Bearing witness, Part 2

Even though it’s sometimes unbearable.

Journalism is too opaque and misunderstood. Chills gives a behind-the-scenes look at how dangerous investigative journalism gets made. 

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A 5-year-old Kavumu rape survivor at Panzi Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

People in my profession talk a lot about “bearing witness.” I’ve written about this before, how intensely personal doing so is for me:

In my experience, having tried to tell adults some of the things I was suffering as a kid and having them ignore me was more painful than the stuff I was trying to convey. That feeling that nobody cared about my suffering — it took me years of working on human rights and in war zones to face that this is what motivates me, but there it is.

My personal and often intensely emotional connections to my sources and stories have, I believe, made for the most compelling and “successful” work of my career — stories that connected with readers and impacted people’s lives.

But, in fact, it’s never been entirely clear to me whether my impulse for intense connections with people and stories helps me be a better journalist, or whether my more compelling reporting is simply a byproduct of my personal need to connect.