Ethics Newsline®

Ray Suarez, senior correspondent of “The NewsHour,” joined that staff in October 1999. He had been the host of National Public Radio’s call-in news program “Talk of the Nation” since 1993. Suarez has 25 years of varied experience in the news business. He talked by telephone with Paula Mirk, vice president of Education at the Institute, on November 11 from his office in Washington, D.C.

Mirk: As a result of September 11, what do you hope will change for the better around the world in the next decade?

Suarez: As someone who’s worked their entire adult life in the news business, I’m finding that the events of September 11 have opened up possibilities for Americans to be more curious and perhaps better informed about things going on in the rest of the world, and how their country relates to and lives with the rest of the world. I don’t know whether to be optimistic or not, but certainly I’m watching as people try to grapple with the history of central Asia and try to understand Islam better. I was interviewing an Islamic bookstore manager, who was telling me about how many more Qur’ans [Korans] have been going out the door than usual. I think, along with the tragedy of it, there may actually be some growth, too.

I think a better-informed public makes a better-informed electorate, and the constant dialogue between people in government makes for a government that better understands the will of the people and has the consent of the governed. These are all cherished American ideals. But for much of the last 50 years, Americans’ own willingness to trust others to handle these things has led the foreign policy to be carried on just by the government, with very little input from the people. A populace that’s more ready to engage on these issues will, I think, live up to American ideals better.

Mirk: As a result of September 11, what do you fear might change for the worse around the world over the next decade?

Suarez: I think there are going to be terrible economic troubles. Because of parochial, local concerns, progress that we have seen toward trade and aid might not continue, because there’s this feeling that we have to watch our own nest. Charity begins at home. [But] there’s this instinct to reel it in a little bit when there’s so much risk around in the world. [What I fear is] just the opposite of what I was talking about in the first question: It’s very possible, with a worldwide community that suddenly becomes more risk-averse, that shakier lenders are perhaps less willing to talk about seeing heavy indebtedness in a new way. Governments that are revenue-strapped suddenly don’t see a heavy engagement in other parts of the world as a priority. And those kinds of things tend to send out lots of ripples. These things don’t happen in isolation.

I get a lot of mail here, and what I’m seeing is that at the same time as there’s a yearning to understand why America was attacked, there is also a dismay with the rest of the world, and a feeling that the United States is on its own. And that tends to dampen down people’s more generous instincts — not necessarily in giving anything, or in extending resources, but generous instincts in a way of looking at the rest of the world as a place where America and Americans need to be concerned, aware, engaged.

Mirk: As things unfold, what are two or three indicators that you’ll be looking for to see whether your hopes or your fears are more likely to come to pass?

Suarez: I’m watching the judicial system and law enforcement. I think whenever there’s a new legal dispensation, which now we have with the antiterrorism act, you have to see how that works in practice. I know what the intention is in the black-and-white letters on the page. [But] we’ve got to see how it works.

I think it’s fascinating that [Mexican President] Vicente Fox’s visit [to the United States] was just a bit before these terrorist attacks. Now it seems like it was years ago. Those ideas that were being floated by President Fox and getting a reception in the Bush administration about finding a new relationship with Mexico? That seems very much ancient history now, as our focus has turned east to America’s NATO allies, and to the war in central Asia. Now there are four-hour waits at the [Mexican] border, and people who’ve had their asylum requests approved can’t even get into the country. So that bears watching, too. Just how open a society is America ready to be after this?

Mirk: I know you’ve spoken at educational forums. I wonder if you have any thoughts or comments about how kids are making sense of this, or what your hopes and fears for the future are in terms of the next generation?

Suarez: Well, for better or worse, it’s created a lot of curiosity in my own kids, who are watching the news more, reading the paper more. Of course, that’s not scientific research, that’s empirical research — anecdotal. But I talked to my [ten-year-old] daughter’s class at school, and this was front and center and foremost on their minds. A great deal of curiosity about [central Asia], about the sufferings of common people there, about what it was like to be in lower Manhattan in the aftermath of the attacks. A lot of concern about the war, and how long it’s going to last. Those kinds of things, very forthrightly stated, very well-put questions. I came away reassured by that. For all their concerns, they had a handle on it — they were going to make sense out of it. They weren’t just going to absorb free-floating anxiety, and be hand-wringing and anxious without any recourse to trying to understand.

I’ve been traveling a lot lately, and I think one of the more interesting parts of this whole experience is how affected by it people are in other parts of the country. Far away from the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and far from New Jersey post offices where people get anthrax, there is a constant concern. It’s not paralyzing, it’s not blinding, but it runs like a thread through everything they say and everything they do. Because of where I’m based and what I’ve been doing lately, I’ve been so concerned with Washington and New York, and it’s interesting to see how it’s being understood in other places in the country.

Mirk: And do you interpret that as a sign of the times?

Suarez: I don’t think we could have a national experience that was the sole property of people in two cities. I think there had to be a way for other people to hook into it, and their inflamed curiosity and their concern is their way of staying connected to an event that, when you’re in Portland, Oregon, seems very far away.

Mirk: And you’ve been back to New York, I take it? Is Brooklyn a different place now, in your opinion?

Suarez: Yes, I was almost on a plane this morning to go cover the crash [of American Airlines flight 587 on Long Island], but we changed direction with the fall of Kabul. I think it’s a more sober mood that people are in. They’re getting back to their lives, and doing the things they have to do every day, but there are constant reminders of what’s going on. It’s impossible to block it out of your mind, even before yesterday morning. There was no way that you could remain removed from everything that was happening.