Outrage with Your Coffee: NPR Story on Filipino "Comfort Women" During WWII A Must-Listen

 Report by Julie McCarthy Brings Home Vitality of NPR Despite Network's Pandemic Challenges

Despite the fact that most of us who listen to "Weekend Edition" on NPR don't need more than the jolt coming from the caffeine in our mug of medium roast, the program doesn't shy away from taking on tough topics. That was in evidence today in a dispatch from Manila bureau chief Julie McCarthy, left, about the continued fight for justice by Filipino women who were sexual slaves to Japanese soldiers during World War II.

The report demands your attention, as it weaves a harrowing tale of one woman and how she and her family were terrorized in 1943 by Japanese soldiers who stormed their village looking for Filipino guerrillas. They lashed her father--the village leader--to a tree and started skinning him alive. Two of her siblings who tried to stop the soldiers were bayoneted, while her mother was sexually assaulted and later died. The woman told McCarthy she was removed to a garrison where two of her sisters were also taken, and  repeatedly raped by soldier after soldier. She was 12.

There's much more to this gripping story and it's one you should catch up to. It's also remarkable in that it runs for more than 13 minutes, which the weekend format allows for more so than NPR's signature weekday news programs, "All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition." Still, 13 minutes is a relative eternity, even on NPR. But McCarthy offers no padding, no unnecessary flourishes. Just damn good storytelling.

Reports like these highlight why NPR remains essential, as it has the forum to tell stories like these without fear or favor. That's not to say it's easy to pull off. NPR has been clobbered by a drop-off in underwriting revenue and donations because of the pandemic. NPR staffers avoided layoffs by agreeing to unpaid furloughs, which are still ongoing this year. Cutting overseas bureaus would be an easy way to cut costs, but NPR has not succumbed to the beancounters, and has held the line in places like Manila. That means we get to hear from award-winning correspondents like McCarthy, who has criss-crossed the globe in service to NPR. We are better for it, as this story affirms.

P.S. After I tweeted about the story, McCarthy wrote back that more would be posted on the NPR Goats and Soda blog, devoted to global health and development news. The blog is new to me, but with stories like these I'll be happy to get acquainted.

We Interrupt The Coronavirus Crisis For This Musical Interlude

Music Stars Come to Us Because We Can't Come to Them

I dialed up one of my favorite stations, KEXP-FM, out of Seattle, to keep me company while cleaning up St. Patrick's Day dinner yesterday. Instead of the usual eclectic fare that makes the station one of our greatest was an extremely stripped-down version of "Crooked Teeth" by Death Cab for Cutie. Turns out, it was the group's lead singer, Ben Gibbard, singing his forlorn heart out. And he wasn't alone.
Turns out Gibbard will be doing this every day, at least for the next two weeks, at 4 p.m. PDT. Not sure if KEXP is committed to that, notwithstanding Gibbard is a Seattle-area native. Fear not, the stream, where he takes requests, is also on YouTube and Facebook.
Gibbard isn't alone in bringing the music home. NPR is keeping a running list, which includes everything from Rhett Miller to the Vienna State Opera.
Other artists, like Chris Martin, John Legend and Keith Urban, have already popped up on Instagram Live and other virtual venues to help us and them pass the time.

Filing Dispatches from the Valley of Death

Ebola Reporting Nothing Short of Heart-Rending, Courageous

Ebola has certainly grabbed its share of headlines over the last month, though I suspect it was still viewed with detachment by most Americans. That is, until yesterday, when word came of a Liberian man holed up in an isolation ward in a Dallas hospital. Now it's no longer one of those "African" problems, you know the kind that get a short mention in the wire briefs buried in a newspaper.

Fortunately, some media have ignored the xenophobia and have told the Ebola story with compelling renderings that provide the context for why thousands of foreign doctors and soldiers are pouring into Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to treat the afflicted and stop the virus's spread. It gives you some hope. But just as quickly you realize just what it is they are up against. And soon the hope begins to ebb.

That was my feeling after reading today's story from Adam Nossiter in The New York Times from a forlorn (is there any other) district in Sierra Leone, where he visited what the headline aptly calls "A Hospital from Hell."

“Where’s the corpse?” the burial-team worker shouted, kicking open the door of the isolation ward at the government hospital here. The body was right in front of him, a solidly built young man sprawled out on the floor all night, his right hand twisted in an awkward clench.

 

The other patients, normally padlocked inside, were too sick to look up as the body was hauled away. Nurses, some not wearing gloves and others in street clothes, clustered by the door as pools of the patients’ bodily fluids spread to the threshold. A worker kicked another man on the floor to see if he was still alive. The man’s foot moved and the team kept going. It was 1:30 in the afternoon.

In the next ward, a 4-year-old girl lay on the floor in urine, motionless, bleeding from her mouth, her eyes open. A corpse lay in the corner — a young woman, legs akimbo, who had died overnight. A small child stood in a cot watching as the team took the body away, stepping around a little boy lying immobile next to black buckets of vomit. They sprayed the body, and the little girl on the floor, with chlorine as they left.

Read it and weep.

High praise to Nossiter for keeping it together to craft this gripping dispatch. You might say, that's his job. Trust me, this is not what journalists, even the West Africa bureau chief for the Times, signed up for. Not only is he reporting a story of incredibly tragic proportions, he is putting is own safety at risk in the process. The precautions one needs to take before entering a hospital filled with the bodily fluids and excretions of the dead and dying are nothing short of extraordinary.

Also, walking among dead bodies never becomes routine. You simply don't detach and retire to the hotel bar for a dirty martini. I can't help but think Nossiter is thinking about his children and how badly he wants to hug them. This kind of reporting takes its toll. It has to, no matter how good you are. And Nossiter is damn good.

The reportage from him and others, like NPR's Jason Beaubien and Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, Robyn Dixon of The Los Angeles Times we are given a light that shines on what Ebola really means. Families laid to waste. New colonies of orphans. The fear and anger that has supplanted despair. Through it all, there is a dedicated cadre of reporters who are there to sort out the truth from the conjecture, providing perspective amid the uncertainty. For that, they have my thanks.


 

How to Make Morning Edition Hosts Choke Up

Then Again, So Will You


Like many, I'm a big fan of Story Corps, which I tend to catch more on the podcast than its usual Friday slot on "Morning Edition."
The podcast often has bonus interviews and provides additional context and follow-up that you can't get on NPR.
However, sometimes hearing Story Corps as it airs has an extra resonance, especially when it presents stories, like it did today, that force people to start hunting down tissues. That sometimes includes the hosts.
Steve Inskeep has admitted he sometimes has to turn down the volume to keep his composure because the stories are so moving.
It sounded today like Linda Wertheimer forgot to do that, as she was obviously emotional coming out of today's story about a Brooklyn family who lost their 6-year-old son to a genetic disorder.
Of course, it's perfectly understandable when you hear the piece. Just a hazard of the trade, and one that makes Story Corps destination listening on the radio, something the medium has precious little of these days.

NPR Falls On Its Sword

Doesn't Shy Away From Talking Publicly About Layoffs of 7 Percent of Its Staff

The economy claimed its latest media victim today: NPR said it would cut 7 percent of its staff and eliminate "Day To Day" and "News & Notes" because its underwriting has been underwhelming.
This is not a panic move. NPR says it needs to close a $23 million budget shortfall.
So far, it looks like the network's biggest names have been spared, though a poster at FishbowlDC says veteran correspondent Ketzel Levine is among those leaving. She won't be the last.
Props to NPR for not being shy to tell us about what's happening. That included a report on "All Things Considered" this afternoon from media correspondent David Folkenflik.
Given that NPR's listeners are often very possessive of the programs they support, this kind of public bloodletting is not unexpected. Let's hope the seams aren't apparent on those programs that remain.
I, for one, fervently hope that NPR doesn't use the downturn as an excuse to pare back its foreign coverage, already much more extensive than any U.S. broadcaster. In an age when international news is barely an afterthought on most networks, NPR has correspondents based in such places as Kabul, Dakar, New Delhi and Hanoi, in addition to the usual outposts.
"All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition" are incalculably richer for being able to tap into that motherlode. So are we for being able to listen to them.