montanajournalism Feature, J-School, Student

Foreign Flavors: Mealtime in Vietnam

I stopped mid-bite and put down my chopstick.

“You’re eating rat?!” I stared at the meat-eating table next to me.

For the past week our group of 13 UM students had been sitting at segregated tables during lunch—vegetarians and non-vegetarians. In the past five days, the vegetarian table had almost doubled, swelling from five to nine. It was our final week in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, day 21 out of 24 of our course with UM’s climate change studies program. Our palates had been tested to the max.

Since landing in Ho Chi Minh City on Dec. 28th, 2014, all manner of dishes had graced my plate. So far, I had eaten catfish-head soup at a shrimp farmer’s house—when I dipped the ladle into the steaming pot, I came up with a severed head with eyes, whiskers, teeth and all. I had taken a huge bite out of what I thought was a sweet pastry, only to come away with a mouthful of preserved egg swathed in bean paste. Pregnant shrimp and egg-laden crabs had passed across my tongue. Spicy peppers had left my mouth singed and eyes watering for hours

Many of the dishes were actually quite good—if I could forget what I was eating. But that didn’t always work out. The mental image that I was eating crab eggs superseded the fact that they reminded me of scrambled eggs, both in texture and taste. And having a fish stare back at me didn’t exactly boost my appetite. Meal time was always an adventure. It was as if those meals represented a microcosm of my entire trip: uncomfortable, foreign, yet surprisingly good.

Now, at the table next to me, another adventure awaited: a plate of whole-roasted rats. The claws were still there. The whiskers were still there. The eyes were still there. They had not been gutted, just skinned and skewered. These rats were a local attraction. The open-air terrace where we were eating was deep within Tram Chim National Park, a wetland preserve near the border of Cambodia. In order to attract more Vietnamese tourists, the park administers were developing new ecotourism opportunities. Visitors could spend a day with a rice farmer, they could go fishing, or, as of this year, they could hunt mice and rats in the fields nearby.

Judging by the size of the rats on the table next to me, rodent hunting looked exhilarating. Naturally, I wanted to see what rat tasted like—and I was in a prime position. As a member of the vegetarian table, I could snag a bite of rat and duck back to my table, without any obligation to finish the creature.

I leaned over, “Can I try just a bite?”

The meat table generously passed over one of the roasted creatures. I grasped at a piece of the rat’s muscular leg. My chopsticks slipped on the greasy meat. I finally tore off a bite-sized piece and popped it in my mouth.

The flavors of fried chicken and intense grease exploded in my mouth. Like so many of my experiences in Vietnam, I was pleasantly taken aback, my horizons forever expanded. Rat was delicious.

Journalism graduate student Shanti Johnson spent the winter session in Vietnam, conducting research for her master’s project while taking two courses with UM’s Climate Change Studies department. She will be returning to the Mekong Delta later this year to finish reporting.

– Shanti Johnson

montanajournalism Feature, J-School, Uncategorized

Good Stories, True Stories

I remember measles.  I also remember whooping cough and the final years of the polio epidemic.  That was all part of the bad old days of our boomer childhoods.  Vaccines were part of the medical miracle that took a lot of the anxiety out of being a parent.  Fast forward half a century, and we have a population that is so accustomed to having children grow up without major illnesses that parents avoid those miracle drugs.  Maybe this is a good time to ask: what role did the media play?

If you have spent time with people suffering from autism, you know this condition beggars description.   And it is no surprise that parents’ desperation led to a frantic search for causes and cures.  It was a compelling story, for those of us who covered science in the 1990’s.  But take a look back at that coverage, and you’ll find that vaccine skeptics got a free pass in many stories.

Jon Stewart is not the only “reporter” to turn his stage http://tinyurl.com/o89he77 over to a vaccination crank.  He’s not the only one to let anti-vaccinators and misinformed parents talk about a “scientifically proven” link between vaccines and autism.  In coverage of politics or social trends, it’s fine to use the “some folks say” approach to journalism.  But when it comes to medical reporting and science in general, we need a higher bar.

This is a tough nut to crack because science is so durned slow.  And often the skeptics do turn out to be right.  Remember Galileo?  But they have to wait their turn.  Proving that vaccines did not cause autism took time.  That’s because the scientific method relies on rigor and peer review.   That schedule seldom fits with daily deadline pressures.  But the growth of the anti-vaccine movement shows that journalists need to be just as cautious as our friends in the sciences.  We should not cite baseless suspicions and conspiracy theories without giving the strongest warning signs possible.

Science and journalism have very different methods, but we have the same goal: the truth.  When it comes to science reporting, maybe journalists should let the truth get in the way of a good story

montanajournalism Feature, Opinion

Hebdo and Religion

While the J School was on winter break, our profession suffered a painful assault. There’s been a lot of smart commentary on the attacks in Paris, which did so much more than kill 17 people. For journalists, this atrocity also sparked some serious reflection about the boundary between free speech and protection of religious values.

A number of organizations, including my former employer NPR, have decided not to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. Many said, basically, they are concerned about offending their readers. This is a dangerous line of reasoning. The Constitution does protect religion from interference by government. But by tradition, and by law, we do not grant special protections to any belief system. They are all subject to criticism. I think that’s part of what the folks at “Charlie Hebdo” were, and are, trying to say. If you look at their drawings, you’ll see them skewering rabbis, the Pope and, yes, the Prophet Muhammad. Everyone is fair game.

Many societies do award special status to religious institutions. They ban speech that offends certain religious beliefs. French society does not, and jealously guards its secularism. This is one value American journalists need to uphold as well. When people demand that no one offend their beliefs, they are asking for something that US law does not sanction. Religious groups can shun blasphemers and bar them from their communities, but they cannot demand that society at large refrain from satire or critical remarks.

Journalists refrain from printing certain ideas and images all the time, because of lack of space or because they are trying to set a standard. I’m OK with that. But the Hebdo cartoons are now news—they are the news, and they should not be kept behind a veil in an effort to protect sensitive readers. Religious readers can avert their eyes, they can write letters, they can cancel their subscriptions. That’s the same right that every reader has when they encounter offensive language directed at their government or at their political party. If as a journalist you decide not to print the Hebdo cartoons, I hope you’ll do so because you think they are juvenile, or just hard to understand. But please, don’t hold back because you give special status to religion.