Biography

[on the proper role of journalists] We should be guard dogs not lap dogs.

Journalists have learned that when a leader goes berserk and unleashes tirades and threats at investigators, that's when you're getting close.

[quoting Chinese poet Lu Xun in a remembrance of the Tianenmen Square Massacre, 1989] "Lies written in ink cannot disguise facts written in blood".

Most of the time in America we're surrounded by oppressive inequality, such that the wealthiest one percent collectively own substantially more than the bottom ninety percent. One escape from that is America's wild places. At a time when so much else in America is rationed by price, egalitarianism thrives in the wilderness. On the trail, no one can pull rank on you - except a grizzly bear.

[thoughts at the advent of 2019] People assume that because I cover war, poverty and genocide, I must be perennially morose, the Eeyore of journalists. But I'm actually upbeat because I've witnessed such progress in my reporting career. When I was in university in the early 1980s, forty-four percent of people on Earth lived in extreme poverty; now fewer than ten percent do. When I was a kid, a majority of humans had always been illiterate; now fewer than fifteen percent are. Every day, another 305,000 people get access to clean drinking water...In the 1950s, two-thirds of parents world-wide suffered the loss of at least one child. That's just about the most terrible thing that can happen to anyone, and it was very common. Now it's rare; only four percent of children worldwide die by the age of five. Of course, far too many kids still die, far too many people live in poverty, and we see ongoing outrages in this country and beyond. But I think it's important to acknowledge the progress for fear that people conclude that global challenges are hopeless and simply give up.