THE OPENING UP AND OUTPOURING
1998
by Scott Murray
Richard Ehrlich is the co-author of the book "Hello My Big Big
Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing
Interviews. The Bangkok-based journalist has worked as a
correspondent for United Press International (UPI), and now reports for newspapers in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. He graduated with a master's degree from the
Columbia School of Journalism, and was awarded their 1978 Foreign
Correspondent's Award. Recently, Scott Murray had a chance to sit
down with Mr Ehrlich and discuss his life in journalism:
How did the idea for your book, "Hello My Big Big Honey!" come
about?
It all had to do with the elaborateness of the bar girl scene here
in Bangkok. It is an extremely complicated situation, and the
girls are not just statistics, but individuals, each with their
own different story to tell -- whether it be tragic, lucky or
desperate.
My co-author, David Walker, and I were intrigued by the men who
truly fell in love with bar girls. Not the ones who just had sex
with them and forgot them, but the ones who would return home,
write them love letters and continually send them money.
For many Westerners, Bangkok is a fantasy land. A man can walk in
a bar and have a number of beautiful women coo in his ear, paw
him and lavish all kinds of attention on him, the likes of which
he would never receive back in the West where his girlfriend was
probably average looking at best.
Spending time in the bar scene here can be like being in "Playboy
magazine heaven". It's as if Hugh Hefner has given you the keys to
his mansion, and said "go nuts". This atmosphere feeds the image
of the exotic East, Madame Butterfly, harems, lotus blossoms and
pleasure domes, and many guys just can't get enough of it.
What insights did you gain from writing the book?
In the foreword of our book, Dr Yos Santasombat discusses a
phenomena I find fascinating. Basically, it describes how a farang
(foreigner) often cannot win if they fall in love with a bar girl.
There may be endless requests for money from the woman to help
support her family. Two scenarios come into play here. One, the
man will inevitably tire of the monetary demands and begin to
wonder if the girl is just using him. If he comes to this
conclusion and dumps her, he may years later, when he is old and
lonely, regret it tremendously. He gave up everything, a beautiful
woman, attention, support, etc. just because he was too cheap to
pay a couple of hundred dollars a month to her mother.
The second scenario is that the man may hold on to the woman, pay
the requested money every month, but years later feel as if he has
been used all along. Maybe the woman never really loved him, she
just wanted a meal ticket out and wanted to support her family.
What ingredients need to exist for a relationship between a
foreign man and a Thai woman to work?
It helps if the woman comes from mainstream Thai society, has some
sophistication, a good education or at least equal that of her
partner, and has a good grasp of the English language. It can
work because Thais like to travel, like meeting new people and
are interested in other societies and cultures. Language
problems and unequal education levels are usually the biggest
setbacks to making these relationships work.
You studied journalism at the prestigious Columbia University.
Tell us about your time there and how it helped you as a writer?
I went to Columbia in the fall of 1977. I was lucky enough to
graduate cum laude and be the winner of their annual Foreign
Correspondent's Award.
Before heading to Columbia, I had primarily written travel
stories and some articles on British society, as I finished my
senior year of undergraduate studies at the University of Hull,
England. At Columbia, I learned how to deal with the mechanics of
the story, pyramid style and so on.
Columbia taught me the nuts and bolts of what goes into a story,
what statistics to use, etc. After I won the scholarship, they
arranged for me to go work with UPI in Hong Kong and that's where
I gained my on-the-job training.
You have been a foreign correspondent for 20 years now.
Tell us a few of the drawbacks of your profession?
The stress. It can be unbelievable. Your news agency is clocking
you against all the other wire services. You have to be the first
and you must never make a mistake, or you will most certainly hear
about it from your boss. To survive you must have a sense of
humor, and you must be aware of your limitations and realize what
is possible and what it isn't. You must absorb the situation and
deal with it -- being who you are and the situation being what it
is. If you are in a crazy predicament, well, to take the absurd
seriously is even more absurd.
If you are reporting on a continually breaking story such as a
war, a riot or an earthquake, every time the death toll mounts
you have to file an update. That is all well and good in the
modern world, but it can be very difficult in a place like the
Indian subcontinent where it is hard to find both factual data
and functioning telecommunication systems.
Another drawback is that journalism is not an ideal lifestyle to
raise children in a nice suburban middle class environment. It can
be done, but it is difficult.
Also the money isn't very good and never has been. If you are
concerned with making a lot of money don't get into journalism.
What about the upside?
You get to travel to all kinds of bizarre places and write about
them. You can discuss subjects such as Marxism and capitalism with
presidents and prime ministers, ambassadors, and Marxists and
capitalists. You get to meet and converse with all types of people
ranging from high government officials, to criminals and killers.
You witness the world from a front row seat and you can play an
interactive role in it. You can step in and ask the decision and
policy makers why they are making the decisions they are making.
Who have been some of the more interesting people you have
interviewed?
There have been a lot, but I once had a fascinating three-hour
conversation with Imelda Marcos. We discussed the symbolism of
shoes. Afghan rebel leaders Gulbudin Hekmatyar, and Abdul Rashid
Dostum were both intriguing, as was the Dalai Lama of course.
I met alleged mass murderer Charles Sobhraj in Tihar Jail. Former
Saigon and Bangkok UPI bureau chief Alan Dawson and I were going to
write a book about him, but Dawson's tape recorder was confiscated
by the prison guards as he left the compound, and the project
never got off the ground.
What about some advice for budding journalists?
Ask the question. If you don't, then when you return to your
office or home you will regret it. You are placed in an
adversarial role with people in power. You represent the people's
right to know and you must be their vanguard.
Print journalism has the potential to be the best media forum because
it can be the least sensational, most accurate and most factual.
Good journalists must realize they are gatekeepers and they
mustn't stand in the way of facts getting to their readers.
It is also very important that the journalist report on the
victim's point of view, not just the embassy's or the press
attachˇ's. Who are the victims and how are they suffering from
what is going on?
Is there a country that you especially enjoy working in, or
reporting from, here in Asia?
I enjoy India very much. The level of intellectual discourse is
very high in the Indian subcontinent. The Indians have a very
strong tradition of debating politics, whether it be the blue-collar worker, or the white-collar professional. In India, people
can talk long hours into the night about matters that concern
them.
There is also a tremendous amount of freedom of the press in
India. There aren't any taboos on any subject. You can name names,
but you must not make a mistake and you must be fair and present
all sides.
How did you become interested in the Indian subcontinent?
I taught English in Kathmandu back in 1972, and traveled
extensively throughout the region and loved it. When I was
working for UPI in Hong Kong, everyone wanted to be posted to
Paris, London or Tokyo. Not me. I wanted to go back in India and
Afghanistan. Everyone they sent to India went there screaming and
kicking and hoping to get out as quickly as possible. When the
Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December of '79, they said "Send
Ehrlich, he knows the Afghans." So off I went. At the time, there
was a fear the Russians were going to drive for the Persian Gulf,
and seize all the oil.
What writers have influenced you most?
William Burroughs, because he worked with language in an
experimental anti-rational way, and did the complete opposite of
what people are taught to expect. Hunter S. Thompson, for
liberating the norms of what could and could not be written.
Specific books I have enjoyed reading include, Charles Bukowski's
"Notes Of A Dirty Old Man", Alfred McCoy's "The Politics Of Heroin
In South-East Asia", Oliver Sach's "The Man Who Mistook His Wife
For A Hat", Hubert Selby Jr's "Last Exit To Brooklyn", Geoffrey
Moorehouse's "Calcutta: The City Revealed", Oriana Fallaci's
"Interview With The Story", V S Naipaul's "An Area Of Darkness",
Howard Zinn's "A People's History Of The US", Raymond Bonner's
"Waltzing With A Dictator", Michael Herr's "Dispatchers", Wieslaw
Kielar's "Anus Mundi: 5 Years In Auschwitz" and Burrough's "The
Naked Lunch."
You sport a beard. In some places, especially here in Thailand,
that can be inappropriate. Any problems with the facial hair?
Quite the opposite. I have had my beard since I was 18, but
I have always kept it short and neat. It has helped me blend in
when I have had to do any stories on the underworld or black
marketeers. Besides, it makes me popular with tuk-tuk drivers and
the rest of the "real people" out there. I was actually mistaken
for a Muslim fundamentalist once with the Afghans and that
probably wasn't such a great thing. In Thailand, many of the high
ranking officials I have talked to have dealt with people with
beards before so it isn't a big deal.
What are your future plans?
I plan to stay based in Bangkok for at least five more years. It
is very central and convenient for the area I cover, which
stretches from Afghanistan to Vietnam. We are also working on expanding "Hello My Big Big Honey!" and marketing it other
countries. Dave Walker and I are also working on another project,
but it is still in the formative stages so I'd rather not discuss
it just yet.
"Hello My Big Big Honey!" has just been translated into French, is
that correct?
Yes, the French translation is titled, "Bonjour ma Grande Grande
Cherie!" Lettres d'Amour aux Filles de Bars de Bangkok et Interviews et Revelatrices. It's been translated into French by Le Figaro correspondent Florence Compain, and France's RTL radio correspondent Cyril Payen. The book is currently in a queue waiting to be published by White Lotus and it will be distributed in
Thailand and Indochina. We also hope to publish it in France and
other French-speaking countries and we hope to print it in German
and Japanese too, maybe even Hebrew, the Scandinavian languages,
Spanish, Russian and so on. We want every language to bask in the
wisdom of Bangkok bar girls and their lovers.
I'm told you are also working on a novel as well?
Yes, it's titled, Sheila Carfenders, and is fiction, a work of
surreal literature that is based on political events in the Third
World. I started it in India years ago. I'm about half way through
it. Unfortunately, I never seem to find time to finish.
But you recently finished another book, titled, Rituals and
Revolutions: Tibet, Afghanistan, India and Sri Lanka. Please tell
us about it and some of the characters you write about?
Rituals and Revolutions is a non-fiction book, based on my work
as a journalist in four very different regions -- Tibet,
Afghanistan, India and Sri Lanka. It's about all the twisted,
freaked out, animist, often psychotic, religious rituals I saw as
well as the political and vicious guerrilla wars and social
revolutions I experienced. I hope that the reading is light
enough and vivid enough, that anyone can pick it up and gain
something from it.
There is some weird stuff in it, like the vulture sky funeral I
experienced during my first trip to Tibet when I lived in Lhasa
for one month in 1984. Four dead people had their skulls smashed
open, their brains were scooped out and they were disemboweled.
The undertaker chopped off the heads of the dead people and
grabbed the heads by the hair and held the heads high in the air
like in a Goya painting. It was horrific.
As for the characters, there are exclusive interviews with people
in those regions. One is Gulbudin Hekmatyar, the mujahideen leader
in Afghanistan who was backed by the CIA and, among many other
things, was accused of killing a BBC journalist. When I spoke with
Hekmatyar, he struck me as a surly, confident guy with a gallows
humor and an aura of danger and confidence. I found similar
traits in Sant Bhindranwale, the Sikh leader in Punjab who
took over the Golden Temple, refused to leave, filled it with
weapons and eventually inspired India's then-Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi to send in the Indian Army to try to kill him and his
followers. Bhindranwale had the same aura as Hekmatyar: an
arrogant leader who feels so cool within his own clan that he
appears not to need the outside world.
Both professed extreme religious views: Bhindranwale put forth a
line of fundamentalist Sikh values; Hekmatyar, ancient Islamic
teachings and traditions. Both were seen by the outside world and
the governments they were fighting as complete terrorists and
gangsters disguised as religious zealots. Both were able to wreak
havoc on their societies. Both were supported at one time by
people who hoped to use them -- Bhindranwale by Indira Gandhi;
Hekmatyar by the Americans. But they both became Frankensteins who
were created, and who broke away, and could no longer be
controlled. And they knew it. They both had to be hunted down.
Bhindranwale was shot, and Hekmatyar is still out there.
In Sri Lanka, I interviewed Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE, in a safe house
bunker in Jaffna while the Indian Army was invading and
threatening to bomb him out of existence. Short and stubby, he
didn't seem to fit the mold of a guerrilla leader. He was less
charismatic than I thought he would be, more of a functional sort,
pumping out his demands, beliefs and hopes for his ultimate dream
for a one-party Marxist state.
In the book, there are also revolutions in people's heads. For
instance, the psychiatric revolution of the Sadhus, India's Hindu
holy men. Their revolution is inside their head, as a result of
smoking huge quantities of hashish non-stop in big clay chillums,
to completely destroy and obliterate the normal world so they can
transcend and unite with Lord Shiva and Lord Vishnu. (more
information about these stories can be
obtained at Richard Ehrlich's
home page: www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent where the non-fiction book he co-authored, "Hello My Big Big Honey!" is also available.)
Would you name some of the journalists who have been sources of
inspiration for you, and who you admire?
One of my earliest inspirations was James Campbell, a British
journalist. He wrote about his career in India and it was
fascinating. He had a very conversational style. Campbell opened
my imagination up to the whole idea of being a reporter in India
and that part of the world and how wild and wonderful it could
be.
As for my own writing style, especially while writing "Hello My Big
Big Honey!", I was influenced by Studs Terkel. What I like about his
writing is his heavy reliance on quotes. He would quote verbatim,
seemingly endlessly. Terkel himself would step back and stay out
of the actual conversation and allow the person to speak, and
Terkel would capture all the nuances of their language, the
pauses, the cadence. You could hear people speaking instead of
just having short, little sound-bites or quotes taken out of
context.
I like to write my news stories with a lot of quotes. I stand
back because the reader wants to hear people speak for
themselves. Readers don't want a journalist to filter these things
or paraphrase the quotes down into mush. If a person has something
to say, they can speak directly to the reader. The journalist then
enters in, and puts things in context.
I must also mention as an inspiration, Hunter S. Thompson's Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas. He revealed what journalism could be
and how unusual subjects could also be reported. He lifted off any
mental censorship writers might impose on themselves. As William
Burroughs said, "All things are permitted."
One of my first influences when I finally became a foreign
correspondent back in 1978 was when I joined United Press
International, UPI, in Hong Kong. The UPI editor for Asia and the
Pacific was a man named Michael Keats. This guy is brilliant. He
is a hard-drinking carousing type of guy, an Australian, who used
to be a car racer and he carried that combative aggression into
his work.
He would lean over my shoulder as I was typing out a story and
bellow, "What do you mean, 'the building caught on fire and
fifteen people were killed?' I don't want to see 'the building
caught on a fire.' I want to see, 'Flames swept through the
building charring it to rubble, trapping people and burning
fifteen of them to death'." And then he would let out a bellowing
laugh. And you knew in an instant the difference between active
writing with active verbs, and passive writing with passive verbs.
And his bellowing laughter and support helped my actual
word-by-word writing.
And when the Russians invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, Keats
was generous enough to send me to be the UPI staff correspondent
to be based in New Delhi to cover Afghanistan and the Indian
subcontinent. It was one of my first major breaks in life. Then, when I went into Afghanistan in 1980 for UPI, Keats gave me a lot
of wild and profound advice on the ins and outs of life as a war
correspondent. Today he's based in Washington DC, and has a senior
position with Inter Press Service.
Another great inspiration in those days was Paul Vogle who had
worked for UPI in Saigon. He came to Hong Kong to work the night
shift while I was there. Vogle is very cool, very low-key and the
opposite of Keats. He gave me quiet advice about being in the
field, using anecdotes about his time in Vietnam. He had a very
subtle approach to things.
Alan Dawson, who was UPI Saigon and UPI Bangkok, and now with the
Bangkok Post, is another big inspiration. Dawson can go anywhere,
anytime, hit the ground, write a story and it will be a fantastic
piece. He is a very pithy guy who is excellent in one-to-one
debates when somebody might be challenging him directly. His
ability to stand his ground, use the facts and his vast wisdom,
especially on Vietnam, and counter-punch in a debate or with anyone he is
interviewing, or anyone he is just discussing things with, is
fascinating. It's an example of how information is power.
How have you and your work been influenced by Internet?
I love Internet. I'm addicted to words. You can go on-line and
you can get text on anything, things you can't even imagine. With
the push of a button, you not only have access to people but to
their beliefs and ideas, and you also have the verbatim text which
you can download into your computer and then quote, read, evaluate
or delete. So it's an ability to be bombarded by text from all
over the world on every subject possible.
The other thing that is fascinating about Internet is e-mail. I
can write a story and, with the push of a button, e-mail it to my
foreign editors at my newspaper, The Washington Times. And if they
have a question they can e-mail me back, whether I'm in Phnom Penh
or Jakarta or wherever. And nowadays, I just can walk down the
street and go into a cyber cafe and immediately file.
In the bad old days of typewriters, there were telex machines and
you would you have to go late at night to a telex office in New
Delhi, or Kabul or Colombo, and punch out a long tape with little
holes and pump the tape through a telex machine. One story of
about a thousand words could take half-an-hour just to transmit by
telex. Then came fax which was fantastic. And now Internet which
wipes all of that out.
A couple of years ago, I suggested to UPI when they were going
bankrupt and collapsing, that they should switch to e-mail. UPI
should use e-mail, instead of paying millions of dollars for
dedicated transmission lines, where reporters are sending their
stories back to UPI-Washington over dedicated lines which cost a
fortune. And use e-mail instead of UPI transmitting its news wire
to newspaper clients on dedicated lines and satellite dishes,
which also costs a fortune. Why don't they just stop all that, and
have the reporters e-mail their stories back to Washington,
virtually for free? Then UPI could e-mail the newswire to
subscribers and newspapers all over the world, also virtually for
free.
Internet is important in other ways as well. For example, I'm also
the Asia correspondent for internet magazines which you can't buy on the newsstands, but they are on-line, and they are
excellent. Internet is the future. Anyone who is addicted to words
can get all the words they need. Photographers can transmit their
photos by e-mail too, scanning them in using PhotoShop and
e-mailing them to newspapers and magazines all over the world.
Some say that the amount of information available on Internet
is mind-boggling, that there is too much information out there. Is
there?
I hope it is mind-boggling. I hope it is too much. Because what
is the opposite? That minds won't be boggled? Our minds would
essentially then be dead and mundane. The alternative is that
there would not be enough information. And then we have
information famine, information starvation. People would be
emaciated from a lack of information.
What holy grails are you still chasing in terms of people and
places?
My goal is to travel farther and farther and farther away. In
today's world that means farther off the roads, basically hiking
into the mountains. I recently did a one-week trek among the opium
tribes of northern Laos, up in the mountains where China, Laos,
and Burma meet. I trekked from the northern Lao border with China
down to the Laotian-Thai border. Three days trekking on foot
through the mountains plus another three days by riverboat on the
Nam Tha River. Going farther and farther away to get news seems to
be one of the most interesting things you can do these days.
As for people to interview, I like to talk to anyone and it
doesn't matter if they are famous or not. Celebrated people often
have the least to say. First of all, they are usually so alienated
from the real world, because they are on a lofty perch, that what
they are saying can be quite mindless. They are often so terrified
of being quoted, or appearing revealed, that they hedge
themselves. The most interesting people are the people at the
bottom of society. They have no pretense, no spin doctors and
they are usually telling you the way it really is.
There are many many things I want to do and stories I want to
report in Asia. But I don't feel like I'm in a rush or that I
have to hurry. Because you either live long enough to do
everything you want to do and that is wonderful, or you die and
because you are dead, you don't really care. So you win either
way.
If you were sitting on a trans-Pacific flight from Bangkok to
San Francisco, and you could sit beside any famous person, living
or dead, who would it be?
Well if it's a long flight, it would have to be someone like
Madonna. Especially if I'm sitting in the next seat. In addition
to her being Madonna the robo-babe, I like her because she's
pushed the envelope of free speech. Her book, titled, Sex, where's she's
naked with animals and lesbians, on one level is of course a porno
book. But on another level it's opening up what free speech and
expression are all about. And because she's Madonna, and because
it's about sex, it's sensational and it gets that message of free
speech to the widest possible audience. Also in her music, she has
tackled everything from Catholicism to teenage pregnancy to drug
use to romance, virginity and despair.
On an airplane journey that long, you'd definitely want someone
entertaining like Hunter S. Thompson or William Burroughs. Not
someone dour or miserable like, say, Fidel Castro. I've seen
Castro speak in New Delhi, the guy stands up, and for hours he
drones on about his economic policies.
I would prefer to sit next to someone who is an intellectual
powerhouse of the written word. Allen Ginsberg or Bob Dylan would
also be cool. Or Mick Jagger and Keith Richard of the Rolling
Stones. Or Suharto, simply to find out the real story of his
downfall.
You've spent a lot of your recent time reporting from Cambodia
and Indonesia. What are your thoughts on both countries?
Cambodia is doomed, and of course Indonesia is doomed. All the
money is being drained out, so no matter who takes over
those countries and no matter what their best intentions are, in
many ways it's too late. Hun Sen and Prince Ranariddh are both
trying to run Cambodia. But at the top, whatever corrupt or
dictatorial or brutal regime does win the election will be bad
news for Cambodia. Because for the Cambodians out in the
countryside, even in the best of times, their lives are still
going to be wretched. Ravaged by the American bombardment, ravaged
by communism -- and just ravaged by Cambodia's own unfortunate history and
position in Southeast Asia, surrounded by voracious neighbors -- it
is basically flat on its back, writhing in pain at the mercy of
Cambodian and foreign carpetbaggers who are raping, pillaging and
plundering. There is very little the average Cambodian can do
about it.
In Indonesia, even with Suharto gone, and his kids allegedly
banking up to 40 billion US dollars of that country's wealth, the place
has been turned into such a house of cards with foreign and
domestic loans that now as it topples there are simply too many
people, and not enough money. And now with Japan going into a
recession, Tokyo is going to be cutting back business investments
to this region, and Tokyo is also going to be cutting off some Japanese
aid to Southeast Asia. Japan was one of this region's biggest aid
donors. So there is going to be a complete financial disaster. And
China's eventual devaluation of the yuan currency will strike
another hammerblow, which is still yet to come.
Putting Suharto's head, and those of his all children, on a spike
is not going to solve the problem. Indonesians are not going to be
getting the 40 billion dollars back. In many cases, those contracts and
investments and profits were legal. The only other alternative
people were saying was to nationalize all the holdings of Suharto
and his kids. But then the foreign investors would totally freak
out and flee Indonesia because joint-ventures would be dragged
into that nationalization as well. They are doomed countries. It's
tragic, it's sad.
Any solutions to this seemingly endless spiral of despair that
Southeast Asia is going through?
As life teaches, there is no bottom. You can simply walk
through the streets of India and see that when you fall, you can
fall to the very end. At the bottom of the pits are lepers and
multiple amputees and cannibals, the whole ravages of society.
There is no guarantee of a solution. Now we are seeing the
economic ravages all across Asia. Next will be the political
ravages, which we are already beginning to see. What does that
lead to? Not only riots, as we've already gotten, and coups which
we've already had, but then territorial wars within countries, and
civil wars as they break up, and then wars among neighbors as they
fight and squabble for food, real estate, shipping rights, oil
zones etc. And once you get into country-to-country wars, you can
escalate quickly to regional wars which now can all be topped off
for dessert by a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. So we are
looking at the apocalypse. And all you can say is, stay tuned.
What's your take on Thailand, your home base?
Thailand has advantages in several ways. It is more of a
homogeneous society, it is not threatened by major racial
divisions like the racism that swept Indonesia. It's not shrugging
off a Marxist past and trying to form a market economy like
Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos. It's not under a military regime still
struggling to achieve democracy like Burma. So in many ways
Thailand is enjoying one of the most coveted positions in
Southeast Asia. Thais have the ability to feed themselves with
rice and fishing. They are also in a good hub position, even
though Southeast Asia is going down the tubes. Whatever
investment or infrastructure projects come through here, Thailand
is still sitting pretty in mainland South-East Asia as a hub with
a large domestic population. Anybody manufacturing or selling
things can sell for export, or to the Thai population.
However, there is a vast gap between the very rich and poor. They
have an unfortunate education system which does not stress the
English language which keeps them, to a large extent, out of the
information age and Internet. This makes it difficult for foreign
companies to set up here and hire Thai talent. Thailand has a lot
of problems to go through.
The average Thai also has to face an increasing crippling disaster
in terms of AIDS which continues to cut a large swath through Thai
society, even though Thailand gets high marks from UN and others
for tackling the AIDS problem. The problem is still quite
widespread and it is a time bomb that has yet to fully explode,
with potentially devastating effects. Thailand has many advantages
that other Southeast Asian countries don't have, but Thailand is
on several vulnerable stilts as it attempts to walk out of its
present economic plight.
Why do you enjoy journalism so much, why is it so much fun?
The most profound thing in journalism is that the truth will
set people free. So, in an altruistic sense, by reporting to the
best of your ability on a complicated subject, or a political
event riddled with lies and propaganda and indoctrination, by
hacking through all that and by pulling up what you believe to be
the most truthful aspects of it and having people on record as to
what they are saying or doing, this helps to set people free,
whether it's in the countries being reported on, or overseas in
countries that have an interest in this region. Theoretically, you
are helping to bring world peace, an end to starvation, better
human rights and harmony. But in many cases that's a delusion,
because a journalist writes, it's printed, the story is read, but
the page is then turned and often no one comes to the rescue. But
at least you have the motive, the possibility that you might be
helping people who are suffering.
Personally, I'm fascinated by the word. I like the fact that one of the first sentences of the Bible is, "In the beginning was the word." I
find that quite interesting. That tells you that the word can be
the source of everything. It's certainly the source of most
people's private thinking. It's obviously the source of much of
our communication because what we are discussing is in words. "In
the beginning was the word," so everything can come out of the
word. As one great author said, "Words are the most powerful drug
in the world." That's also very fascinating because normally you
wouldn't think of words as a drug. Yet when someone stands up to
give a speech or a proclamation or a declaration, it inspires
millions of people to give up their lives, to kill, to do all
kinds of things.
So the word seems to have the most power. That's attractive. And
if you can work with words you are working with a power more
influential and more valuable than working in gold and making
jewelry, or working in uranium and making nuclear bombs, or
working with DNA and shaping mutant life forms. As a humble
wordsmith you are at least working with something that has
incredible power. Whether you have the capability of succeeding is
of course part of the game.
And being a foreign correspondent enables you to not only to
engage in words, but also experience the great historical events
and dramas of the latter half of the 20th century. The wars
and revolutions and coups and earthquakes and great leaders
and criminals and disasters. You can enter into events and be
part of them. There is nothing more thrilling than experiencing
these events. It is one thing to sit back and read about them and
understand, but it's quite another to experience. There is a vast
difference between understanding the world, and experiencing the
world.
How do you keep your objectivity when the story you are
covering may be tugging at your heart strings?
Everyone has their own technique for maintaining objectivity in
an emotional crisis kind of a story where you would naturally be
drawn in. One of the easiest and most portable ways to remain
objective is to simply view the people and their statements -- that
you might be drawn into -- as completely the opposite. If you are
talking to someone and for some reason you love their cause or
you love that person or you love what they are doing, then in
your mind, look at them as the complete opposite. Imagine that
perhaps these are people that you would normally instinctively
hate or be against or be alienated from. Then question them, in
an adversarial fashion. Because a journalist must always take an
adversarial relationship with whoever they are interviewing and
whatever story it is.
If you find yourself being sucked in, just switch the context and
take the opposite view. Say to yourself, "Yes this may is true
and these people may be wonderful but what if these guys were
actually lying? What if they are actually impostors? What if they
are actually trying to trick everyone?" Then the questions you
would ask such people will come to mind and you will be able to
objectively go back through their stories and what they are
doing and their motives and the possible consequences.
And of course never take sides, no matter how attracted you might
be, because 10 years later you don't want to pick up a paper and
find the people you thought were so good and so wonderful, and
that you had a bias towards, turned out to be secretly
perpetrating atrocities. In many cases, when the revolutionary
comes to power, he becomes a pig. You have to be careful of that.
No matter how great it may sound when these people are rising up,
they may not sound so great 10 to 20 years down the road.
A journalist never knows if the person he or she is interviewing
is telling the truth or not. You would need a jury, lawyers,
cross-examination and evidence for that. We are supposed to see
people as innocent until proven guilty, but such a trial is more
than a journalist can do in an interview. So a journalist should
assume that everybody they are talking to is a potential liar and
that they are potentially trying to trick you or say something
for their own purposes. That is the purpose of the interview: to
question their answers, and question the answers to their answers.
Do you think your stories have changed things or changed the
world in some small way?
In Sri Lanka, I quoted Foreign and Interior Ministry officials
who were talking about torture and the psychological operations
they were running against Tamil guerrillas. I had a Sri Lankan
official, on the record, who explained, "Of course we torture
Tamils, how can you not? Here's a person who comes in, and you
know that this guy has planted a bomb on a railroad track or on a
highway, so what are you going to do? Stroke his head and give him
a cup of tea? Of course we are going to torture him to save human
lives." He even told Amnesty International this and tried to
explain his perspective.
When I quoted this guy, the Sri Lankan government went right
through the roof and said how dare I quote, and name, this
official. But as I explained to them later, the Foreign Ministry
invited me in and set the whole thing up, because of my requests
to talk to someone about the allegations of torture. The fact that
these allegations were finally brought one step closer to the
light through my news stories may have helped human rights.
Other possible influence of my stories: I've interviewed the Dalai
Lama three times about the plight of Tibetans in his homeland.
And we see, as he becomes more famous, more people know about the
Tibetan cause. So perhaps by focusing the media spotlight on
relatively obscure parts of the world, such as Tibet or Sri Lanka
or now Cambodia and Indonesia, the world gets a greater
understanding and doesn't see these countries in black and white,
with good guys and bad guys, but instead sees the complicated
subtleties and contradictions and hypocrisies woven through these
places. Asia doesn't need simplistic answers, such as dumping
money or bombs on their heads, to help these places.
Few foreign correspondents could ask for a more impressive resume
than Richard Ehrlich has. Let's take a look:
* April 1984 - today. Washington Times and international media.
Based in Hong Kong (April 1984 - October 1986), New Delhi (November 1986 - March 1989) and Bangkok (April 1989 - today).
Assignments have included:
- United Nations' efforts to end the war in Cambodia
- India's separatist violence in Kashmir
- Afghanistan's Islamic revolution after the Soviet withdrawal
- the Dalai Lama's struggle to free Tibet
- political and economic changes in Vietnam
- Thailand's democracy movement
- Burma's repression and rebel wars
- insurgencies on the island of Sri Lanka
- the Philippines under Corazon Aquino
- China's crushing of the Tiananmen Square protests
* January 1980 - April 1984, United Press International (UPI).
When Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan,
UPI immediately posted Ehrlich from Hong Kong to New Delhi as
their staff correspondent for South Asia.
News reported from UPI,
1980 - 1984 included:
- the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan
- Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's re-election and rule
- Pakistan's martial law under President Mohammed Zia ul-Huq
- coups in Bangladesh
- demands for democracy in Nepal
- the start of the Sikh insurgency for Punjab's independence
- the beginning of Sri Lanka's civil
Readers and book distributors can get more information read 20 pages of free excerpts -- and view six of the 25 photographs -- from the non-fiction book of investigative journalism titled, "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews
or read more of his published news stories from Asia
by visiting his website at http://www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent and he may be reached by email: animists *at* yahoo *dot* com