Reporting—and words—matter

NBC’s Harry Smith stresses human element of reporting

By Brenden Moore

Since breaking into the news business more than 40 years ago, NBC News correspondent Harry Smith has interviewed multiple presidents, covered the toppling of governments, reported from war zones and everything in between.

But it is a 1987 story about 18 Mexican migrants found dead in a boxcar near the Texas-Mexican border that stays with him to this day.

Smith, then a young CBS reporter, went to Mexico and talked with the family members of the deceased, putting a human face to lives that otherwise would have been forgotten.

“We went to the area in Mexico where these people came from and we met their brothers and sisters, their moms and wives,” Smith said. “The moms talked about the money their sons sent back. The wives said we no longer have a dirt floor, we have wood on the floor here. And we have a refrigerator. They’re actual human beings who will do the work no other Americans will do.”

Smith spent 25 years at CBS before jumping over to NBC in 2011. Though the boxcar story was very early in his tenure at the former, Smith said it still resonates with him today and perhaps shows an important aspect that can easily be lost in the daily grind of journalism: the human element.

Indeed, Smith has made a career of listening to regular people and telling the stories of their lives, something he believes is more essential than ever following an election where many journalists misjudged the mood of the country and downplayed President Donald Trump’s chances of winning.

“One of the things that happened in this election cycle was that we as media were not doing a very good job of listening to the country,” Smith said. “We were paying a lot of attention to the candidates. We were not paying attention to the actual human beings.”

Smith was among the few mainstream media members who believed Trump had a legitimate chance. Why? “Because I get out of the office,” he said. “It’s just the truth.”

“The difference is really made when you get on a plane or drive your car, go someplace and look at somebody face-to-face and hear what they have to say,” Smith said.

Though Smith mostly does feature stories nowadays, he still tries to read newspapers for at least two hours every morning to keep up with what’s going on.

“I still want to be ready. I want to be prepared. I think of the things that I’ve learned through this whole process is preparation is really key,” Smith said. “When you go out that door to do that story, you’d better be armed with as much homework as humanly possible before you get there, so you know which questions to ask, where the pitfalls are, what’s at stake. To me, that’s what it’s really about.”

Smith said that no matter if one is covering Donald Trump (Smith believes the media still hasn’t figured out how to cover the president) or the local zoning board meeting, journalists must take the assignment seriously as “people are invested.”

“The jobs you’ll often get to start will not be great, or they’ll feel like they’re not great. And … if you go to work for a small television station or a local newspaper, you get sent to the zoning board meeting. And if you think that’s a death sentence, then you should quit.”

And, of course, Smith said not to forget the human element.

“It goes back to the beginning of the conversation, if we go there with open eyes and open ears and an open mind, we might be amazed with the story we come back with,” Smith said.

 

 

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