A reporter for NPR, Mary Louise Kelly, interviewed United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the firing of former Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovich.
Among others, Kelly asked Pompeo whether he believed he owed Yovanovich an apology for not defending her. The secretary said: “I’ve defended every single person on this team…I’ve done what’s right for every single person on this team.”
Based on Kelly’s account, after she asked him to elaborate on specific acts that showed he defended the the former ambassador, Pompeo ended the interview and left the room glaring at her. After a while, an aide asked Kelly to go into Pompeo’s room, with specific instructions not to bring her recorder. He then shouted at her for about the same amount of time as the interview itself had lasted.
He asked her whether she thought Americans cared about Ukraine. “He used the f-word in that sentence, and many others.” The secretary also gave her a blank map and asked her to point where Ukraine was.
In a later statement, Pompeo gave the impression that Kelly had mistakenly pointed to Bangladesh, instead.
He never denied cursing at her, but accused her or lying to him twice: “First, last month, in setting up our interview and, then again yesterday, in agreeing to have our post-interview conversation off the record.”
“It is shameful that this reporter chose to violate the basic rules of journalism and decency,” he said. “This is another example of how unhinged the media has become in its quest to hurt President Trump and this Administration.”
Media here in the Philippines are no strangers to pushback and retaliation from the powerful when their mighty feathers are ruffled. Government officials who act boorishly when a journalist’s—or a media organization’s—questioning or reporting are not favorable to them only reveal their insecurities and their own unhinged state. It is precisely the duty of the press to ask uncomfortable questions, to criticize when needed, and to point out lapses in governance. All these seek not to bring down anybody, but to constructively help officials to lead better.
Those who cannot stand dissenting views merely expose their despotic tendencies. This should not be taken lightly by the people that put them in power in the first place.