“You have to be more curious than scared.”
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist share the joy and pain of journalism with Columbia University students.
Hundreds of journalism students crammed into Pulitzer Lecture Hall on the campus of Columbia University Tuesday evening for the annual Pulitzer Prize Seminar. Spilling out of seats, leaning on doors and propped on tables, the students chatted warmly until the emcee, Megan Mulligan, approached the microphone.
Ms. Mulligan, the Pulitzers’ deputy administrator, introduced the journalists: Alissa Rubin of The New York Times, Yannis Behrakis of Reuters and Robin Mcdowell and Margie Mason of the Associated Press.
“They are all foreign correspondents which means they have come quite a long way to be here this evening,” she said. Mulligan was being modest.
From McDonald and Mason fleeing armed slavers in Southeast Asia to Behrakis trekking across Europe with Syrian refugees, the award-winning journalists had traveled back from the brink of war and oppression. Of the tragedies they covered, one the most gruesome and powerful was the death of Farkhunda Malikzada reported by Alissa Rubin.
According to a New York Times report, “Farkhunda Malikzada a 27-year-old Muslim woman falsely accused of burning a Quran, was killed by a mob in central Kabul as hundreds watched and filmed.”
Rubin opened with why she choose to cover Malikzada’s death. “If this woman had really burned the Koran, there actually is a procedure in Islam for figuring out why she burned it, and then what the punishment for that should be,” Rubin said. “This really fell outside of both the Islamic way of thinking of it and any westerner idea of justice.”
“This was a lynching,” she said.
While reporting the story, Rubin experienced countless perils and roadblocks. Malikzada’s family stopped talking to Rubin because she couldn’t guarantee them US citizenship. Local women were uncomfortable doing interviews with her. The men who killed Malikzada lied to Rubin about their participation with fake alibis. But when facing these, or similar obstacles, Rubin offered the journalism students her secret for overcoming them: “You have to be more curious than you are scared or impatient” she said.
However successful, this gritty, hard-nosed reporting isn’t without its drawbacks. All of the reporters on the panel shared the burden of ruthlessly pursuing these types of traumatic stories. After covering the Syrian refugee crisis, Yannis Behrakis said he had nightmares of his wife screaming and daughter drowning. McDonald and Mason spoke about wrestling with sadness from stories about the freed slaves they reported on slipping into poverty and depression. And Rubin said she felt the despair when contemplating the slow pace of progress for persecuted women across the globe. Nevertheless, these pitfalls did not deter the students.
Julian Lim, a Columbia journalism master’s candidate, was one of the steadfast pupils. “Rubin, Behrakis, all of them are public servants and heroes. Even though it is a risk to their personal health, they are still willing to go out there and chase these stories,” Lim said in an interview. “We are all better for it.”
In line with Lim’s comments, Rubin too seemed to agree that those called to the profession will feel the cost of reporting these stories far less than the toll of letting them go untold.
“You are always rather disappointed with the impact that you are able to have,” said Rubin speaking on the constraints of journalism. “The most you are able to do is shine a light on them for a period of time, and then some things go on. So, you do it because you believe that otherwise, you couldn’t live with yourself.”
