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.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

BOOKS

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

PERIODICALS

Publishers Weekly, July 24, 2006, review of Uncivilized Beasts and Shameless Hellions, p. 52.

Texas Monthly, September, 2006, Mike Shea, review of Uncivilized Beasts and Shameless Hellions, p. 60.

ONLINE

Written Voices Podcasts, http://writtenvoices.com/ (February 10, 2007), “John F. Burnett.”*