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>>Male Presenter: Hello everyone. Welcome to another edition of Authors at Google. We're
very excited to have Renee Montagne with us today, co-host of "Morning Edition." I don't
know how many of you are actually up at that time of day.
[laughter]
So, maybe? I don't know. I usually am. So, as I'm driving to work, I usually listen to
the show. So I'm very excited. The book is "This is NPR, The First Forty Years." It's
great for me to be able to put some faces to the voices that I hear on NPR every day.
And it's great to hear some of the stories--all the exciting people they meet, all the great
events they cover. So, no further introduction. Renee Montagne.
[applause]
>>Renee Montagne: Thank you very much. Thank you, Mike, for the introduction. I hope you,
I'm imagining those in this room probably do listen to "Morning Edition," or you certainly
listen to NPR shows, which is what this book is about.
And in order, in fact, to talk about the book is to talk about NPR. But I just have to say
one thing, which I will say to anybody, I love Google.
[laughter]
And I actually, it's almost hard to imagine living without it and doing what we do without
it. And one of the interesting things about doing this book, which, of course, now it's
the forty-first, this now it's the 41 years of NPR.
When we were doing this book, like not last year, but the year before, and each of--.
There are four decade chapters and they were given to four different authors to do the
chapters. It was such an amazing walk down like, remembering what life was like without
Google basically, and everything else that's come onto the scene in the last, sometimes
five years.
The last ten, the last decade anyway. And things like we now have--I'm jumping ahead
here, but I just wanna say--we now have, we now have people we interview, we ask them
to record themselves on their iPhones. And it's like something out of like, the future,
to be able to say there's a microphone and the quality, unless you really screw up, will
be really good.
And do you mind just recording yourself? I mean, that, I couldn't have made that one
up even years ago. So, anyway, I'm delighted to talk about the book because I think for
those of you, and there is, I was thinking maybe it would be a group where nobody would've
been born by the beginning of NPR.
But the fact, some of you look like you were born back then. So, some of you might recognize
some of what I'm going to talk about. As I say, there were four, lots of contributors
and introductions--Susan Stamberg, Cokie Roberts. Susan talks about--I wasn't there--but in
1971, in May 3rd, when the show went on the air, in the weeks leading up to that, they
had meetings.
This is how NPR began. They had meetings. They all sat on the floor, figured out what
the mission was and many things that they were, as they were trying to literally bring
into being this entity, National Public Radio. And they sat on the floor. And Susan had told
me that story once or twice and I never realized that until she wrote her introduction, that
the reason that they sat on the floor wasn't because they all were a bunch of hippies,
but because there were no chairs.
[laughter]
NPR had, was that, they hadn't literally bought the chairs yet when "All Things Considered"
first went on the air. And so, there were these contributions by all kinds of people.
And as I say, the four chapters, and for those of you who have books, I'll tell you literally--if
you wanna know--what's say, my writing or Ari Shapiro's writing.
It's the white pages. [laughs] And then all the rest are maybe really the best part, are
these inserts, the side bars, which are personal stories from a whole range of people--how
they got to NPR, what they did. There's also transcripts, which are nice. And they picked
ones that did work on the page, but it's interesting to see some of this stuff written down when
the whole essence of what we do is for the ear and is in storytelling mode.
So, I'm just gonna begin with my own chapter, which is the 90s, which is an era of NPR that
was a great turning point for NPR. I mean, I think it's safe to say that up until the
end of the 80s, NPR was a well-kept secret. I mean, it was, what's that expression for
when like, a few people know about something and they're really dedicated, but the world
at large isn't that familiar?
I traveled through Texas to do a story on a tornado where you could travel for seven,
eight hours and never pick up an NPR station. And also through Nebraska in 1988, the whole
western side of Nebraska, you could not pick up an NPR station. And that all changed in
about two or three years. There's no place you can go now and theoretically, if you're
not right in the mountains, pick up an NPR station.
And one of the things that changed it, actually, was our foreign coverage. We were very, to
the degree that NPR was known, people knew Cokie Roberts. I mean, she made her name on
NPR before she went over to ABC. They knew Linda Wertheimer. They knew the people who
covered Washington. And to the degree that it was known and very respected by the time,
I was freelancing at that time, it was because of that sort of coverage.
That and a certain amount of reaching out to the small towns of the country in innovative
ways, because whereas we now have stations like KPCC that have full service news departments,
in those days, pretty much we didn't even have that. I mean, we had a Washington contingent
and we had, in the 80s, I can't give you an exact count, but there were maybe ten staff
reporters in the country, maybe.
I mean, I can remember there was America Rodriguez here in Los Angeles. That was her name. She
went on to other things, but America Rodriguez. There was Scott Simon in Chicago. There was,
I mean, you could name them practically. In fact, I might be wrong. There might have only
been five national correspondents.
And there was no foreign, there was one foreign correspondent and that was, it was Robert
Siegel in a chunk of the 80s because we had a location and still do, although it's not
Bush House anymore. We had studios in Bush House as of, I think, 1979 or '80. Sylvia
Poggioli, for instance, I used to chatter with her.
You had the fun of talking with people that I know very well, but I really see 'cause
NPR, all our friends are people in other places. You become friends with somebody that you
have never lived in the same town or city. And Sylvia's one of the long time friends
who I don't ever hardly get to sit and have an in-depth conversation with, but I did for
the book, which was fun.
And I said, "Sylvia, when did you actually go on staff?" And Sylvie said, "Let's put
it this way. They'd already named the restaurant after me." And what she meant was that she
was so famous. I mean, Sylvia Poggioli. She was so part of the fabric of NPR, of the sound
of NPR, that you couldn't believe that she was still on a contract. I mean, not on a
contract, 'till 1993.
And she'd been ten years working with NPR. And the restaurant was this restaurant in
Salem, Oregon called Poggioli's. There were actually two at one point. And she was like
already surfing, what's the New York Times, more recently, was talking about something
that happened in the Vatican and said, "Holy Poggioli. It's blah-dy, blah-dy, blah."
It was a jokey thing about the Vatican. So, it's almost impossible to imagine how well
NPR covered the country when we didn't have reporters out in the country. And we had some
freelance, a lot of freelance people. I was freelance. I mean, there was no hope of getting--.
I was in New York, no hope of getting a job in the '80s because they were, like I said,
there was Margot Adler, the same people who--. We're like, "They're gonna have to die." Thank
God. I mean, they didn't.
[laughter]
They didn't and there's three people still there who are were there back in the '80s.
But when they asked me to do the '90s, it was a great thing because I had just come
on staff officially in '88. And I, as the host, the co-host with Robert Siegel of "All
Things Considered," when Susan Stamberg and Noah Adams left.
And I did that for a couple of years and then, starting in '90, I started going to South
Africa. And so, I had a taste of what are the new level that NPR was gonna reach when
foreign coverage became one of our best projects. And it also, the foreign coverage that NPR
provides for some parts of the country is all the foreign coverage that anybody's gonna
get there.
I went to South Africa to cover the release of Nelson Mandela. One of the biggest stories
of the decade. Actually, one of the biggest stories, the Mandela story, of the century.
And I got there the day, literally the day he was released. And I remember it was raining
and I started the chapter with that it was raining in Soweto, which in Africa, I was
soon to learn, a positive.
Rain is considered a gift. And it was considered very, very propitious--a very, very good sign.
And I got there the day that he was released. And the idea was NPR was turning more and
more to trying to be there for these big events. We had been there for the fall of the Berlin
Wall. They sent Robert Siegel just the year before.
We had been there, we had people in Poland when solidarity prevailed and they elected
Walesa as President. We, all this stuff was stunningly over about a two-year period, the
world literally was changing. And at that moment in time, what was happening was the
Cold War was ending and walls were coming down.
So, it was really a moment that's actually almost impossible to imagine now of such hope.
A little like the Arab Spring, only with much more, how can I say, much more of a potential
for positive outcomes, like in Poland, in Russia. And it was Russia before the oligarchs,
Russia before Putin.
This was like a new Russia emerging it seemed. And to give you a feel for how it worked then,
I showed up, got myself in a car, got on the left side of the road, started driving where
the big networks were in a four-star hotel downtown. A downtown, by the way, that was
soon to disappear and become very African.
But at that exact moment in time, it was very white. And it was called the Golden Mile.
So, all the fancy restaurants, because apartheid, right? Obviously, the wealth was downtown,
like it would be in a normal city. Well, NPR had us out in the suburbs and we were in this
little hotel that was really a salesmen hotel.
And I don't know if you know Afrikaners, but they're like the--I don't know what you would
say. Well, they're the white people of South Africa, but Afrikaners in particular, they
would be out in the countryside and in small towns. So, it was like Afrikaner’s salesmen
who were living at, were staying there.
And here we flow in and there were five of us and we set up shop. And the only way we
could get out was through the hotel phone system, which meant that if somebody called
you, like, say you were trying to set up an interview. You would call out and, of course,
most people in South Africa did not have landlines, not just the black people.
A lot of white people didn't either 'cause they just didn't have a good phone system.
There was no such thing as cell phones. The political people were pretty sophisticated.
They had--what do you call it? Pagers. And all you could do is put your number down and
cross your fingers that they would page you back or call you back.
But in our case, it went through a hotel system where, if you were out you wouldn't get the
call. If you were upstairs and they knocked on your door and you were in the bathroom
you wouldn't get the call. I mean, it was like, really hard to set up an interview.
So basically, you had to go to the place, set the interview up, and hope that they were
there when you came back for the appointed time, or if they were there, hope they were
willing to talk to you.
It didn't hurt me too much because I was there to cover people, not the Mandela people, not
the ANC--the African National Congress. But when we wanted to file, I had to file. And
I'm gonna actually have to look this up. It's called, something called the--. What you filed
on was something called a Comrex and Vince Mews, our engineer, set it all up.
And it was one of these things that you would do your, you would talk into it and then it
would slow--not a time thing--but they stretched it out and then they closed it back up at
the other end, which meant that it didn't always sound right. I mean, it sometimes sounded
slightly off in this funny way, but that was the best you could do.
And as for the rest, you were on your own. Like, you got in your car and went out and
found people. And I used to this. I had a technique and I was in and out of the country
for the next four years through Mandela's inauguration and lived there at times for
as much as a year. And at all times, I just would go into the townships, even, there are
these township wars that grew up and there was two years and it was pretty serious business.
It doesn't sound like anything now, but they were fighting each other and killing each
other in the townships. And it was a strange war. It was between the Zulu and Khartoum
Freedom Party, which was ethnic and the ANC, which wasn't ethnic. But this was a power
struggle. And so, these young guys, comrades, they called themselves on the ANC side.
And you'll probably remember them from the '80s. Kids would be out there protesting.
And they were young kids. It was almost like a children's revolution in that sense. They
were young teenagers and whatnot. They would, I would just get, I would find somebody and
get them in my car. And Soweto had two million people.
It was the township of Soweto. It had two million people. It did not have a single street
sign. It did not have--. If you wanted to go somewhere, there were a couple of things
like Baragwanath Hospital. And there are a couple of things, but it was this sprawling
township. And you would go in and there was like nothing else you could do but have some
local person take you where you wanted to go and everyone needed a ride.
I mean, I'd be the only car driving along. And I'd look out at somebody likely and often
it would be these young guys, kids, that wanted to get in your car. And so they came. But
when it came time to filing, this is how we filed. There were two ways to file, and this
one on the whole time I was there, through '94, right through the inauguration.
When it came time to filing, you had two choices. If you had a really, really nice feature story
and you wanted to put it on a nice tape, I would, I had rigged up in my bedroom a quilt
over a chair for sound purposes. And I would sit under it. And I swear to God, I never
got it right, ever in all that time. And it would fall on my head all the time.
But you would put this quilt up and get down and do my tracks, put them on a cassette,
send the cassette--.
[laughter]
Sometimes, I actually had a machine that I could edit it on, so I'm not saying I'd always
send it this way. I would often edit it to my satisfaction and then put it on reel-to-reel.
But it all started with a cassette.
That was how I recorded it. And then the cassettes of my tapes--. So, I'd put it not together.
I couldn't produce it, but I would put the reels together. And then, we had an arrangement
with the BBC where there would be a pick-up every day at five o'clock in the afternoon,
so you had to be there. I would knock on your door, take your tape, take it down to the
airport.
They would put it on a plane along with the BBC stuff. The BBC would collect it and get
it through customs in London. They would get it over to the Bush House. And then, at Bush
House, they would send it by satellite to NPR. So, if you wanted to sound good, two
days from finish to delivery--after you've done everything.
If you couldn't afford to do that and you wanted to send a piece or talk to them, be
interviewed by NPR--and I didn't do a lot of what you hear now. In fact, I probably
did one. You hear now talks with people, Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, right in the middle of, not
Tienanmen Square, right in the middle of--back in the '90s here.
Back in the middle of--. What? Well, I'm thinking of--. Well, she was also in Egypt, but--.
[audience calls out answers]
Yes, thank you. Tahrir Square, right? But Lourdes Garcia-Navarro in the middle of Libya.
"Hey, Lulu. How are you doing?" And often, by the way, we do say, "Take care of yourself,"
and things you don't hear on the air at the end.
Believe me, I'm highly aware, people are standing with bullets going by and talking to you.
Well, then the only way you could talk to someone, which is why I rarely did any of
those kinds of conversation--in fact, I never did--was you, on your tape recorder, you put--.
I did something. You won't even know what this is.
You took, you unscrewed the telephone and there are two little prongs, right? And then
you had alligator clips. Have you ever heard of alligator clips? They're little electrical
things. They're, call them alligator clips 'cause they look like that. They're really
small. You would put it on one, how did it work? I know, yes.
I can't even remember anymore. You would alligator clip it into the telephone and attach that
to the microphone. No, to the, geez, recorder. But there were, yeah, two clips and it went
into the recorder. That's right. Then, you would set the recorder on record and pause.
Thank you. You've got the idea, right?
Record and pause. And then, you would read, which meant you couldn't talk to somebody
because the headset is all--. You could, technically. You could hold it up with these alligator
clips, but you're talking through your microphone, so the sound was much, much better going through
the telephone. And, or you would record it and just send everything.
Just record on cassette and just send everything. But it never sounded that good. It sounded
like telephone tape. You would send your tape that way, too, if you had to. And I mean,
I'm trying to think of all the other insane sounding ways in which we communicated. Once
I was in Congo, in what was then Zaire and Kinshasa, and it was the very beginning of
the end of the Mobutu, hung in there for about eight more years and five million more people
dead.
But at that moment in time, he had been a dictator for like 30 years and there were
riots. And so, you don't--. Madhulika Sikka, by the way, who I should introduce our executive
producer of "Morning Edition," she just flew in with her daughters for a vacation and came
here on the way from the airport.
But you would like this. We had a foreign editor. Her name was Cadi Simon. At the time,
she ran the foreign desk and was really building the foreign desk. She called up once and she
said to me, "You know about the riots?" I didn't have wire services 'cause it was too
expensive. And also, the phone lines were so bad that the wire services oftentimes didn't
print very well in South Africa.
So Pearce said, "We're not gonna spend hundreds of dollars. You just call us and we'll read
it to you." And so, I used to call the newscast and they would read me what was of importance
in South Africa 'cause I was covering the whole country. So, clearly, I covered it with
features for the most part and not a daily, daily thing.
But she called me. She said there's riots. And she said, "and they're talking about--"
and there's the fewest Europeans in Zaire that have been there since the beginning of
colonialism. And the reason for that was they'd all fled.
There were like three generations of Greeks and various people from Eastern Europe and
people who had really been there for a hundred years, but they didn't have citizenship and
people were leaving their factories and getting the hell out of there. So she said, "We hear
there's gonna be a blood bath. How soon can you get there?"
[laughter]
I'm like, "Oh, let's see. I gotta get my yellow fever shot, but I think I can make it by sundown."
But in fact what the problem was no planes were going in. They had stopped all the international
traffic. So, I ended up going into Brazzaville, which is in the other Congo across the river
and got what was truly the last, at that moment in time, the last ferry over.
And this was, and I had to, these two Greek guys who had fled a month before came on the
plane with me. I say Greek, but they were, like I said, third generation. They were going
back to see their factory. So, it was so lucky for me because they spoke English and I spoke
French, but not--. They speak French there, too, in the Congo, but not so great.
And so, they were like, "OK, OK. We're gonna get this ferry." And they helped me get the
ferry and they said, "You better stuff all that equipment." So, I get on the ferry like
I'm like nine months pregnant. And they had heard. They had some kind of walkie-talkie
and they'd heard that people were stealing everything off of everybody as soon as the
ferry landed on the other end because it was quite chaotic.
And, but somehow, I don't know. I they were around me and we plunged through and we got
there. And we went straight to their factory and they took me before the hotel. And that
factory--they opened the door and the factory is empty, stripped of everything, electrical,
everything. And just that deep in slippers, in flip-flops, because people had run so fast
out of there that they ran out of their shoes.
It was a stunning sight and I wish I'd had an iPhone with a camera. I mean, I go to the
hotel and it's pretty much water for an hour a day. All the reporters were put on the fifth
floor--pretty empty. I mean, but still. This fancy intercontinental hotel and there were
these guys walking around with what looked like bowling balls on their ears.
They were walking around with these big black things that they were doing this. And I'm
like, "Who are they? And what is that?" And they were like early adopters of phones, these
kind of things that I think people did have in their cars in 1991. But they were carrying
them around. And I said, "Well, who are they?"
And they were diamond smugglers, very fancily, beautifully dressed with these. And you're
like, "Yeah, that's who has all the equipment, right?"
[laughter]
The diamond smugglers. They figured it out. They needed it. They're working it. But for
the rest of us, it was the same thing. You had to go to people's houses and set it up.
But one time, I tried and I had to make a phone, I got ill and I was supposed to be
there three weeks, but I had to get out.
And there really wasn't a way to get out. It wasn't easy. I didn't know how to get a
flight out of Brazzaville, so I tried to call NPR. I did call NPR and say I needed a flight
just a little earlier, just a simple change. It would be simple today. But then, it took
three days for the phone call to come back to me.
There was a business room and you went in and you put in a call. "I'd like to put in
a call to this number." Three days later, they knocked on my door and said, which was
OK. I didn't need to get out that fast. Three days later, they knocked on my room and said,
"Your call is waiting for you downstairs."
So, I go down and I talk fast 'cause I knew it was expensive. But I never knew how expensive
it was until I turned, I got billed at the end of the--. It was like a nine-minute call
and it was 300 and change dollars.
That, that, and the way I got out was it was a little Christian flight, like a one-seater
or two-seater. Only room for one more. And they didn't organize it. The hotel organized
because there was no way to get out. There was no ferry running across the river. So,
I mean, the way that they do it now--you hear all these stories as you're going along--these
were things that happened without anybody knowing what you're going through because
there was no communication.
I wanted to open it up for questions. I wanted to, but I do wanna do one thing. I wanna play.
God, it might take six minutes, right? You all know Rwanda, right? You know what happened
in 1994 in Rwanda. Half a million people killed. A terrible slaughter of the mostly ethnic
Hutus, Tutsis killed by Hutus.
So, I'm gonna play a four-minute story and open it up for questions. And the reason I
wanna play it is it's a radio story by one of our reporters, Michael Skoler, who was
with us, up with me or down rather, in Johannesburg covering the Mandela inauguration--the vote
and the inauguration. And the vote took a really long time to count so that it delayed
like three weeks what we thought would be done in a day or two.
It was delayed right up to the day of the inauguration. And so Michael--. Here's the
thing with foreign correspondents. They run into where everyone else is running out of.
And he was desperate to get back to Rwanda 'cause he was out of Nairobi. And I was desperate
to stay and cover the inauguration 'cause I love South Africa and was there.
So, we made a deal where I stayed for the inauguration, which was nice. Anyway, he,
Michael is the second one. He's the second one. He sent this story, very much in the
way I just described--1994--you could not have heard this story 'till a week after it
happened, maybe three days. Maybe. Three and a half days.
And it's a very long, it's a 21-minute long story. I'm not gonna play 21 minutes. But
there is one part of the idea of trying to explain, in a book, what we did and what you
heard on the radio and this was, I wanted to use this because it was one of these really
stunning stories. He got some big awards for it, too.
He was there ahead of a lot of people. The difference between what you hear and what
you'll see if you see any quotes on the page because it's all in the sound in a way, profound
as his story was. And what's happened is, and I'll just do the set up. It's probably
gonna take me two minutes to do the set up, but let me quickly just do the set up.
And that was that he had gone in and all this killing had happened, but it was really hard
to cover. It was really hard for people to understand it was happening. If you wonder
sometimes why people didn't intervene earlier, like the United States, it honestly went fast.
And it was weird because it retail killing.
People were not killed by bombs or rockets or IEDs. They were killed one on one with
machetes and versions of machetes. So this six-week period, these Hutu groups managed
to rampage across the country and kill, by hand, somewhere in the neighborhood of half
a million people.
So, that wasn't really getting out very well and at the point at which people didn't know
much about it, this story came on the air.
[plays sound clip]
>>Michael Skoler: I drove in from the north and entered the part of Rwanda held by the
Tutsi land rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, or RPF. The RPF insisted I travel with
two soldiers "for my own protection," they said, though that hardly seemed necessary.
The countryside was empty. We passed miles of deserted villages, fields of sorghum, beans
and bananas with no one to harvest them. Eerie, since Rwanda is one of the most densely populated
countries in the world. Sometimes, the car would fill with the smell of rotting flesh
and we would notice corpses lying in a field or by the side of an abandoned house.
Those who had been killed here were almost all from the Tutsi ethnic group, like the
rebel soldiers with me. Other Rwandans, those of the majority Hutu group, had fled, afraid
the RPF would kill them in revenge for the slaughter of Tutsis. But occasionally, I found
places crowded with people, people too fearful to go back to their villages and homes.
[crowd chatter]
In a town called Gahini, 30 miles east of the capital Kigali, the crowd around me contained
old women and some younger women, small children, but very few men. And as I asked why they
were here, they started to lift their clothes.
[woman speaking]
This woman is showing us her legs and arms. They have raised long wounds on them. They
look like maybe they're burns. Those are burns.
[women speaking]
And in her nose, there's kind of a crease now that's healed over the scar and she said
that was a spear that went in through her nose. And here's a little girl in a pretty
flower dress lifting up her skirt to show burn marks on her knees and legs, and a bandage.
And here's a little boy who has lifted his shirt to show a wound from a spear, right
in the middle of his back between his shoulders.
[woman speaking]
Mainly the boys. Even the babies. Why? Por qua?
[woman speaking]
In order to get rid of the Tutsi race.
>>Woman #1: Yes.
>>Michael Skoler: The planned killing of a race--genocide. Foreign nations have been
hesitant to label the Rwanda massacre as genocide because that would force them to act. But
the evidence that genocide has been occurring here is hard to ignore.
Those in Gahini told me to go to Kerubanda a few miles away to see for myself what had
happened to their mostly Tutsi families and friends who, like them, had sought refuge
in a church there, but who never made it out again. As I drove up to a set of orange brick
church buildings, I had to clamp a bandana tightly over my nose and mouth. The stench
was unbearable.
[pause]
I'm outside the church and there are maybe two or three dozen bodies. In the heat here
in Rwanda, many of the bodies are already almost fully decomposed. You can see some
skulls, some backbones. There are what seem to be women in brightly colored clothing as
well as children lying about. This is amidst what is a very beautiful area of eucalyptus
trees and pine trees.
[footsteps]
There are bodies scattered all over the church. The blood on the floor is so thick it's dried
to kind of a muddy brown dust that may be, in some places, a quarter of an inch thick.
Most of the bodies are black and then decomposing.
They, some lie on mattresses, some on the floor. Some are covered with blankets. By
the altar, there are probably about 30 bodies clustered around. One is the body of an infant
with the parents, it seems, on either side. There's a suitcase that is open and torn apart
in front of the altar.
On the floor of the church, you can see baskets, plastic water cans, pails, combs, brushes,
sandals, sneakers, tins of food, a bottle of talcum powder. The windows, stained glass
windows on either side, are broken. There are wooden pews that have been thrown against
them. Above the whole scene, above the altar, is a small wooden statue of Christ with one
hand raised.
[end clip]
>>Renee Montagne: Gee. I mean, I'm even like woo. What happened there, and happens I think
on NPR regularly and many times in a much happier fashion, is that there are things
you can't even imagine. In this case, too hellish to imagine. But when you hear something
like this, it becomes really impossible to not think about it or to ignore it.
And that's a particular slice of what we do. That is, bringing it to you, but as long as
it took him to get this on the radio, it had to of. I mean, I wasn't there talking to Mike
about it, but Michael about it, but three, four days. I just know that's five days maybe.
He had to get out of that place. He had to, there was just no, there were no satellite
phones or anything remotely like that.
Computer, he probably had no computer with him. Probably did it all by hand on a paper.
It still was very, very immediate. You were still unfortunately walking with him through
this space, this little bit of hell. This is only another minute and then I'll just
turn it to questions. This is what happens today.
And this is from the last time I was in Afghanistan and it's only, like I say, it's a minute and
20 seconds. But it's actually about five, six minutes on the air. Seven or eight minutes
>>David Green: This is "Morning Edition" from NPR news. I'm David Green.
>>Steve Inskeep: And I'm Steve Inskeep. Good morning. An attack on Kabul, Afghanistan is
over. Attackers took control of a building that had a clear line of fire down to the
US Embassy and NATO headquarters in the heart of the city. And it's taken 20 hours for Afghan
forces to finally clear that building.
It is inside that building that we have found NPR's Renee Montagne and Quil Lawrence. Hello
to you both.
>>Quil Lawrence: Good morning, Steve.
>>Renee Montagne: Good morning, Steve.
>>Steve Inskeep: What do you see there?
>>Renee Montagne: Quil and I are both standing on the tenth floor of this 12 story high rise,
here in the middle of Kabul. And not too far from us are the bodies of four of the attackers.
There's two more bodies in the staircase as it goes down.
We're looking around and this was clearly the site of a huge fight. We're told this
was where the fight was the fiercest, right here in this room. The walls are pock-marked
with all kinds of holes from the incoming fire from Afghan and international community
forces. As you said, the target was the American Embassy.
And looking out of one of these big, open windows, there's a clear line of sight to
the Embassy. It's a perfect target from this distance for something like a rocket-propelled
grenade.
[end clip]
>>Renee Montagne: I mean, it went on and on. But that was like, not live actually, although
it could've been. But an hour, 45 minutes before we went on the air. Maybe even 15 minutes
before it went on the air. So, that, like that's 20 years right there. No, 18. As you
can see, I could go on, but I won't. I won't.
There must be things you wanna know at NPR that I haven't got to. So, let me just stop
for a moment and ask for questions.
>>Male #1: Is there really an NPR voice? Do you all take elocution lessons?
[Renee Montagne laughs]
And, because there's a very distinctive accent on NPR, a [ ] pronunciation of sorts.
>>Renee Montagne: Well, it seems to my ear just the opposite. It sounds like some people
ought to take elocution lessons.
[laughter]
I mean, we do not discriminate against people who have adenoidal voices and high voices
and who talk with a sing-song. And I think the difference between us and, as I think
in commercial radio, even to this day is, I think we don't, we actually do employ voice
coaches once in a while.
But really, people get hired in and whoever they really are is how they sound on the radio.
And I think while maybe in a weird way it sounds the same is because I think what's
the same about is everybody has, speaks in their natural voices. They're voices are,
I mean, I'm obviously talking a lot faster and I know.
I don't make an effort. It just happens. I put on headsets, I'm talking in front of a
mic and I can hear myself, you know? And I don't, didn't use to like that. But if I hear
myself, I slow down, but I don't like sit there thinking "slow down." I just slow down.
But for the most part, my voice is my voice. Steve Inskeep voice is--.
Sometimes, you get Noah Adams, who of course was with us from the beginning practically.
Bob Edwards. Robert Siegel, to some extent, with these low, deep, maybe traditional-sounding
voices. But I sort of think the office, I think what's the same is we all sound like
ourselves. So, that's so different that it's an NPR sound. Does that make sense?
>>Male #1: Well, I know that in contrast with BBC, it used to sound like NPR and has taken
a deliberate attempt to emphasize regional accents.
>>Renee Montagne: I know. Yes, I know. I hear it, too. I hear it when I get up at eleven.
They play a PM at night. They play "The Morning Show" on KPCC, so it's like my "Morning Edition."
Yeah. And they're going with Scottish accents. They have some even clearly like, African--I'm
not sure what countries--but some slightly African accents. And yeah. They're presenters.
>>Male #1: Yeah.
>>Renee Montagne: They're allowing, yeah. And they didn't used to, right? It was, what
is it, received accent? Look, Madhulika is from London. She's from London. When did that
switch happen? Do you even remember? You don't follow.
>>Madhulika Sikka: Well after I was looking for a job.
[laughter]
>>Renee Montagne: Yeah, because they wouldn't have hired you.
>>Madhulika Sikka: They saw my name and they wouldn't have hired me.
>>Renee Montagne: Madhulika Sikka would not have been on the air 20 years ago.
>>Madhulika Sikka: It happened way after that. And I think it also happened because the BBC
started going into more regional coverage around the country. So, Scotland and North
England and those kinds of places. So, you had a shot at making it to the national coverage
of the BBC. But certainly my people were never on the air.
[chuckles]
>>Renee Montagne: But they are now.
>>Madhulika Sikka: But they are now. And just one thing about NPR, I mean, I think that
Renee's right that a lot of our reporters sound exactly the way they are when you meet
them.
So, Ofeibea Quist-Arcton jumps out of the radio at you and that is exactly how she sounds
when you meet her. Sylvia's the same, Louisa. We do have a fair amount of Brit-type voices
on the air.
>>Renee Montagne: Yeah. British like Ofeibea's Ghana by birth.
>>Madhulika Sikka: Like Louisa--.
>>Renee Montagne: But raised or educated in Britain.
>>Madhulika Sikka: Yeah. So, I think that, yeah, you. I think that when you, if you met
our radio voices in person, you would know exactly who they are because their voice would
be so recognizable to you. Whereas, I think a lot of commercial television or commercial
radio, there's a voice you have portray. And they do try and get the accents right when
we're saying foreign words. We agonize over that.
>>Renee Montagne: We try. We also fix the show. I mean, there's a first run show here
in California. It's at two AM. Really hardly anyone hears it. It starts at five on the
East Coast. And so, we're on that schedule.
And luckily, in a way from my area, my region. If you really get something wrong, like even
if you mispronounce someone's name or you get it really wrong, you have a shot at like
doing it another time--re-doing it. But I'll tell you one thing real quickly. People also
often look.
People say that they don't look like, people always say it to me honestly every time I
meet someone. "Oh, I thought you'd be taller." This happened four days ago.
[laughter]
OK. But, or blonder, even though this is darkened hair, so I am a little blonder than this.
But many times, people do look that way. There was a slight mistake in the book where they
took something out and then collapsed something and fine, you know? It was too late to fix
It was actually me saying this where it was attributed to a listener once said about Sylvia
Poggioli. And they what the listener really said and left me saying it. Whatever. But
Sylvia Poggioli always sounded to me before, I met her. Because I met her after I had heard
her. Like, that she would have like a 1940's jacket on and a Fedora with, and long, dark
hair swept back with a press stuck in the ribbon. And she doesn't wear that hat or the
press.
[laughter]
But she really does look like, or did used to, when I first met her, look like a '40s,
like "Hello, I'm here reporting," like Edward R. Murrow only female, reporting from--. Ruth
of London during the--. And she did look like that. She smokes. She's really like that.
And it kinda just fit it exactly. So, does anybody? Oh, gosh. Yes.
>>Male #2: I was wondering, actually. So, at Google, a lot of us are engineers and so
we become tech support for our family and friends, right? So, I was kind of wondering
with you guys, do you become like a family or a friend's news reporter source and you
go to a party and everyone expects you to do the thing you do on the radio in person?
>>Renee Montagne: Yeah, they do.
[laughter]
They really do. I hadn't thought of that. I've never even asked that. Yeah.
[laughter]
Fill us on Libya or something. Or, yeah. And usually I can. I mean, what I do? I mean,
I'm second-hand, but I'm so focused on the latest that it's good to ask me. It is good
to ask me those questions.
[laughter]
I can fill you in.
>>Madhulika Sikka: My husband always says, "Did you hear about [ ]?" Yeah, we did it
on the show.
[laughter]
>>Renee Montagne: Yeah, did you hear.
>>Male #3: You spoke about the '90s as being a critical decade of transformation. How did
the intensifying congressional attacks on NPR and public broadcasting figure into the
changes there?
>>Renee Montagne: Back then, the original Newt stuff?
>>Male #3: Yes.
>>Renee Montagne: Seriously, Newt Gingrich was after us. Yes. I had to do a little segment
on it. Who, by the way, he might not fess up to it now, but I use it 'cause I fact-checked
it. I saw the speech that he said this in, who said in the early 2000s. I don't know.
Either NPR's gotten less liberal or I've gotten more relaxed, whatever the quote was. Oh,
here it is. I turned to it by accident. Newt Gingrich, they tried what they called "zero
out public," well, public broadcasting. They were, but they really had disliked NPR. It's
not all public broadcasting. They're fine with most of what goes on PBS 'cause PBS has
no, they have no strong news.
They have the one news show, basically. And the wonderful, oh, my God. I'm blocking on
it. The wonderful documentary--"Frontline." But really half an hour a day kind of thing.
We're all day news. So, they've never liked NPR. And they used to be called in this '80s,
kind of stupidly really, 'cause it really wasn't that--.
What did they call it? NPR, Nicaraguan Public Radio at a certain point to be mean, to say
it like--. And there was a little truth to that in the early days 'cause people were
really much younger and much more underdog-oriented and much more rah, rah, and maybe a little
less--to be honest--maybe a little less the news people that they are today or that we
have on staff today.
But that's long since been over. But yeah. Newt Gingrich. What happened was it gave us
a lot of publicity. The show version gave us a lot of publicity and did us a lot of
good because they didn't zero it out in the end. They didn't. And Newt, if I may say--'cause
we've met several times--went on to say, he was on our air just yesterday, was Newt, right?
Yeah. I'm sorry I didn't hear it, but--.
>>Female #1: Yesterday we were the elite media
>>Renee Montagne: Oh, I'm sorry I did not hear.
[laughter]
I was sleeping in. I was gonna go back and listen, though, 'cause he gave us an interview.
We kinda feel like we know how bad off he is now because he wouldn't, has not been willing
to consider interviews. But suddenly--
[laughter]
he's on NPR, that's like you can just kiss his campaign goodbye.
[laughter]
No, but he said, "Listen. On my way to work, I listen to NPR and appreciate it." This was
in speech in 2003. "NPR is a lot less to the left, or I've mellowed," said Newt. "Or some
combination of the two."
And he was a subscriber. But it has some kind of charm to attack NPR. It has some, it does
work to some small degree, it appears 'cause they keep coming back and doing it. I mean,
they really, it's like a ten-year thing or every eight years you can count on it. And
then they don't do it. They didn't zero us out this year either.
I mean, we were not cut at all. In fact, we should be cut out a little bit compared to
everything out there. I don't mean "should be," but we can expect to be because everything
is gonna be shrunk down a bit. But the big cut was in 1983 when Ronald Reagan, in the
early--. Ronald Reagan became President. He said we should not be paying for public radio
or TV.
And so, he wanted to zero out the corporation for public broadcasting, which is the umbrella
group. And, in fact, he succeeded. The whole system changed. There was actually CPB funding.
I don't know the exact amount. But it was most of the funding for NPR was coming from
the federal government in the '70s.
And there was corporate and then, and when Reagan came in, he made good on "we're not
gonna fund you directly." And, but what happened was the system changed, so they--. The CPB
money now goes to the stations. And stations get about 15 percent on average of what they
need to run their stations from the CPB.
And then, some percentage of money comes to us. So, one of the, comes to NPR. Well, they
have to buy NPR shows because if they didn't run NPR shows, they'd make less money from
listeners because listeners tune in to hear NPR shows. I mean, it's a simple dynamic.
So, it's a good deal all around. But when they talk about defunding NPR, they're never
really defunding NPR per se because it was long ago, 30 years ago, that direct cash went
away, really.
And now, it's just that it could hurt stations a lot, especially small stations and struggling
stations. So, but it still seems to be a thing to like, hang over. It's sort of a [ ] thing.
>>Male #4: What was your take on SNL's "Schweddy Balls" episode?
[laughter]
>>Renee Montagne; Oh, I--.
>>Male #4: Basically they're ridiculing the extreme effete-ism of NPR.
>>Renee Montagne: Yeah. You know, how can you not love being on Saturday Night Live
and being made fun of? I don't know. The funniest one is the, was the food show. And that wasn't
even NPR. That was KCRW, originally.
What was it, "Good Eats?" What's it been called? "Good Food." It wasn't us at all. It was the
station, but people, media--. What do you call the--? The SNL people who live out here,
who would've heard KCRW, picked it up at some point. And then I guess they were on PBS,
too, which I certainly missed it, the TV part. Well, you know? Schweddy Balls.
[laughter]
It's not a very accurate--.
[laughter]
But it, you know. So, we have some funny, there's some funny ads they've done for us.
Ads, not ads. There's some funny funders that they've done, done for the system that you
hear sometimes. So you can only thank them. Let's just put it that way. So, thank you
all very much for having me.
[applause]
It's really a pleasure. And if I may, can I just quickly introduce two of the--. Shannon
Rhodes, who's our editor here in Los Angeles, and Nina Gregory, who's our other editor here
in Los Angeles. Nina and I, like I said, we get to work at midnight every night and we're
there for the long haul. And so, especially--. And, of course, I introduced Madhulika. It's
really a pleasure for us to be here.
[applause]