NPR's Ombudsman on News Coverage in 2005

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FRANK STASIO, host:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Frank Stasio in Washington. Neal Conan's on assignment.

2005 turned out to be a tumultuous year for national and international news, from the ongoing war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, leaks and scandals and news organizations, the controversy over funding and bias in public broadcasting. NPR covered all the events, along with many others, and listeners responded, expressing their concerns, extending praise, offering criticism as well to our coverage. While each program, TALK OF THE NATION included, airs weekly letters segments, from time to time we should hear from listeners and find out in person what they have to say and talk with our ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin. He gets more than a thousand phone calls and letters each week, and they range in topics from editorial bias to questionable grammar. Today Jeffrey joins us here on TALK OF THE NATION to take your calls and your e-mails.

Later, we'll talk about the risks of reporting from a danger zone. A reporter from The Christian Science Monitor became the 31st journalist kidnapped in Iraq since the war began. What precautions do foreign reporters and their editors take to protect them from danger?

Also later, what should our--this era be called? We have an e-mail challenge going on, and you can send your suggestions to totn@npr.org. How do we name this era?

But, first, your questions and comments about NPR's news coverage. What stories did we miss? What did we get right?

Jeffrey Dvorkin, welcome.

JEFFREY DVORKIN (NPR Ombudsman): Nice to be with you, Frank.

STASIO: You regularly respond to listeners in a column on our Web site at npr.org, and in your latest one, you said, `2005 is going to be remembered for the intensity of events, whether meteorological, political, military, journalist.' Which one drew the most listener response?

DVORKIN: Well, politics continues--it's almost as if we're in a period of continuous campaigning. And listeners write to me all the time who are expressing their concerns about what they're hearing on the radio, whether NPR has got it right, whether they think that NPR has got all aspects of the story. I mean, the Jack Abramoff scandal is a case in point. I've had many e-mails and letters accusing NPR of trying to present this as a uniquely Republican scandal and others saying it is a uniquely Republican scandal and, `What the heck is going on?' So, I mean, it's almost as if there is no room for explanatory journalism. A lot of people are writing to say they want their side supported at all costs.

STASIO: Are you seeing a change in that kind of a critique about the way we do business?

DVORKIN: I think it's becoming more intense. It's hard to imagine it getting more intense, but I...

STASIO: Yeah.

DVORKIN: ...my sense is that the listeners who write to me are--seem to be angry with NPR simply because they're not hearing only their points of view on the radio. And I think that must mean that NPR specifically and journalism in general is not doing a good enough job to explain what the role of journalism is in as complicated and stressed out political times as these are.

STASIO: The idea of balance is sort of what the journalists do, and I wonder if that--if the whole concept of balance in journalism suffers a bit from the kind of--particularly when, you know, sort of blogs have taken over the--in the blogosphere, we see a lot of independent films and documentaries that really take a side. People aren't exposed to the kind of balanced journalism that you and I may have been raised expecting.

DVORKIN: And I think that balance is a somewhat overused term right now, and perhaps it's overvalued as well in some instances. We have other news organizations, such as Fox, saying that they're fair and balanced. My sense is that fairness and balance should not be an end--a journalistic end in and of itself but a means to an end. And the end should be for news organizations to get to the truth of the matter, and that's a much more complicated and dangerous place to go.

STASIO: Uh-oh. Are you saying that there's some room here for overturning the notion of balance and that there's some other means to the truth?

DVORKIN: I think sometimes when you pursue journalism as a balancing act, you end up shortchanging your readers, listeners and viewers. If you get both sides of an issue and give them equal time, that gets you actually nowhere; that gets you to no conclusion; that gets you to no real understanding of what the event is about. And I think that this is the challenge for journalism and for ombudsmen as well--is to figure out how and where to be balanced and when to use that as a springboard for further journalistic investigation.

STASIO: Do most of your e-mails and letters center on questions of accuracy, or are they questions of balance?

DVORKIN: I think they're all over the place actually. I mean, I get e-mails accusing NPR, with some specific examples, of how left-wing NPR is, and I get others accusing NPR of shifting to the right, coming under the influence of the board of directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has always been appointed by the White House, whether the White House is inhabited by a Republican or a Democrat. But there is the sense that--a tremendous sense of suspicion about the media in general and about NPR that we have an agenda and that even if we're not aware of it, we're pursuing it in some crafty way.

STASIO: I'm talking with NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin today about how we do business, in particular, here at NPR. We can talk more broadly about journalism as a profession, but we are talking about NPR, your complaints, your observations about how we do business. You can give us a call at (800) 989-8255.

In another of your columns, you wrote that you've gotten a lot of complaints about NPR's apparent overreliance on experts, our talking heads. Talk about that.

DVORKIN: Well, I think a lot of journalism has found itself in a place where expertise is being offered by think tanks, and sometimes think tanks are not so much experts as they are advocates. I thought--and I do think--that NPR needs to do a better job in explaining who these experts are that we put on the radio, why we've chosen them and what value they have to the listeners in explaining what a situation is about.

We have here in Washington, DC, an awful lot of think tanks, many of which are quite conservative and very adept at getting on the radio and on television and on the op-ed pages of newspapers. And I think as news organizations, excluding NPR--as those news organizations contract, they look to these think tanks to fill up the editorial gaps behind them, so that a lot of op-ed pieces are written by these think tanks. And that gives a certain texture and color to the sense of the range of opinion. It narrows the range of opinion that's available to the public.

STASIO: Well, in particular, in a vehicle like this, a talk show, when we have experts on, how do you feel about this, where you've got experts and, as you say, advocates really for their cause? They've spent a lot of time thinking about this. They're allowed to say things and really not--what do you think about the ability of talk show hosts to challenge an assertion vs. a reporter, who takes all that information back, chops it up, goes through editors?

DVORKIN: I think...

STASIO: Is this a dangerous format?

DVORKIN: It can be a dangerous format, but I think it's entirely credible for a call-in show host to push back politely but firmly on the assumptions that are proffered by experts. I think that one of the values of doing a good interview is to assume the role of, `I'm just a dumb journalist. Would you please explain this to me?' And that often elicits a lot of information.

STASIO: Let's go to the phones. Mickey is on the line in Phoenix.

Hello, Mickey.

MICKEY (Caller): Hi.

STASIO: You have a...

MICKEY: Great show. I just disagree with the comment that journalism should be a balancing act. I think that it's--I think that people know that the journalists are--do have bias. I mean, they're human; they're going to have some bias--and that it's better to have them know the bias and be able to recognize that and choose their news source as such rather than trying to pick out which--where the bias is in each story. And I can take my comments off the air.

DVORKIN: Well, actually, Mickey, would you mind answering a quick question...

MICKEY: Yeah, no problem.

DVORKIN: ...'cause I'd like you to explain--expand that a bit? Do you mean, you know, you want the reporter to say how they vote and then you're fine with whatever they report, or do you think that they're--that organizations like NPR and Fox should just slant the news and tell you that it's being, you know, sort of a Michael Moore documentary: `Here it comes, folks, and here's our point of view,' and then you are supposed to take as many of them as you can find and do the sorting yourself?

MICKEY: No, I don't think they necessarily have to tell you. I think that most people, whether they're correct or not in spotting it, they spot a bias, be it conservative or liberal, and they choose their news sources thinking that that's--whether it's with their slant or against their slant. And I think that that's OK, as long as they know that the bias is there. I don't think that you necessarily have to come out and say, `I'm conservative,' or, `I'm liberal,' or, `I support this view.' I think that people can pick it out, and they choose their news sources that way.

DVORKIN: All right.

MICKEY: I think that to portray it as balanced, I think, throws a lot of people off.

STASIO: Thank you, Mickey.

MICKEY: Thank...

DVORKIN: I think this is a kind of Europeanization of American media. In Europe, especially on the continent, you can go to a city, Paris or Berlin or Vienna, and choose one of a dozen or 15 newspapers. Each one will represent a particular political aspect, and the reporting also reflects, to a greater or lesser extent, that political point of view. And I think that the ideals of American journalism, which is that you separate the fact-based reporting from the editorial and the op-ed pages, is something that we're seeing more of now, and I think that's actually a negative consequence for these fractious times.

STASIO: Well, you talk about it as an ideal, but, really, it was a business proposition, this whole notion of balance, wasn't it? I mean, it was an idea for a way for wire services to do business in a political environment. How do they get their stories on the Republican paper and the Democrat paper?

DVORKIN: Right. And it also came from a time in the early part of the 20th century when there was a reaction against the tabloid newspapers, especially the yellow press, the penny dreadfuls, as they were known, especially in New York, to find a way to create an elite, reliable form of information. Walter Lippmann wrote a lot about this. And I think what you're seeing now is a small small-D democratic experience that has been brought about by talk radio, certainly the Internet, the rise of various media. It's creating a much more democratic form of political exchange. It has advantages, and it has its disadvantages.

STASIO: Well, we'll talk more about those advantages and disadvantages and the impact on NPR with my guest, Jeffrey Dvorkin, who is the NPR ombudsman. We're taking your phone calls as well, (800) 989-TALK. Our e-mail address, totn@npr.org. I'm Frank Stasio. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

(Soundbite of music)

STASIO: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Frank Stasio in Washington. We're talking with NPR's ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin. The ombudsman is an independent advocate for listeners to NPR. Every few months Jeffrey joins us here on TALK OF THE NATION to answer your concerns about NPR's coverage, where we got the story wrong, where we missed it altogether. And in a few minutes NPR senior foreign editor Loren Jenkins joins us to talk about the precautions NPR takes to protect its news staff working in dangerous areas. We'd especially like to hear from any of our listeners who've been reporters or editors or producers in danger zones. Right now we're talking with Jeffrey Dvorkin. We're taking your calls at (800) 989-TALK.

And I suppose we ought to do that right now. Let's go to Christopher, who's in Montana.

Christopher, go ahead.

CHRISTOPHER (Caller): Yeah, I was just curious, what does NPR do to protect its journalists against legal action, you know? And they have resources and things like that, you know--confidential sources.

STASIO: All right. Thank you, Christopher.

DVORKIN: Well, NPR has an Office of General Counsel that will act in the case where a journalist is threatened with legal action in the course of doing something that is part of his or her normal journalistic practice. This has not happened particularly at NPR. But as NPR becomes more and more of a source of news and a source of breaking news, I can imagine that those kinds of challenges and legal implications may happen. But it hasn't happened for quite a while, as far as I can recall.

STASIO: Before the break we were talking about the--you were talking about the democratization of news in the world, really, the effect of the Internet, more people getting involve, and the expectations that that has created. What effect is that having on our coverage here, Jeffrey?

DVORKIN: Well, I think it puts a lot of pressure on all news organizations. We're in an extremely competitive environment now. And satellite radio and podcasting and Internet and streaming means that the traditional forms of journalism, print and broadcast, are being pressured severely. And we're seeing this particularly with newspapers. Newspapers are being forced to return large amounts of money to their investors on an annual basis. Circulation figures keep going down. Newspapers keep cutting. I think NPR is in a terrific place at this point--we shouldn't get cocky--because NPR sees news as what it's listeners are really interested in. And the expansion of the NPR News service goes against these tendencies in other media. So--but I think that the pressures are on all of us at this point.

STASIO: Let's go out to Prescott, Arizona. Brian is on the line.

Hi, Brian.

BRIAN (Caller): Hi. Am I ...(unintelligible) yet?

STASIO: You're on the air. Yeah. Go ahead. OK.

BRIAN: Earlier it was stated that the attempt at fair and balanced news was essentially a quick road to nowhere; that you're not leading the listener anywhere; it's better to try and be right. It seems to me that simply trying to be right is just an editorial; it's forming an opinion for the listener. Wouldn't it be better just to present the facts and let the listener essentially come to their own conclusions?

STASIO: All right. Thank you, Brian.

DVORKIN: I think it's always a balancing act. To do a story and to do it right means that you, of course, present all the relevant facts to do it in a way that is as fair and as nuanced and as explanatory as it possibly can be. There is a next step that often is necessary in journalism, and I think journalists too often pull their punches because they don't want to be put on the defensive and be accused of being biased on a story. And I think that this is something that American journalism needs to look at in a more serious way now, especially at these times when there's so many serious issues that face the country.

STASIO: Well, and even if you talk about just the facts--if the president of the United States says, `We got--there was yellowcake that transferred from Niger to Iraq,' what do you do about that fact? You report it, don't you?

DVORKIN: Well, of course you do. The point is that the editorial decisions that are made in a newsroom every day means that any news organization worth its salt means that it has to make choices about what is important and what is not important. Coming to conclusions about the facts that it gathers is part of the job of journalism; otherwise we'd just be a form of C-SPAN, which is fine as far as it goes, but it is a completely value-neutral place. And I'm not sure that being in that way is exactly what journalism ought to be.

STASIO: Just occurs to me you're going to get a bunch of e-mails talking about my pronunciation of Niger (pronounced nijer), and they're going to say it's Niger (pronounced neejeer). And you're going to get a thousand e-mails about what I just said.

DVORKIN: I'm ready for that.

STASIO: Well, next time, maybe in about six months. Let's go to the phones right now. Susan's on the line from Fairbanks.

Hi, Susan.

SUSAN (Caller): Hi. First of all, I just wanted to say one of the things I look for is--as I tell my husband frequently, it's always good to hear what the enemy's talking about. So, well, in a way I look for balance in reporting, but I find that NPR probably leans a little bit more my direction, and I think we all want to hear what--I think we all want to hear, to some extent, our own opinions repeated back at us. But I just--personally I think NPR does a great job, so that's the main thing I wanted to say.

STASIO: All right. Well, thank you, Susan.

SUSAN: Thank you.

DVORKIN: I think that Susan raises an interesting issue--is that we--there are a lot of people out there who really want to have some kind of informational comfort food. And if we end up in the position that that's all that we're giving people is basically their own ideas and opinions back to them, I don't think that's journalism. I think that's just a way of avoiding getting close to a story.

STASIO: People are listening for validation, not information.

DVORKIN: Well, and radio is a very intimate medium. I mean, we're inside people's heads, and we talk to them, and people imagine what we look like, and they know what we sound like. And combining that with journalism makes this a very powerful media, I think the most powerful of all.

STASIO: You talked about the pressures that newspapers are facing, the fact that NPR at the moment is well positioned. But do you think that there's going to come a time when journalists and journalism in general--journalists are going to have to change the way they do business? We're going to have to maybe drop this whole notion of objectivity and move into some other way of getting at the truth. Is that heading--are we headed that way?

DVORKIN: Well, I don't think we're heading that way, but what I think we are heading towards is a kind of an atomization of information; that you can get a little bit of information here and a little bit there. With podcasting, if the only thing you wanted to hear on a given day was every report by Sylvia Poggioli, you could program that into your podcast and only get that. Now that would be fine, but where is the big tent of information that journalism is supposed to provide? So my worry is that instead of getting a complete picture, people will get the picture that they want to see or hear or read.

STASIO: I have a very particular kind of a question today. Last week on TALK OF THE NATION, we got a call from a listener who--we couldn't get it on the air, but today we can raise it. The listener asked why in our news stories President Bush is referred to as Mr. Bush on second and subsequent references. We don't seem to do that for anybody else.

DVORKIN: Well, I think that this is in deference to the office of the president; that we refer to him as President Bush on first reference and Mr. Bush after that. No other person in the news gets the honorific, Mr., Ms. or Mrs. And I think this is in deference to the office of the president. And it goes--it's been a policy and a practice at NPR going back to the Ford administration.

STASIO: So it's been going on for a long time.

DVORKIN: Right.

STASIO: All right. Let's go back to the phones. Robert is on the line from Denver.

Hello, Robert.

ROBERT (Caller): Hello. I'm an air traffic controller. I work here at Denver. And this fall my job was contracted out. I've work now for Lockheed Martin. I was nine months shy of being vested in my pension. I tried throughout 2004 and 2005 to get NPR to cover our story at all, and I'm just wondering if you guys are afraid of reporting something like to the American people because--biting the hand that funds you in terms of the Bush administration or somebody in Congress not wanting these stories to get out.

STASIO: All right. Thank you, Robert.

ROBERT: Thank you.

DVORKIN: This is a good story that I will happily recommend to NPR's labor reporter, Frank Langfitt. This is--there are a lot of stories out there. There are a lot of stories that NPR should be getting to. NPR's getting to more stories than it used to, and I don't know why this story was not covered, but I'm certainly happy to pass it on. I don't think there's any intimidation factor. A lot of people who write to me insist that we are being--you know, we're poodles of the Bush administration because we're not reporting one story or another. And it just doesn't work that way. I mean, there may be a churn of stomach acid in the executive suites over something that happens at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but as far as I can tell, it never gets down to the news department.

STASIO: Would you clarify for us how the funding works here at NPR?

DVORKIN: Well, the short version is that NPR receives less than 1 percent of its funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is the funding arm of Congress, and it acts for the most part as a firewall between the politicians and the broadcasters. NPR receives half of its money from program dues that it charges to the stations, and the other half it raises for those underwriting messages, which you hear at the top of the hour.

STASIO: The other question that Richard raised, I think, is sort of, you know, how a bill becomes law. How does an idea become a story at NPR? Can you give us a rough idea of what the editorial process is?

DVORKIN: Well, I don't think there's one process. I think that there is--it's quite a sophisticated process, where ideas are pitched by reporters, by editors, by the public. People can write to me, and I will give them over to an editor. It's up to the editors to make that choice, and it's up to the program producers to put them in a certain form that ends up on the air.

STASIO: Let's go out to Ypsilanti, and Arnia(ph) is on the line.

ARNIA (Caller): Hi.

STASIO: How do you pronounce that?

ARNIA: I'm calling because a lot of people that I talk to about the news always say that they don't listen to it or they don't watch it because there's no good news, you know, quote ...(unintelligible) whatever that means. And so I was just wondering, you know, is that, like, a purpose of the news? Is it supposed to be balanced between, you know, whatever good news or bad news is?

STASIO: Thank you.

DVORKIN: My sense is that every time there is a feature on some cultural aspect or some idiosyncrasy in the news, I get a lot of e-mails of complaints saying how fluffy NPR has become. So I think that there is a balance. There is room for a pallet of informational offerings: hard news, foreign news, national news, science news and cultural news. And trying to get that balance that turns into a compelling program is the challenge that the producers have every day.

STASIO: Compelling program--and I want to press you a little bit more on that, again this question of how we choose news stories here. Do you think we're led too much by the policymakers, that those in power set the agenda and we're following instead of leading and saying, `Well, we don't care what's going on in Congress. There's a big issue happening out there in the streets, out there in Denver'?

DVORKIN: I think it's a balancing act. I think the fact that NPR originates, to a large extent, from Washington, DC, necessarily gives a kind of political edge to the journalism. But I think over the last few years NPR has made a concerted effort to shift its focus outside of Washington, creating bureaus overseas and in the rest of the country. The proportion of news that comes from Washington steadily diminishes, although these days it's hard to--some reporters complain from outside Washington that it's very hard to get on any program because of the press of events in Washington. But I think that NPR has pushed its focus outside of Washington quite deliberately.

STASIO: And, finally, Jeffrey, this is my question. Thousands of e-mails and letters--do you answer them all?

DVORKIN: I answer about 20 to 25 percent of them. All of them are looked at. I and my assistant, Chantal de la Rionda, see everything. We discuss what should be responded to, what should be forwarded to the editors and what is grist for the column that I write every week on the NPR Web site.

STASIO: Jeffrey, thank you very much.

DVORKIN: It's my pleasure.

STASIO: NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin.

Coming up, we'll talk with one of those editors about what we do to protect reporters and editors and their staff in mortal danger. Stay with us. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

(Announcements)

STASIO: I'm Frank Stasio.

And we turn to the hazards of reporting in danger areas. Over the weekend an American freelance reporter was kidnapped in Baghdad after her car was ambushed by armed men. Her Iraqi interpreter was shot and killed. So far no one has claimed responsibility. Reporter Jill Carroll was on assignment for The Christian Science Monitor. She's the 31st journalist to be abducted in Iraq since the war began three years ago.

War reporting is an essential part of journalism. We rely on reporters to sort through the chaos of war, often at personal risk. One of the jobs of the editor or news manager back home is to help their reporters and their staff do their jobs safely. So to talk about that and how NPR does it, we're joined here in Studio 3A by senior foreign editor Loren Jenkins.

LOREN JENKINS (Senior Foreign Editor, NPR): Hi. How are you?

STASIO: I'm fine. Tell us how many reporters and producers NPR has in Baghdad?

JENKINS: Well, right now we have two reporters, one producer, and then we obviously have a staff of interpreters and translators and drivers, who work with us that are Iraqis.

STASIO: Does the NPR staff rotate in and out?

JENKINS: Yes. Most people go in for about a month; some people go in for six weeks. It all depends. But we keep a constant rotation. It goes up. Sometimes we have more than two reporters. At the last elections, we have four reporters in Iraq. It depends on the news. But we never have less than one reporter and one producer in Baghdad.

STASIO: Now are reporters and editors assigned? Do they volunteer? How do they get there?

JENKINS: They're all volunteers. No one is forced to go to Baghdad. It's a choice.

STASIO: NPR, I know, has a house in Iraq; we don't want to say too much about that. But can you tell us, is it inside the Green Zone?

JENKINS: No, absolutely not. We consciously stay out of the Green Zone, where we live, because the Green Zone--it sort of insulates you from what's really going on in Iraq, which is part of the problems that US policymakers seem to have; that they don't understand the country as well as they might if they were outside.

STASIO: They're in the Green Zone.

JENKINS: So we live outside of the Green Zone.

STASIO: Now what are the ways that NPR protects the journalists and staff?

JENKINS: Oh, we spend endless amounts of time trying to figure this out. It is one of the most dangerous assignments I've seen in my 35 years of journalism. It's much more dangerous than other wars I've covered and others have covered. We train people before they go. They receive hostile environment training from the security organizations that provide it, which takes people out and shows them what guns can do and what dangers to be careful of; teaches them first aid; teaches them how to be careful, how to, you know, try and prevent kidnapping. We do that. When they're there, they're provided with equipment: helmets, bullet-proof vests, armored cars. And the house is well protected. It's--where we live is in a security compound, which has guards, which means at least at night they can have some safety.

STASIO: You talk about this being the most dangerous time for war reporting. I mean, I was going to ask you if you're surprised to see that, but aren't you surprised that it hasn't been more dangerous up until now?

JENKINS: It has been dangerous. It's been dangerous from day one. You know, 31 reporters have been kidnapped and dozens have been killed.

STASIO: I'm talking about the previous wars...

JENKINS: Oh.

STASIO: ...because these wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the proportion of reporters...

JENKINS: It's huge, yeah.

STASIO: ...injured and hurt compared to other wars is huge.

JENKINS: Absolutely.

STASIO: And those other wars were certainly no less dangerous. What's going on?

JENKINS: Well, there are no lines in this one. I mean, this is a civil, a guerrilla war. There's no safe havens. You know, I cut my teeth in Vietnam. You went out and covered the war where it was being fought, you came home to Saigon at night; you were pretty safe. You could go out in restaurants and sit around and felt pretty well protected. I mean, there was the odd restaurant bombing, but it was pretty safe when you weren't at the front. The front is everywhere today in Baghdad. It's outside your door. It's--the minute you get in a car, you're on the front line.

STASIO: When we come back from a short break, we'll continue our conversation with NPR's senior foreign editor, Loren Jenkins. After that, what should we name this era? Richard Haass will join us with his comments from Sunday's Washington Post, and we'll hear from you. You can send in your suggestions to totn@npr.org. I'm Frank Stasio. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

(Announcements)

STASIO: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Frank Stasio in Washington sitting in for Neal Conan.

Tomorrow, where do you plan to retire? The choices go far beyond Florida, as more and more cities realize the economic potential of the retired population. That's tomorrow on TALK OF THE NATION.

Right now we're continuing our conversation about the risks of reporting in danger zones with NPR's senior foreign editor, Loren Jenkins. We're taking your calls at (800) 989-8255.

Are reporters being targeted in this war, Loren?

JENKINS: Well, I'm not sure. There's a debate goes on about that. I think not as reporters; I think they are seen as Americans. Americans are targets in Iraq. And I think if a reporter moves around and they spot him as an American, it makes him a target. But I don't think it's necessarily because they're journalists.

STASIO: Can we--in terms of the kidnappings, did they seem to be for ransom, or is there some political value in most of the cases?

JENKINS: It can be anything and everything. Certain ransoms--a lot of kidnappings have been for ransoms. Governments have paid to get their people out. The Italians was a big case of this.

STASIO: Right.

JENKINS: They paid millions to get a couple of their reporters out; so did the French government. Others are done for political reasons. They can be some of the more extreme terrorist organizations, like Zarqawi's group, which has beheaded people. So some are political kidnappings. Some are just a way to make money.

STASIO: We heard in the case of Jill Carroll and that abduction that she didn't have a chase car, a second car that follows behind the reporter. Do NPR reporters have chase cars? What is that?

JENKINS: It's an option. Some reporters don't want chase cars because it--driving through a hazardous area, which is all of Baghdad, two cars looks too much like a convoy. Some people--so it's an option. If they want a chase car, we send two cars out, but some people prefer traveling alone.

STASIO: I'm talking with NPR's senior foreign editor, Loren Jenkins, today on the program. Tom's on the line with a question.

Hello, Tom.

TOM (Caller): Hey, how you doing today?

STASIO: Good. You have a question?

TOM: Thank you for taking my call.

STASIO: Sure.

TOM: I was active military; I just retired not too long ago. And I realized that the combat reporter was more of a part of the combat team when they filmed a SEAL team actually come aboard the beach in Haiti. I mean, people don't realize what's going on real time on a battlefield, and people don't really know how things are developing until now. All of a sudden you have somebody that's standing right there, and when somebody gets shot, it goes right back to our TVs. And in order to get that kind of coverage, you have to have more training, you have to assume more risk. And if people are willing to do it, then it changes the whole complex of what a combat reporter is.

STASIO: But are you saying that the reporting is better now...

TOM: Oh, yeah.

STASIO: ...or was better then?

TOM: Yeah, but I think the real change needs to be in the person receiving the information because they're not realizing that we're seeing what's happening right now. We're not seeing it four days later, 10 days later...

STASIO: Thank you, Tom.

TOM: ...a month later.

STASIO: Thank you, Tom.

JENKINS: Well, I think that's true. You know, in Vietnam, the information was not immediate when you were out--we did have correspondents went out with troops, but you--the nature of communications was so slow. If it was television, they came back to Saigon; they had to ship their film on a plane to New York. It was usually a day late before you saw it. There's less immediacy. Today with sat phones, instant television, it's totally immediate. You can see everything as it happens.

STASIO: Given the amount of security that you need now for reporters reporting from Iraq, do they have space to operate? Can they do any kind of useful reporting?

JENKINS: Well, they're doing useful reporting. I think if you listen to what we've put on the air, what newspapers have been putting out, we're still getting really solid reporting out of there. It is harder. It's harder to reach people. It's harder to get to them. It's harder to move around, but it's still happening, and it has to because we need independent reporters on the ground who gives us an independent view of what's going on rather than just what the officials say is happening.

STASIO: Let's go out to Wisconsin. Marty is on the line.

Hi, Marty.

MARTY (Caller): Hi. Good afternoon. I'm wondering how reporters who are in really tough areas, such as war zones, when they come back to live their lives in less-stressful parts of the world, how they deal with the emotional impact of being in such hard places? Mr. Jenkins, I don't know you. I've never heard you before. But you sound more than just sort of physically tired to me.

JENKINS: Well, I haven't been to a battle zone for a few years, now that I'm in Washington, but if I'm physically tired, it's because it's been a long day. But, no, it's rough. There's great stress levels. Different reporters respond differently to it. Some go to a battle zone two, three, four times and then all of a sudden decide that's it; they don't want to do it again. We honor that. We understand that.

STASIO: Are we starting to see reports of post-traumatic stress syndrome among reporters on battlefields?

JENKINS: No, not that I know of. There may be some. I have--you know, none of our staff have shown any signs of it. But we also offer counseling for anyone--private counseling if anyone wants to see someone when they come back, if they feel stressed or if they feel they're suffering.

STASIO: Like they need a break. Michelle is on the line from Tempe, Arizona.

Hello, Michelle.

MICHELLE (Caller): Yes, am I on?

STASIO: You are.

MICHELLE: Oh, OK. I just had a comment. I just wanted to thank reporters like Jill Carroll for doing what they do and being in the dangerous situations and bringing us the news from all sides and not just one side but from all angles and risking their lives to do it. And I think we need more reporters like her, and I really hope she is OK through all of this.

STASIO: Thanks a lot, Michelle.

JENKINS: Thanks. I think that really is true; that a lot of people just don't realize the risks people are doing putting their lives on the line, really, to report and inform the American public of what's going on in the world we live in.

STASIO: Loren, thanks very much.

JENKINS: You're welcome.

STASIO: NPR's senior foreign affairs correspondent--editor, I should say, Loren Jenkins. Thank you for being with us.

In a moment, it is a dangerous era. What would you call it?

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