But If Writing About People Who Are

I've Said It Before And I'll Say It Again: Never Trust Anyone Who Tells You How People Come To Trust Them.

When I'm Engaged In A Story My Health Is Not A Big Deal, But When I'm Not Doing Anything, If You Sit Me Down, I Can Get Tied Up In My Own Medical Dramas. So I Much Prefer To Work.

I Think It's This Congenital Problem With Journalism That We Oversell The Difference We Make. We Make Small Differences.

As A Reporter, You Know The Tropes Of How Stories On Poverty Work In Any Country. A Reporter Will Go To An Ngo And Say, "tell Me About The Good Work That You're Doing And Introduce Me To The Poor People Who Represent The Kind Of Help You Give." It Serves To Streamline The Storytelling, But It Gives You A Lopsided Cosmos In Which Almost Every Poor Person You Read About Is Involved With A Ngo Helping Him. Our Understanding Of Poverty And How People Escape From Poverty, In Any Country, Is Quite Distorted.

In My Kind Of Reporting Work, You Don't Parachute In After Some Big, Terrible Event, Which Is Important And Has To Be Covered, But Offers Only A Glimpse. It's The Kind Of Work In Which You Ask, What Is My Understanding Of How The World Works, And Where Can I Go To See These Questions Get Worked Out In Individuals' Lives? That Was Really The Question For Me: Whether I Had Anything To Add To What Had Already Been Written.