FreshAir

As a regular NPR listener, I occasionally find diversion in FreshAir, the NPR interview segment hosted by Terry Gross. Last week, Terry spoke with Emmanuel Jal, a young man who grew up in Sudan. By the age of 8, he had been conscripted into the Sudan People's Liberation Army, for which he fought as a child soldier. The whole interview is here, if you want to listen. [I am focusing on only about a 2 minute portion of the conversation, which begins 18 minutes into the dialogue.]

If you're unable to access the interview, I have reproduced (with remarkable accuracy) the segment of the interview I want to discuss:

Gross: I've read that during this period there was so little food that some of the boys would eat flesh of dead bodies.

Jal: ...what's the point? I said lemme go home to where my dad is and try to live in the village. At least [there would be food at home]. The journey ended up being terrible; that's where I was forced into the occasion to almost eat a dead body.

Gross: So when you're ALMOST forced to eat a dead body, what goes thru your mind when you're deciding "Do I do this...or not?"

Jal: I was thinking like what about if I survive? What am I going to do when there are people there? I've eaten someone. Does it mean that I'm gonna be eating people because if there's no food then because I’ve eaten people and survived [then] I'll end up snatching children and eating them? Then I said, "God if you're there, give me something to eat because I don't want to eat someone." So, the prayer...it worked. A bird came, and then I ate that bird, so I said, "Oh, it worked". A bird, a crow. I was depending first on snails, snakes, vultures, and then wild animals.

Gross: But some of the boys you knew did eat the flesh of the dead.

Jal: Some ate...those who ate never survived. Any person who ate a human being at that time, they never survived. But the few that survived went and died from trauma...They just become mad, and they just died. They are crazy because they remember the images, eating human being so they just go crazy. Some would just commit suicide.

At this point in the interview, Gross seems satisfied that she has induced in Jal a state sufficiently close to post-traumatic stress disorder, so she cuts to a commercial break. Perhaps it's difficult to get that sense from my transcript...listen to the portion 18 minutes into the interview if you have access.

In my assessment of the situation, he seemed rather reluctant to discuss his venture into near-cannibalism, but Terry pursued with a series of questions. First she tries to get him to share his own experience. When he denies having eaten another person, she asks what it was like to almost eat someone. He becomes slightly more candid, but nervous laughter ensues when he confesses wondering whether "I'll end up snatching children and eating them". Finally Terry questions him about others whom he knew who participated in cannibalism.

Poor Jal is then forced to recount stories of people who were so traumatized by having to eat other human beings that they either died from the shock of cannibalism, or committed suicide to escape the guilt.

I'm sure there is journalistic virtue in Gross's exposing the scourge of war, especially because she draws out particular details that you won't hear from the 30-second token clip about the atrocities in Darfur during your local eye-witness "news" format. [But don't get me started on eye-witness "news". That's another 4-5 blogs worth of tirade.] Perhaps it was necessary for Gross to push her interviewee past his comfort zone so that listeners could better grasp how appalling the situation in Sudan has indeed become.

After hearing the interview, however, I detected what appears to be a perverse fascination with cannibalism in Gross's tone, particularly as she articulates her last question with the pointed phrase "the flesh of the dead", which sounds like some campy 1970s horror film. She simply refuses to drop the topic. As I listened, I caught myself yelling at the radio:

"Drop it already, Terry! He obviously does not want to discuss this aspect of his childhood. Leave the poor man alone! What is your obsession with cannibalism?"

Anyway, it made me think about how far journalists should go to bring attention to a story to the public's attention. Is it okay to objectify sources, asking them to describe, quantify, and relive their pain? Interestingly, I heard a different NPR interview last month in which one man said he couldn't be a news reporter, because it seemed too callous to ask people how they felt about their personal tragedies.