Burnett, John F.

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Burnett, John F.

PERSONAL: Married, wife’s name Virginia (a professor); children: three. Education: University of Texas Austin, B.A., 1978.

ADDRESSES: Home— Austin, TX. Office— National Public Radio, 635 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20001.

CAREER: Journalist. Reporter for newspapers in Texas, 1979-83; United Press International, Guatemala City, Guatemala, reporter, 1983-86; National Public Radio, Washington, DC, southwest correspondent, 1986-2004, national desk correspondent, 2004—. Poynter Institute for Media Studies, faculty member, 1997 and 2002, and ethics fellow, 2006.

AWARDS, HONORS: Ford Foundation grant, 1997; silver prize, New York Festivals, for radio documentary “The Oil Century”; National Headliner Award, 2003, for investigative reporting; Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, 2003, for coverage of Iraq war; Edward R. Murrow Award, Radio-Television News Directors Association, 2004, for investigative reporting.

WRITINGS

Uncivilized Beasts and Shameless Hellions: Travels with an NPR Correspondent, Rodale (Emmaus, PA), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS: John F. Burnett, a National Public Radio (NPR) reporter based in Austin, Texas, is the author of Uncivilized Beasts and Shameless Hellions: Travels with an NPR Correspondent. In the work, Burnett chronicles his thirty-year career as a newsman, during which he witnessed atrocities committed during a Guatemalan uprising, investigated abuse in the American crop insurance system, reported on the 1993 federal government raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Texas, attended a “Death to America” rally in Peshawar, Pakistan, after 9/11, and served as an embedded reporter with the First Marine Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In a section on the Hurricane Katrina disaster, he addresses the role of the journalist as “detached chronicler,” writing, “Purists argue that journalists should never participate in a story—period. We bear witness to history; we don’t step into it. But it’s not that simple. We don’t leave our humanity at home when we cover a disaster. Anytime I, as a journalist, record a person in misery and then walk away, I feel like the photographer who queasily described his role, saying, ‘We came to take our trophies and left.’ There’s something unbecoming about that behavior, particularly if we can offer a small kindness without neglecting our job.” According to a critic in Publishers Weekly, “This absorbing review of newsworthy events and intriguing people by an award-winning reporter is also a subtle manual about journalism.”