> > >The San Jose Mercury News used to have a column written by aT. T.
> > >Nu. She used to write about her family in Vietnam, her mother's
> > >family in North Vietnam, and her father's family in South Vietnam.
> > >1: Her father was killed, and her father's family blamed her
mother's
> > >family for his death.
> > >2: At the end of the war, her father's family became regugees
> > >throughout the world. She and her mother settled in New York City
> > >where her mother always dreamed of a wonderful young Vietnamese boy
> > >for her. She said; "now, where am I find a wonderful young
Vietnamese
> > >boy in downtown Manhattan?". She became a journalist and married a
> > >white lawyer and moved to San Jose.
> > >3: She wrote her mother's brother who left a beautiful young wife
and
> > >baby boy to go to war. He fought at Dien Bien Phu, at Khe Sanh,...
> > >At the end of the war, he returned home to find an old woman and a
> > >man with a family of his own. A man who commanded thousands of the
> > >world's toughest fighting men, only to be commanded by his
> > >grandchildren and loving and enjoying his life for the first time in
> > >his life.
> >
------------------------------------------------------------------------=
---=AD-------------------------
> > Must be some crap stories written by some VC propagandists !
> Write toT. T.Nuwith the San Jose Mercury News. I believe she still
> works there.
I misspelled her name: T. T. Nhu
I didn't know she had gone back to Vietnam. She and her husband must
be divorced.
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3D3839
=46rom AJR, April/May 2005
Does No Mean No?
A former journalist says she doesn't want to be interviewed, but then
talks freely. Should the interviewer have used her remarks?
By Natalie Pompilio
Natalie Pompilio is a re****ter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
One of a re****ter's basic tasks is to keep a source talking, to get
past the initial refusals and hesitations and score an interview.
But what if the source is a former journalist who believes her
conversation with a columnist is just a friendly talk between
colleagues, not an on-the-record interview?
T.T. Nhu, a one-time San Jose Mercury News columnist who went on to
work as a press secretary for Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, says she was
reluctant to return calls from Scott Herhold, a Mercury News
columnist, but she did so out of politeness. (The pair had never met
at the newspaper.) Herhold wanted to talk about Nhu's decision to
move
back to her native Vietnam, a choice partially driven by her
disappointment over the November presidential election results. Nhu
told him she didn't want to be interviewed.
Then she proceeded to talk. In a highly quotable way. "I didn't say
the magic words 'off the record,' because I'd already said 'no' to
him," Nhu says. "Because he's a colleague in the newspaper business,
I
spoke to him frankly like I'm speaking to you. I didn't know he was
writing it down."
Herhold did take down what Nhu had to say, not hiding the fact that
he
was typing, but, he says, "I wasn't advertising it either." Herhold
devoted his November 28 column to Nhu and her decision to leave the
country. The piece was im****tant, Herhold says, because "it said
something about the way people felt after the election of George W.
Bush. I was trying to be sympathetic to her. I'm not quite sure why
she's reacted this vehemently." He acknowledged Nhu's reluctance to
talk in the first line: "T.T. Nhu really didn't want to talk to me."
Herhold then quoted Nhu as saying, "My animosity to America has been
growing. America is such an incredible bully. It's doing the same
things in Iraq that it did in Vietnam. America always comes down on
the wrong side of things."
"It's bullying coupled with the vast ignorance of its people, who are
anesthetized by television," he further quoted Nhu. "It's all about
Halliburton, it's all about oil, it's all about Israel... People miss
the subtleties, the nuances. All they can see is freedom on the
march."
Nhu, who learned she had been the focus of the column when she saw a
copy of the newspaper in an air****t trash bin, was outraged. She
fired
off a letter to the editors, calling herself the "unwilling subject"
of the column, pointing out two factual errors and saying that "it
would be appropriate for the paper to publish this letter, without
comment in a prominent place noting that the paper accepts the
corrections and that it and Herhold regret his errors and his
inappropriate use of information received that he knew that it was
intended to be off the record."
The Mercury News did publish a correction for the two factual errors.
But not the letter.
Herhold says he did nothing wrong. (Nhu admits that he quoted her
accurately.) Although Nhu initially said she did not want to talk, "I
stayed on the line and asked questions," Herhold says. "I did not say
this was off the record or anything of the sort."
"One of the things you have to understand when interviewing is, 'What
is the sophistication of the person on the other end of the line?'"
he
says. "A lot of the time, you give them a break because they're not
sophisticated [about journalism]. I think T.T. Nhu is plenty
sophisticated."
Herhold disagrees with Nhu's argument that she was a private citizen
making a private decision to move out of the country. Her positions
as
a columnist and a press officer make her "of some high profile," he
says. And, he says, Nhu signed off the conversation by saying
something he thought implied it was OK to write about her: "The sense
of it was, 'Take that for what you will.' To me, that was a clear
understanding that she knew what I was doing."
(Herhold's editor, Rebecca Salner, left AJR a message saying she
believed an interview with Herhold was sufficient for this story.)
Mercury News general assignment re****ter Dan Reed, a friend of Nhu's,
says he initially encouraged her to talk to Herhold, but she insisted
her decision to move was private--not something she wanted to discuss
publicly. That's why Reed was surprised to see the column. And when
he
heard Nhu's version of events, he was also upset.
"It struck me that if it were on the record, he would have been able
to more freely fact-check things. The fact that mistakes were made
suggests to me, again suggests, that perhaps he was not being
forthcoming about the fact that he was going to write this," Reed
says. "If he was not being sneaky, he would have interviewed her
directly. I don't think he did that."
Edward Wasserman, who teaches journalism ethics at Wa****ngton and Lee
University, says Nhu's story provided "a way of making a point the
columnist wanted to make so it was a very attractive column to
write."
But the somewhat incendiary tone of Nhu's words would have concerned
him if he were editing the piece. "I think I would be somewhat
concerned that this person has kind of unburdened herself as if to a
colleague. I would be a little bit concerned that she was certainly
being imprudent."
At the same time, he says, "I'm sympathetic. He didn't have a clear
embargo. He didn't have a clear no-go... She didn't use the magic
code
words"--off the record-- "so the questions then become, 'Was there
any
ambiguity in his mind?' and 'Where is it that you can, in the course
of an interview, confirm this is on the up and up? You can ask for a
spelling, you can verify details, the kind of thing that makes it
clear to the person you're talking to that you're trying to get the
facts right. It seems to me the most he can be reproached for is
choosing to benefit from the ambiguity."
Paul McMasters, First Amendment ombudsman for the Freedom Forum's
First Amendment Center, agrees it's the journalist's responsibility
to
ensure that interview subjects know whatever they say could end up in
print.
"The public should assume a journalist is never off-duty. The
journalist should always make clear that they're taking notes and are
prepared to write a story or a column based on the conversation going
on at that moment," McMasters says. "That's why there should be a
sign
in the newsroom that everyone sees once or twice a day, 'Make sure
both sides are playing by the same rules during an interview.'"
Speaking generally, McMasters says every journalist has been "in that
complicated terrain where one side thinks one thing and the other
side
thinks another. Most journalists go by the creed 'When in doubt,
leave
it out.'.. On the other hand, I think every journalist has been in a
situation where a source knew fully well what he or she was saying,
regretted it and tried to ****ft the blame to the journalist."
Nhu, who has now moved to Vietnam, maintains she was "ambushed." She
considered legal action against the newspaper but decided not to
pursue it since she was leaving the country. What she really wants,
she says, is an apology, in print.
"I want the paper to acknowledge the fact that when someone says
'no,'" she says, "they should respect that decision."
T.T. Nhu
Ha noi maven
Viet Nam
Contact Directly
Get introduced through a connection
Past Press Secretary to Mayor Jerry Brown at City of Oakland
columnist/re****ter at San Jose Mercury News
Education University of California, Berkeley
Connections 7 connections Industry Writing and Editing
---------------------------------------------------------------------------=
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T.T. Nhu's Experience
Press Secretary to Mayor Jerry Brown
City of Oakland
(Government Agency; 1001-5000 employees; Government Administration
industry)
2003 -- 2004 (1 year)
columnist/re****ter
San Jose Mercury News
(Newspapers industry)
1987 -- 2003 (16 years)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------=
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T.T. Nhu's Education
University of California, Berkeley
---------------------------------------------------------------------------=
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T.T. Nhu's Contact Settings
Interested In:
career op****tunities consulting offers new ventures expertise
requests
reference requests getting back in touch
---------------------------------------------------------------------------=
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Note 5: Tran Tuong Nhu is a columnist for the San Jose Mercury New
and
writes on a wide range of subjects, especially about changing
communities and mores in California. Born in Vietnam and educated in
the US, Nhu returned to Vietnam during the Vietnam War, where she was
a social worker and worked for NBC News in Saigon. She is currently
assisting the Canadian Broadcasting Cor****ation with a do***entary in
Vietnam. Nhu also serves on the boards of Asian Women United and
Global Exchange and has received a number of awards for community
service. Back
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