. But these packages took me into Darfur, they took me into Pakistan, I met women accomplishing extraordinary things against impossible odds. I got teary eyed, and believe me, I don't like to cry.

I was blown away at the power of the Internet and the convergence of media. Until now, I guess I didn't really see it, or maybe I didn't want to see it, but now I do.

These stories had endless possibilities, they could go on as long as needed to tell the story and kept me wanting more. There were no commercial breaks, teases, and headlines; I got exactly what I wanted immediately. The imaged were real and raw, with no need to worry about television restraints and the script was true. Kristoff could say all he wanted without the barriers of TV language. He could even send his own message to the officials of Pakistan to beware, because he was watching their moves. That is journalism with a message, a purpose, a need to continue coverage, which is what every good journalist should strive for.