INDIANAPOLIS –- NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly showed how it should be done.
Kelly interviewed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo several days ago. She asked Pompeo some straightforward questions about the direction and effectiveness of President Donald Trump’s approach to containing Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
Then she inquired about public complaints that Pompeo has not supported the diplomatic corps he oversees. Kelly cited Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, whose testimony is near the heart of President Trump’s impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate; and Michael McKinley, a career foreign service officer who said under oath that he resigned in part because Pompeo’s State Department wasn’t supporting diplomats and other foreign service personnel caught up in the Ukraine scandal.
Pompeo bristled.
He said he hadn’t agreed to talk about Ukraine.
Kelly said she had confirmed with his staff before they went on the air that they would be talking about Iran and Ukraine.
Pompeo blustered his way to the end without answering in any real way any of Kelly’s questions.
After the interview ended, Pompeo continued the conversation with Kelly.
He berated her. He dropped the f-bomb repeatedly. He said Americans didn’t care about Ukraine. He also demanded that someone get a blank map of the world to see if Kelly could point to where Ukraine is. (She could.)
Afterward, he didn’t deny that he went on a tirade, but insisted that Kelly was a liar because the off-air conversation was supposed to be off the record.
Kelly said it wasn’t off the record.
A couple of things need to be said here.
The first involves an explanation of the rules of sources talking to journalists off the record.
Taking something off the record is not a decision sources get to make unilaterally. A conversation is off the record only when both the journalist and the source both agree it will be off the record.
Going off the record also is not a blank check. A source can’t confess to a crime or some other huge transgression even if both parties have agreed to have an off-the-record chat and expect the journalist to keep the conversation a secret.
It’s debatable whether Kelly would have been obligated to keep a temper tantrum from the nation’s top diplomat under wraps even if she had agreed to having an off-the-record conversation, but she said she hadn’t agreed.
So, Pompeo’s complaint is nonsense.
This brings us to the second point.
Most journalists who have spent any time in the business have had sources indulge in screaming fits over stories they don’t like.
But here’s the thing.
Those fits never come over stories that aren’t true.
When a reporter screws up and gets the facts wrong, the person wronged doesn’t yell, scream and drop the f-bomb again and again. No, he or she provides evidence that the story is wrong and demands a retraction or correction.
It’s only when the story is embarrassing or damaging and there is no way for sources to contradict it that they go on tirades like Pompeo did.
The reasons for their outbursts vary.
Sometimes, they erupt because they’re caught in an impossible situation and their frustration hits a boiling point.
Other times, it’s because they’re embarrassed and lash out at the humiliation.
And, still other times, they start screaming and yelling because they hope that creating commotion and controversy will distract attention from the fact that they’re piling up lies and falsehoods like bricks on a house.
I’m not going to speculate on why Mike Pompeo opted to behave like a 2-year-old who’d been given too much sugar and denied a nap.
Instead, I’m going to focus on how Mary Louise Kelly has conducted herself throughout this.
She kept her cool throughout. She didn’t rise to or respond in kind to Pompeo’s name-calling.
She behaved like a professional and let the reporting and the story do the talking.
That’s how it’s supposed to be done.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. Send comments to [email protected].
