“Faces of the Media” Live with Ryszard Kapuściński on TVP1, 26 November 2003

Piotr Kraśko: Unfortunately very few Polish journalists are someone about whom everyone, without the slightest hesitation, will say: an authority. There is certainly one.

Some call him a living legend of Polish and world reportage. When he travels he does not write; when he writes he cuts himself off from the world. He chisels his text. He can sit over three sentences for a whole day. He uses neither computer nor internet. He began as a journalist at “Sztandar Młodych”. It was then that he made his literary debut with the reportage collection “Bush po polsku”. That is the only cycle in his output on a domestic theme. Then for many years he worked as a foreign correspondent for the PAP news agency in Asia, Africa, and South America. He was a witness to almost 30 revolutions. Many times he came close to death. But he is also the most translated Polish writer. His books have been translated into 25 languages. He became a literary discoverer of the Third World countries.

About himself, about the media, about journalism he has in fact not spoken in any of his books until now. But recently an extraordinary work has been created: “A Portrait of the Reporter” — a mosaic of excerpts from interviews he has given to Polish and foreign media.

Piotr Kraśko: Muszę powiedzieć, że jestem prawie przerażony, bo muszę zadać pierwsze pytanie człowiekowi, który jest mistrzem pierwszego zdania. The first sentence of “The Emperor”: “It was a small dog of Japanese breed, it was called Lulu. It had the right to sleep in the imperial bed.” How did that sentence come about?

Ryszard Kapuściński: It was the early 1970s; there was a revolution in Ethiopia. The Emperor had been deposed and the army had taken power. I went there then to write about this revolution, about the coup d’état. I returned to Warsaw. The weekly “Kultura” was waiting for my reportages. I began writing reportages about those Ethiopian events and at a certain moment I realised that tanks on the streets, searches, shooting — I had written about that so many times that I could no longer write in the same way. I had to find a new form of writing. I could not find it for weeks.

Finally I shut myself in my flat; the editor-in-chief was sending me telegrams asking what was happening, why there was no material. But I knew one thing: that I could no longer write as I had written before, yet on the other hand I was unable to write it differently. And finally, in complete despair, I am looking through books, notes. At a certain moment I saw a photograph that reminded me of the Emperor. He had a small dog, with which he was often photographed on the throne. And I think: maybe I’ll begin with that, with the dog. And so I began writing that first sentence. I remember it to this day, because when I had written it, I already knew I had a book.

Piotr Kraśko: Napisał Pan: “To nie jest zawód dla cyników. Do tego, żeby go uprawiać, trzeba być przede wszystkim dobrym człowiekiem.” But many young people, when they come to work in the media, are told: remember, bad news is good news; be first and show the face of the mother weeping because her child has been killed. This is in effect a school of cynicism.

Ryszard Kapuściński: I don’t think so. It is very important in our profession that it is a very special profession. It contains something more than the purely technical performance of work, something more than simply earning money. In this profession taken seriously there is always some element of social concern — of wanting to help with something. There are us, and then there are others.

Piotr Kraśko: But increasingly journalists ask themselves whether we were the first to get this piece of information, whether we will be the first to report it. Not whether the world will be better after this information.

Ryszard Kapuściński: It always fascinated me too, to be the first. Sometimes I managed it. And that is our professional passion. To inform means to let people find out about something. One does not exclude the other. It is a very difficult profession. If someone wishes to devote his professional life to it, then in the conviction that he has a role to fulfil here, a mission — to make the world that tiny bit better.

Piotr Kraśko: You wrote: “It is a destroying profession; many people practise it only for a certain period of life because they cannot endure it.” How did it come about that you endured it, having been a witness to the world’s horrors, 27 revolutions, coming close to death so many times?

Ryszard Kapuściński: It is some character trait consisting in curiosity about the world; it really does interest me, fascinate me. I am curious about how this world will develop. And I think that is the criterion for practising this profession. If that natural curiosity begins to cool, to dim, that is in effect the end of practising this profession. Because this profession cannot be done in any other way if something in it doesn’t interest a person. It is a profession that requires passion and curiosity. If that curiosity ceases to move us, it is time to say farewell to the profession.

Mariusz Szczygieł: I think that this book A Portrait of the Reporter is the journalist’s bible, the bible of today’s media person. Kapuściński reminds us, sometimes with a child’s naivety, of everything that in our professional blasé-ness we consider obvious and unimportant. He tells us what we must not forget. And we must not forget that presenting and describing the world is an attempt to understand the world for the reader. Today’s journalism based on shock, on sensation, on flash, on glimpses is no attempt whatsoever to understand reality.

Piotr Kraśko: It was an honour to have you in our programme.

source: kapuscinski.info