Kevin Sites on why he left network news for the Net
In an interview with Howard Kurtz on CNN, Kevin Sites discusses why he left network news to become the first news correspondent for yahoo.com and spend a year filing multimedia dispatches from around the world.
"The Internet has incredible power itself," Sites said. "I went to working for a network that had about 10 million viewers a night on a very good night, 'Nightly News With Brian Williams,' and now I have the potential of reaching 400 million people every month. And it's transnational.
"You know, my audience comes from everywhere in the world, and it also transcends boundaries by age, by country, by gender. The impact that I can have using the Internet and using the multimedia platform could be huge."
Here's the full transcript:
HOWARD KURTZ: Kevin Sites is a veteran network foreign correspondent who has covered conflicts in Colombia, Afghanistan and Iraq for CNN and NBC. But in September, Sites abandoned television for the Internet, becoming the first news correspondent for yahoo.com.Now he's spending a year filing multimedia dispatches from hot spots around the word. He writes a blog, posts video and photographs, and holds live chats with his readers. He's been to Sudan, Somalia, and Iraq, and still plans to travel to Chechnya, Kashmir and the Korean Peninsula, among others.
Kevin Sites joins us now from Beirut, Lebanon. Welcome.
KEVIN SITES, YAHOO NEWS: Hi, Howard. Thanks for having me.
KURTZ: Why give up the power of TV to run around and post things on the Internet?
SITES: Well, when you think about it, the Internet has incredible power itself. I went to working for a network that had about 10 million viewers a night on a very good night, "Nightly News With Brian Williams," and now I have the potential of reaching 400 million people every month. And it's transnational.
You know, my audience comes from everywhere in the world, and it also transcends boundaries by age, by country, by gender. The impact that I can have using the Internet and using the multimedia platform could be huge.
KURTZ: Well, the move certainly seems to have liberated you in the hair department, but tell me a story...
SITES: Thanks very much.
KURTZ: ... that you've done that you couldn't have done for a network because there wouldn't have been any market for it.
SITES: Well, just the very idea of covering every conflict zone in the world within one year is something that the network executives probably, you know, would have shied away from completely or laughed me out of their office. The fact that Yahoo! has decided to go ahead with this project says a lot about the medium, as well as their interest in really shedding some light on under-reported stories, stories that just aren't getting told anywhere else.
So the very project itself, the places that I've been, the first stop I made was Somalia. When's the last time anybody reported from Somalia? It's been a long time. But there is so much going on there, so much that impacts U.S. and world interests, that we can't afford to ignore these places.
KURTZ: Which leads me to this larger question. Do you think that the network news divisions today really care about international news other than Iraq?
SITES: Not to a great degree. I think there is certainly...
KURTZ: Why is that?
SITES: ... self interest.
Well, you know, first of all the medium itself has a limited amount of time. You can tell a two-minute story, but you're competing with all the other stories in the world that day. So you want to take the most important, you feel, to your viewing audience. And that doesn't necessarily explain the background of that story, it doesn't explain the other events that happen in there. That's why we've been subjected to so much criticism in Iraq about covering just the bombings those days or the deaths that occurred, rather than looking at the full perspective. There's a lot of things that happen in Iraq, a lot of negative things, obviously. But there are some positive stories, smaller stories, and that's the idea with the "Hot Zone," is that we cover the story in front of and behind the conflict. The small stories that when strung together, I think, create a more accurate picture.
KURTZ: Right.
SITES: And that, added with a multimedia dimension, the fact that we use video, text dispatches, still photos, audio and interactivity, all of those things, if you get one aspect of the story, maybe more nuance to the text side, but you can also get the visual image through the video side. Basically, we're providing all the broadcast mediums.
KURTZ: On a personal basis, what draws you to these war zones and places of heartrending poverty? It sounds like pretty depressing work in some ways.
SITES: Well, you know, you can look at it that way. You know, there is a lot of gloom and doom in what I have to report. Human suffering is a horrible thing to face every day. But I am also seeing an incredible triumph of the human spirit everywhere I go.
There has been a common thread in the stuff that I have been reporting out there, and the common thread is that people do overcome the harshest conditions that they experience from Sudan to Somalia to Iraq. Despite the fact that horrible things happen in their life, hardships that are unimaginable for us in so many ways, they can overcome them. We can all overcome them. And these are important lessons for us as human beings.
KURTZ: Now, you recently went back to Falluja, where one year ago, while working for NBC, you shot some pretty controversial footage which we'll put up on the screen here of a wounded Iraqi dying inside a mosque. The Marine in that case was ultimately not charged.
Did you get a lot of adverse reaction from the public over your role in that shooting?
SITES: Oh, incredibly so. You know, I received 500 death threats, you know, on a daily basis for almost a year after this happened. And it was astounding to me to some extent. And part of that was our problem in the media.
We haven't done a very good job at educating the American public about our role in society. Our role is to find and report the truth. To minimize the harm, yes, that's a possibility that we can do, but also to be independent.
We are not organs of the government, we are not organs of the media. We are independent. And we're to provide this perspective to show both the good and bad that happen in war. And both happen in war, especially in Iraq. It's a very complex situation.
KURTZ: Did you have...
SITES: And we need to be able to do this because people have to take responsibility for all aspects of what goes on in their name, both good and bad.
KURTZ: Just briefly, did you have a hard time finding work after that incident?
SITES: No. I had lots of offers.
I had offers from all three networks, to be honest with you, both as a freelancer and a staff position. But the fact is, part of what happened to me with that mosque incident made me take the Yahoo! job. I had to explain myself through my blog at the time. I had a blog, kevinsites.net.
And I was able to provide the nuance and further aspects and details that weren't part of my television report. And in doing so, a lot of people began to understand exactly what happened in that mosque and began to understand what the actions were that I took in reporting that.
KURTZ: Kevin Sites, I suspect you'll soon have some competition on the photo blogging front if this becomes more popular. Thanks very much for joining us.
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2 comments about 'Kevin Sites on why he left network news for the Net'Kevin Sites is nothing more then a mouthpiece for the liberal left news media. This guy thinks he can go in film our soldiers like he did and be a hero? Think again. Is that why he is going into Iraq again to put our soldiers in extreme danger again. How come Al Jazeera hasn't hired him. He seems to really favor terrorists and has no problem painting them as "victims".
I certainly hope he doesn't think that if he ever comes back to the US he will get a hero's welcome, because he won't.
Posted by blogerchik at January 3, 2006 1:11 AM
Kevin is a true journalist. The world needs more unbiased reporters like him.
It's not easy to do what he does, and you shouldn't blame him for it.
Posted by ellis at January 21, 2007 7:48 AM
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