National Public Radio's Julie McCarthy
begins her day thinking about news.
Before brushing her teeth, she checks the
overnight accumulation of e-mails, and reads the morning papers
over a glass of orange juice and a carton of yogurt. The phone
calls from colleagues and sources begin to pour in, and then
it's time to call NPR in Washington, D.C., and send the daily
brief to the foreign desk. Then she's ready to cover a
day's worth of news.
Julie McCarthy has been covering Africa,
Europe, and the Middle East for NPR since 1999. She filed
reports from Iran during the war in Afghanistan, covered the
Israeli incursion into the West Bank, and served as NPR's lead
reporter assigned to investigate
al-Qaida following the 9/11 attacks.
"Reporting on world events, I have
learned how elusive and complicated the truth can be;
discovering it means listening to different, sometimes
repellent, points of view," she says.
"Reporting requires precision of language and
sensitivity to the prism of culture."
McCarthy served as NPR's first staff
correspondent in Tokyo, where her reportage included the Kobe
earthquake of 1995 and the 50th anniversary of the atomic
bombing in Hiroshima. She was a Jefferson Fellow at the
Hawaii-based East-West Center in 1994, and received the
organization's Mary Morgan Hewett Award for the Advancement of
Journalism for her coverage of Japan.
Over the years other awards came her way:
a Peabody, two Overseas Press Club Awards, and an Ohio
State Award. Most recently,
she was given a fellowship at Stanford for
the 2002-2003 academic year where she studied the Middle East
in preparation for her
current assignment as NPR's
Jerusalem Correspondent.
McCarthy says she became a journalist to
"swim in the stream of history." She studied
history, political science, and literature at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. She graduated in 1979 and went on to
earn a law degree from Antioch School of Law. "I
wanted to either pursue a career as a criminal defense attorney
or prosecutor, or be Nina Totenberg," she enthuses.
After law school she went to Washington,
D.C., in the early 1980s. There she worked for a law firm
and spent some time running political campaigns. While in
Washington, she decided to try out broadcasting and landed her
first job in radio at WAMU-FM. After a stint there, she
began working at NPR in 1985.
She describes herself as an "NPR
baby." "I came with the furniture," she
says. On the day she began, NPR launched Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon. She remembers filing a
brief report for the initial show on the 1985 gubernatorial
races.
"There was magic in radio and an
intimacy that you cannot find in any other medium," she
says. "I knew I wanted to be a part of it."
When McCarthy is not writing or filing a
report, she enjoys gardening, cycling, swimming, and playing
the violin.
As McCarthy reports from locations abroad,
she says she has learned the importance of being humble.
She describes journalism as the way a student of history
and politics makes a difference.
"Humility deepens empathy; empathy
enlarges understanding; and understanding is the beginning of
truth, which is what we seek as journalists," she says.
"What we need is the courage to be humble in the
world today if we are going to live in peace."
