Michael Parks |
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No Facts, No Plans Q: What were your first impressions of Saigon when you arrived? My predecessor there for The Baltimore Sun said “There are two things to remember here.” I said, “Well, what are they?” He said, “The first is there are no facts. You’ll get lots of things that look like facts but you’ll never know which one is real.” I said, “What’s the second thing? I mean because facts are what reporters need, that’s what we use.” He said. “You can make no plans.” Both turned out to be largely true. Countries in war are chaotic and certainly that was true of South Vietnam. Less true of North Vietnam, their chaos was a result of lots of bombs falling on them but South Vietnam was just pretty chaotic. Couldn’t make plans, one could travel rather freely but you weren’t sure if you could get back. You never knew whether going up the road was going to be safe. No facts. So who, who’s in charge of this village? The government? The Vietcong? You could go there in the morning and get one answer and in the afternoon get another answer, and you wouldn’t know. But it was a very lively place. The Vietnamese, even in all this chaos, were doing stuff all the time. Very resourceful people, very resourceful. It seemed that nothing went to waste. Everything was used somehow and the food was good.
Object Description
Profile of | Michael Parks |
Title | A Life Apart from Vietnam |
Profile bio | The Wrong War |
Profiler bio | Michael Parks is a journalist originally from Detroit, Michigan, whose work as a foreign correspondent took him to Saigon, Moscow, Johannesburg, Beijing, and Hong Kong. He received a Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting in 1987 for his coverage of South Africa. He worked as the editor of the Los Angeles Times for three years and helped launch the “Reading by 9” program to help children read at grade level. Parks has been a member of the USC community since 2000 and was director of the Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism from 2002 until 2008. He was appointed interim director at Annenberg in June of 2013. |
Subject | Kaitlyn Mullin is a junior and a double major in Biological Sciences and Print and Digital Journalism. Renzhi Yu is a senior and a double major in Business Administration and Accounting. Sofia Shoffner is a sophomore and a double major in International Relations and Spanish. Jalen Cope-Fitzpatrick is a sophomore and an International Relations major. |
Interviewee |
Vietnam Vietnam war news communism viet cong draft |
Profiled by | Mullin, Kaitlyn; Yu, Renzhi; Schoffner, Sofia; Fitzpatrick, Jalen Cope |
Profile date | 2014-04-12 |
Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Detroit; Saigon; Ho Chi Minh City; Hanoi; Moscow; Johannesburg; Beijing; Hong Kong |
Geographic subject (county) | Wayne |
Geographic subject (state) | Michigan; Kentucky |
Geographic subject (country) | USA; Vietnam; Russia; South Africa; China; Korea, Laos |
Coverage date | 1972 |
Publisher (of the original version) | http://anotherwarmemorial.com/michael-parks/ |
Type |
images video |
Format | 1 image; 8 video files; 8 transcripts |
Language | English |
Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
Part of collection | An Other War Memorial -- Memories of the American War in Viet Nam |
Filename | parksmichaels |
Description
Profile of | Michael Parks |
Title | No Facts, No Plans |
Format | 1 transcript, 1p. |
Filename | parksmichaels-vid1_tr1.pdf |
Full text | No Facts, No Plans Q: What were your first impressions of Saigon when you arrived? My predecessor there for The Baltimore Sun said “There are two things to remember here.” I said, “Well, what are they?” He said, “The first is there are no facts. You’ll get lots of things that look like facts but you’ll never know which one is real.” I said, “What’s the second thing? I mean because facts are what reporters need, that’s what we use.” He said. “You can make no plans.” Both turned out to be largely true. Countries in war are chaotic and certainly that was true of South Vietnam. Less true of North Vietnam, their chaos was a result of lots of bombs falling on them but South Vietnam was just pretty chaotic. Couldn’t make plans, one could travel rather freely but you weren’t sure if you could get back. You never knew whether going up the road was going to be safe. No facts. So who, who’s in charge of this village? The government? The Vietcong? You could go there in the morning and get one answer and in the afternoon get another answer, and you wouldn’t know. But it was a very lively place. The Vietnamese, even in all this chaos, were doing stuff all the time. Very resourceful people, very resourceful. It seemed that nothing went to waste. Everything was used somehow and the food was good. |
Archival file | Volume6/parksmichaels-vid1_tr1.pdf |