‘I’ve cried a lot’: PBS Ukraine correspondent Nick Schifrin discusses empathy in journalism

ALLIE CAMPBELL Contributor

PBS NewsHour’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent Nick Schifrin joined the College of Communication and Information as keynote speaker for the International Reporting Symposium on Friday afternoon to discuss his experiences covering the war in Ukraine and provide advice for journalism students on resilience.

After an introduction from doctoral student Teodora Trifonova, Schifrin emphasized the importance of asking the right question to shine light on a person’s trauma without exploiting it. In a story, Schifrin showed how the simple statement “Tell me about your son” to a grieving Ukrainian mother captured the humanity and dignity that Russian forces stole from an innocent boy.

He detailed the struggles and pain that came with telling stories in such broken parts of the world. From Pakistan and Afghanistan where he lived for four years, to Ukraine, China and several others that he visited, each of them brings a new emotional injury.

“Each trip is a scar that needs years to heal,” Schifrin said.

In 2014, he reported live from Gaza in the middle of a two-month war with Israel. He was so close to the explosions that they drowned out his own voice on a broadcast. He received a text from his mother who had been watching, which read “You cannot go before I do.”

Schifrin said the reason he is able to justify the emotional trauma, lost relationships and pain that his job as a war correspondent causes his loved ones is the purpose behind his work.

“(We) find the trauma … so we can convey it in a way that is both meaningful and memorable to audiences many thousand miles away,” Schifrin said.

The award-winning journalist’s transparency allowed the audience to see his humanity. He noted how important it is for journalists to keep themselves open to emotion. Despite the six wars that he has covered, he still feels immense pain for the people he meets.

“I’ve cried a lot in interviews over the years,” Schifrin said.

He then told the story of his trip to a small city in Ukraine called Balakliya this past October. The Ukrainian police took him to see a former police station in the middle of the town that the Russians had taken over to imprison Ukrainian people. He described this experience as a “tour into the heart of darkness.” One of the prisoners had engraved the Lord’s prayer on the cell wall, including the words “deliver us from evil.”

An audience member asked Schifrin if he spoke any other languages and if it is difficult to communicate with the people he’s interviewed. He said that while he spoke Hindi and Arabic when he was abroad, he doesn’t think it is necessary to speak the same language in order to communicate with someone with the help of a translator. Schrifin believes that if he looks someone in the eye and demonstrates a willingness to understand what they are going through, then the communication is natural.

He then led a panel discussion with four University of Tennessee scholars whose expertise lie in Ukraine, Russia and Eastern Europe in a discussion about the war in Ukraine.

Elis Vllasi, a senior research associate at the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, spoke about the 20% of Ukraine, about 42,000 square miles, that is currently occupied by Russia, which is equivalent in size to the state of Tennessee.

Natalie Rice, who works with CCI Research and Innovation Center on disinformation research and warfare techniques, then spoke about the 70% of Russian people that are in support of the war effort and have been born and raised under the misinformation spread by Russian state media. Many of the older generation likely sees Putin as a source of support, so it would be very difficult to reframe this narrative.

Nataliia Yakushko, a doctoral student in the Haslam College of Business who is from Crimea, discussed the hope that still lives within the people of Ukraine. She said they all believe in their country and they believe they will successfully take back occupied territory from Russia. She also raised the importance of journalists at this crucial time in the war.

“It’s important to show what’s actually happening,” Yakushko said.

When Lindsay Young Professor of History Vejas Liulevicius was asked about the success of Ukraine, he discussed the ways that the nation has already defied expectations.

“There’s a way in which Ukraine already has won and had a huge effect and that is to frustrate a lot of the experts,” Liulevicius said.

“Whether political experts or military experts were convinced that Kyiv would fall immediately, the leadership would scatter and some new structure would be built entirely at the whim of Putin.”

The panel members each made clear that the current war between Ukraine and Russia is being framed by the people suffering through it as a war between good and evil.