Nicholas Kristof on the Times and why he no longer sees himself as a progressive

TThroughout his new memoir, Nicholas Kristof escapes plane crashes, dodges warlords, and debates whether to warn his family that he is in danger now or later. He also, not surprisingly, survives and thrives as a global newspaper writer during a period when the changing economics of journalism have made this type of career increasingly rare. “Kristof kept the tradition of the front-line columnist alive,” as the editors of the Deadline Artistsone of the best anthologies of American newspaper columns, he said.

Kristof’s book is called Chasing Hope, itself a rare — and perhaps surprising — undertaking for a writer who has covered so much horror in his career. Its central theme – a chapter titled “How Covering Genocide and Poverty Made Me an Optimist” – is that we know how to tackle many of our most intractable issues, if only we can muster the will. Kristof and I talked about everything from where he sees progress to resistance to conservative voices in journalism to why he no longer considers himself a progressive.

Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

For me, the most important quote from the book may be this: “We in journalism have become instruments of fury, as well as victims of it, because we have lost the public’s trust.” We all understand to some extent what happened, but how do you think we will get out of this?

I think good journalism has never been better, but bad journalism has rarely been worse. And I wonder if we are so focused on everything that is going wrong, that we don’t focus enough attention on solutions, progress and this miasma of despair that I consider exaggerated. I fear that the relentless negativity of the coverage will make it more difficult to govern and lead to a certain paralysis.

Are you saying that coverage choices are causing the decline in public trust?

When I see these t-shirts, “Noose. String. Journalist. Tree. Some assembly is necessary”, I simply recoil because I have seen so many journalists risk their lives to do heroic work. I think, for quite cynical reasons, there are people who are trying to bring down the media. But we created some of these vulnerabilities. And I don’t think we’ve been careful enough to include conservative voices in our ranks, which also creates a vulnerability. I say this like a good liberal.

You write that there has been a new wave of moralism invading journalism with results that are neither fair nor good for the profession. How do you see this contributing to this general crisis of trust?

It seems funny to me to complain about moralism in journalism because I’ve spent much of my career arguing that journalism has a moral purpose. But it is not possible to cover all events by running some moral algorithm. And I worry that some young journalists, in particular, want to censor some opinions because they think they are wrong or dangerous. I don’t think we should defend all opinions, and it’s a very difficult decision, but I think it’s exaggerated among young journalists, in a way that diminishes our credibility and authority and worsens our problems with public trust.

Throughout the book you interview terrorists, warlords, some bad people. What’s out of the question?

I struggle with this all the time. When I covered global terrorism, I felt I needed to talk to supporters of Al-Qaeda, for example. And I took considerable risks to get to these people. I think we also really need to understand the people of this country, who, from my point of view, are extremists and have views that I consider dangerous to the country. I think we need to make sure the public understands these views. This has to be accompanied by very solid fact-checking, which is where we sometimes go wrong.

You are critical in the book about how the New York government Times handled certain episodes, such as the troubling departures of former editorial page editor James Bennet and longtime health reporter Donald McNeil. Where do you see the Times culture today, following these episodes?

I mean, I’m biased, but I think the Times never been better. And I think part of that is that Times I learned from these episodes. It worked to try to bring in more voices, including those that irritate people. I was very happy when they brought in David French. David is a conservative evangelical with whom I agree very little, but I think we are better off when we read him. There are still a lot of people on the team, especially some young people in this building, who don’t see why we need to have some of these conservative voices, who from their point of view say the wrong things. I think, however, that the Times has been working hard over the last six years to try to explain why we need voices across the spectrum. And I’m 100% in favor of that. My liberal opinions have more credibility if they are accompanied by the opinions of Bret Stephens, the opinions of David French.

When Bret’s arrival was first announced, someone in the coffee room posted some nasty comment about him. I thought: how can you welcome a new colleague who reports you before you even meet him? And I tore it up and threw it away. Is there still any incivility? Is there still a certain hostility towards more conservative points of view? Yes. But I think there has been a great effort at the top to ensure that we have ideological diversity. And I do what I can, in my own way and in the book, to try to make it clear that this is part of journalism, that journalism is not just about preaching liberal orthodoxies to the world.

He writes that “as progressivism became an ideology of the educated, it distanced itself from the people it nominally defended” and criticizes what he calls the progressive impulse to “solve problems by revising terminology.” Do you consider yourself a progressive?

No. I resent having to redefine myself because five or ten years ago I could have done that. But the metric of progressivism should be progress. And in West Coast cities, where progressives have dominated policymaking, we see a backslide. You look at homelessness, you look at homicide rates, you look at education. When I was running for governor, in my 10-minute political career, people wanted me to say how horrible the Republicans are. And I don’t think we can blame the Republicans. Because there aren’t any in Portland. This is our mess. We created this. Seeing the challenges in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles has made me more cautious about progressivism. The results are what matters. And our results in west coast cities are not good.

Who are the conservative columnists who have influenced your thinking and work?

I read the Wall Street Journal opinion pages partly because they challenge me, make me sweat. Bret Stephens sees the Middle East very differently than I do, but it forces me to confront issues like incitement to violence in Palestinian communities and textbooks, etc., that are uncomfortable for my narrative. And that’s good.

We started by talking about the ways in which we in journalism cause some of our own problems. There is another strand in the book which is liberalism and progressivism which cause some of their own problems.

I think what we need most in journalism, and perhaps in life itself, is a certain dose of humility. Both liberals and conservatives today don’t have enough. My liberal colleagues are convinced that we are full of truth and justice and that conservatives are lost. Obviously I think that liberalism in general has the right on its side. But the left was fundamentally wrong on one of the big issues of the 20th century, which was communism and Maoism. Just in the last few years, I believe the right has been catastrophically wrong about COVID and underestimated COVID. We on the left were catastrophically wrong about closing schools in a way that has caused immense harm to children across the country. And I don’t think we’ve owned up to our mistakes the way we should have.

In the spirit of humility, are there columns that you look at over the years and say, well, did I get that wrong?

I got Iraq right, but then I got the Iraq surge wrong. And I think it was because I was full of myself and so proud of getting it right in Iraq, that I then resisted the real evidence, in this case, that troops could actually be part of the solution. I was in favor of intervention in Libya, and in hindsight, that was probably wrong. In China, I would expect there to be more positive developments over the last 15 years or so. And we didn’t see that. I hope to one day prove myself right, but it’s taking a lot longer than I expected.

Another topic he addresses is the difficulty of drawing attention to humanitarian crises: Afghanistan, Syria, Bosnia, Darfur. That is not something we are seeing right now in Gaza.

Yes. Gaza is getting a lot of attention, but Gaza has largely meant that other crises like Sudan are not getting attention. The possible impending famine in Ethiopia is not receiving attention. The civil war in Myanmar is not receiving attention. And even in the case of Gaza, right now, I would say that the student protests in the US are getting more attention than the famine in Gaza. So we in journalism have this ability to focus and focus on one issue.

In part, I think there is a double standard and that the world pays more attention to human rights violations by Israel than by Sudan, Ethiopia or Myanmar. It is also true that Israel implies a special case because these are our bombs being dropped from our planes, in the case of Gaza. And I think that implies a certain special moral responsibility. It will probably be easier for President Biden to improve results in Gaza than to improve results in Ethiopia.

But is there a double standard related to people’s narratives and, in some cases, anti-Semitism? Yes. I think there is. And I say this as someone who believes President Biden should be much tougher on Bibi Netanyahu.

Despite all the horror you’ve covered, you’re an optimist – that’s the biggest theme of the book. Do you have any optimism regarding the current crisis in Israel and Gaza?

I fear the Middle East will get worse before it gets worse. It is possible to imagine scenarios in which this crisis leads to a Saudi-Israeli-American agreement and a Palestinian state, just as the Yom Kippur war led to [Anwar] Sadat going to Israel and Egyptian-Israeli peace. But I think that is quite unlikely, and it is more likely that we will see continued dysfunction and tragedy in both Gaza and the West Bank. My optimism is a general optimism, but I don’t think all places are going to get better, that’s for sure.

Why the widespread optimism?

I am often asked how someone goes from covering war and genocide to feeling hopeful about humanity. It’s a combination of seeing, throughout my career, vast material and moral progress. It’s inconsistent and intermittent, but for example, when I was a child, most human beings were always illiterate. Now, we are promoting 90% adult literacy. This is simply transformative.