Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Investigative Journalism in the Digital Age with Emily Kassie

Episode Date: December 31, 2021

In this episode, Sharon is joined by Emily Kassie, an Emmy and Peabody nominated investigative journalist and filmmaker, to discuss the highly contentious U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years. During her career, Emily has covered conflict, abuse, and fracture points in the U.S and internationally for PBS Newshour, the New York Times, Netflix, Frontline, Time, the Guardian, and more. In 2021, she traveled to Afghanistan and smuggled into Taliban territory with fellow PBS NewsHour journalist Jane Ferguson to develop a six-part documentary series called “The Longest War,” detailing the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Emily answers pressing questions about Taliban peace talks, military equipment left in Afghanistan, targeted killings, the history of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, why Kabul fell so quickly, and what life is like under Taliban rule today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, my friends. Thank you so much for joining me today. Today we're chatting with Emily Cassie, who is an Emmy and Peabody Award nominated investigative journalist. And she does work for places like the New York Times, Netflix, PBS, and she has a six part series out about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. I think you are absolutely going to value hearing her perspective on the role of investigative journalism in a democracy and also about her perspective on this very complicated, nuanced, difficult topic of the United States' involvement in the country of Afghanistan. So let's dive into this conversation. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Emily, I'm so happy to have you here today. I know that people are absolutely going to

love hearing your perspective on some of the issues we're going to be discussing, and they're very much going to enjoy watching your documentary work. So can you just tell us a little bit more about how you got started and tell us a little bit more about the topics that interest you and what you're doing right now? Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me, Sharon. I started being interested in storytelling and journalism and documentary at a very young age. I made my first film when I was 13 years old about gay kids in religious high schools and what that experience was like for them. I think I was drawn to the closest injustice I saw in my life, which was that these kids who I was really good friends with, I was a

big theater kid. And so I had a really queer community and they felt like they were being mistreated or left out or not treated fairly by the schools that they were in or their peers. And so I was interested in helping them tell that story. And I found that that was really empowering, that it could change people's minds, that they had a reaction. And it played in student film festivals in Toronto, where I grew up. student film festivals in Toronto, where I grew up. And that kind of propelled me into thinking, oh, wow, this is a really powerful tool for impact. And I shortly after saw Shake Hands with the Devil, which was about the Canadian general, Romeo Dallaire, who was in Rwanda and

refused to leave when the genocide was happening there. And it was really the first exposure I had had to kind of mass atrocity outside of the Holocaust and kind of what we learned about World War II and World War I. And I was really taken aback that this was a current history. This was a recent history. And so I started traveling to East Africa when I was 15, wanting to learn more about other cultures and societies and understand how much bigger the world was outside of my own bubble and what I could do to be a part of it. I think born as a white woman in Canada that afforded me an unbelievable amount of privilege in the world. And so my first thought was, what can I do to extend that? What is my role and responsibility to help lift the voices of others and to use that to do some sort of good or impact and storytelling and filmmaking and journalism ended up being the way that I went there. I'm so curious about your parents' reactions to your desire. Like I want to

make documentary films and I would like to travel to the places where these types of atrocities are occurring. How can we make that happen? Like, what was that conversation like with your parents and what, what was their impression of your desire to follow that story? Well, I'm lucky to have two really amazing parents who care a lot about what's going on in the world. And so they understood the impulse and I kind of eased them into it. So the first trip that I made, I went to Kenya and Tanzania. When I got to college, I started spending my summers in Rwanda and Northern Uganda, and I gave them and close friends and family kind of detailed descriptions of what was going on and assured them of safety

precautions. And then eventually as my career went on, worked them up to Afghanistan and the Syrian border and all these other places where of course they were, they were nervous, but I think that they were behind this idea of, of trying to use whatever skillset I had to, to make impact and help tell these stories. So I was really lucky to have parents that were really supportive. Did they take you on your first trips there? No. And what did, no, how did first trips there? No.

No. How did you get there? Did you go with an organization? Yeah. My first trip, I found an organization based in Toronto that was doing kind of development work over there. So that was kind of my first opportunity to go to be part of kind of more of a younger group of students going over and learning about development. And honestly, it was really eye-opening, not just because I was immersed in a different culture, but also understanding

the kind of problematic nature of bringing like a young group of white kids over to an African nation and being like, we're here to help. And that really also helped me understand the nuance of what it meant to try to do this work and the communities that I was entering into and think about the ethics of that and the right way to do it and how to come in in an informed way that's helpful and not entitled or presumptive into those communities. So it was actually a really important formative experience for me that first trip. a really important formative experience for me that first trip. I would love to hear more about what you studied in college and how you decided, you know, I'm going to be a documentary filmmaker. Like this is my career. This is my calling. Yeah. Well, I decided to go to Brown because

they let you make up your own major and there were not a lot of rules and I liked that. And I came up with an independent major in politics, film, and journalism. So that is exactly what I ended up doing. It was a kind of combination of political science courses and international relations courses, a couple of journalism classes. And I was able to take one documentary class at RISD at the time and also took a couple of my own courses where I made up the syllabus and was kind of doing this deep study. And my kind of thesis, as well as a documentary film I made in attachment to my written thesis, was about Rwanda and about intermarriage and post-genocide Rwanda, people who married into the families that killed their own families specifically. And that became a huge project for me. And I ended up making that film and it won the Academy Award for student documentary. And so that was kind of my

first more professional foray. The media is very, very maligned by many people right now. As a member of media, you are well aware of how much distrust has been created or has been established. And yet I think people really forget about the incredibly important role that investigative journalists have in the world. role that investigative journalists have in the world. Like so many things that are important for us to know have been uncovered or amplified by investigative journalists. Can you tell us a little bit more about why you think investigative journalism documentary film is important? it is it is tough in such an oversaturated media landscape where we are all fed so much information every day from so many different sources and sometimes we're getting them from

different sources than the other people and so we're we're coming up with different sets of ideas and things that we think are right. And in such a complicated environment, particularly online and in social media, it's hard to make sense of, well, what is the truth? And to me, investigative journalism, which is now kind of hard to find exactly in the muck because there's just so much else happening in front of it is such an important check on power in a democracy, right? So when we have a government, you know, there are different kinds of tools that help us make sure that they're doing the work that they're supposed to do, that our businesses are not corrupt, that people are being treated fairly, that when there is wrongdoing happening

in our communities and in our nation, that there's someone to check that. And that's not always the police and that's not always the government. And that's kind of where investigative journalism and journalism in general comes in to be that check to ensure that people are heard and that a democracy is thriving. And that is why it's so important because it's this kind of ideally nonpartisan group of people who are deeply skilled in looking for the truth and holding power to account on behalf of the public. And that's what's important to remember is that the people doing this are doing it for the sake of the public. And it's so important that the public

has trust in that type of journalism. And I think in a world where broadcast journalism often feels sensationalized and you don't know if you're supposed to be listening to CNN or Fox News or what side you land on, we end up with these incredible biases that say like, this is our group and this is what our group believes and this is what is right. And there are these people who are balancing the facts, who are looking at what you're saying and what you're saying and what the actual data is and making sense of it and coming forward with this really integral information to help the rest of us make decisions about who we vote for, what we buy, who we listen to. And my hope is that we find a way to connect the public to those voices and to make kind of room in the muck of all of the other information to get to that because without it,

we lose sense of the truth and we lose sense of our democracy and what's really important to us as a nation. And I say that as a Canadian, but I've been living here for a decade and I'm a green card holder. So I care very much about this democracy as well. And I see it as a service, the type of journalism that my peers do and that I'm lucky to be a part of. So well said that there needs to be the importance of an external check on power. It cannot be overstated. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests,

and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Lady 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink.

You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. I would love to hear more about your investigative work in the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. I should start by saying that I was really privileged to get to join Jane Ferguson, who is a foreign correspondent for PBS NewsHour, who has been covering Afghanistan extensively throughout the U.S.'s longest ever war and is a brilliant journalist who has worked in Yemen and worked in Syria and all over the place. And so I had a longstanding interest in covering Afghanistan,

but was invited to come with Jane to produce and shoot a six-part series with her on what was going on there at the beginning of the U.S. withdrawal. So that's kind of how I ended up most recently covering Afghanistan. Now, the history is a complicated one, but I think something that to the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan is important. Because what happened is that you had a government there where the Soviet Union was supporting kind of a communist push in Afghanistan. The U.S. was funding the kind of rebels on the other side, which were called the Mujahideen, this armed group that we now know as the Taliban. And so U.S. weapons and U.S. money went into funding what eventually became this group. And the emergence of al-Qaeda and of ISIS really is connected, these terror groups, to the funding, the U.S. funding of these kind of proxy wars with communist Soviet regime. And so knowing that history makes it a little more

complicated than just the U.S. came into Afghanistan to help the people of Afghanistan to stave off the Taliban and knock them out of power and punish them for harboring Osama bin Laden. It's more than that. And I think that when the U.S. got into this war, there was this idea that the terror threat was so large that as a public, this maybe had that sense that this was necessary. And it's complicated because the last 20 years in Afghanistan, there has been this kind of birth of a civil society without the Taliban in power. So there is something to say for the fact that the Taliban was out of power for this amount of time. There was war and destruction and a lot of civilians were killed. But there was this birth of a civil society where you have women who are judges and lawyers and girls who are going to school and brilliant young journalists who were really able to start to thrive in this environment. And then, you know, the withdrawal and the kind of inability to really end the Taliban presence resulted in all of that being lost. And that's what we're seeing now. So on the one hand, you know, you have 20 years of war for what,

you know, you have the Taliban coming back in, and then you have all of these people who are educated and who are bringing so much to the society in this community in Afghanistan, and they're all fleeing and they're all gone. So you have this brain drain as well of people fleeing the country because they can't live or will be targeted by this very violent, oppressive regime. And that is a total tragedy. I think the U.S. withdrawal is very contentious. I think a lot of people feel that a U.S. withdrawal was inevitable. I understand that. There are a lot of U.S. soldiers' lives lost and the outcome was going to be the same. The Taliban was going to come in at the end, no matter what. But could the transition have been better? And I think a lot of people feel that way because it left a lot of people at a high, high risk, people who had sacrificed their lives to support the U.S.'s mission there. So it's complicated and it's very contentious, but the people who have lost here are the Afghan people in a tremendous and really heartbreaking way. You're so right that it is very contentious and yet it is so complicated

because when you start really digging into it, almost none of the options seem like good options. Am I correct in that assumption? You know, like we stay and that doesn't seem like a good option and we leave and that does not seem like a good option. This is like the million dollar question here. But from my experience there and from being on the ground, from being with people and seeing the consequences here, I wish that there had been a longer transition out. I wish that there had continued to be boots, American boots on the ground to ensure a safer transition, to put more pressure on the Taliban. You know, you had President Trump having a direct call with the Taliban before Joe Biden came into power

and understanding that they were coming back into power. You have a release of their leader from the U.S. prisons so that they knew that this was coming. This was not a surprise to anyone. How fast and chaotic and harmful it was, I think, is more of the surprise to people. And that could have been handled better. of the people, but rather their own interests in at least initially in this kind of staving off of terrorism or, you know, the punishment of harboring Osama bin Laden or whatever it was. And again, why the U.S. decided to get into Afghanistan is also a very contentious, debated issue. But either way, you know, this involvement over time and with the Soviets and in the history of the U.S. being involved has never really ended well. There's not really a good example of the U.S. getting involved in a foreign conflict for their own interests and it ever ending well for the people.

Why do you think, having been working in Afghanistan, why do you think the Taliban return to power was so incredibly swift? I've heard a variety of conversations about this. Some people saying like it wasn't a surprise. There shouldn't have been a surprise to anybody. Other people saying it was absolutely a surprise. We knew it was inevitable, but we didn't realize Kabul would fall that quickly. Do you have any insight about why it occurred so dramatically and so swiftly? Hmm.

Well, I can share what we saw on the ground. And when we were there, when Jane and I were there, we smuggled into Taliban territory, which was at the time they weren't in Kabul. So you had to kind of dress in disguise in a way as a local woman so that you wouldn't be spotted. And actually what we were fearful of going to meet with the Taliban was not the Taliban finding us on the road, but was the government or other players finding us on the road, kidnappers, etc. So we smuggled into Taliban territory. And when we met with a commander there and his fighters, they were jubilant. They knew what

was coming. They were very confident. And the reason why they had let us in to speak with them is because they wanted legitimacy in the international press. Like why else would they have wanted us there? Right. And so we, we went in knowing that and we went in sitting with them thinking, what's the plan here? And our questions were not centered around, do you think you'll win this fight? There are questions were centered around what kind of laws are you going to put in place? And what will women be allowed to do? Will there be extrajudicial punishments? Will there, you know, do you have any interest in a peace deal or working with the government in a transition in any way. You know, we were fairly confident at that point.

And so were they, that they were taking over. As soon as that conversation between Trump and the Taliban leader happened, and as soon as they released that leader, like it was pretty inevitable that that was where this was heading, like this withdrawal has been talked about for so long. And that's the other thing is that the Taliban has not relinquished power. They've gained power. And once your leadership abandons ship and there's no call to, we're going to fight, we're going to, I think they knew that they couldn't win. And I think the swiftness with which Kabul fell was and wasn't a surprise. I had many conversations with Jane about this. She was there when it fell. I was shooting on

another project. So she was there in those very moments and was an unbelievable voice on the ground there. But when Kabul was falling, I think people just had suffered 20 years of war. The other option here to that kind of surrender was full on civil war and just total bloodshed. And, you know, these are communities that have, have risen that are educated and, and are lifting their people and their daughters and their women up. And I don't know, really, it's just an impossible, it's a, it's a really heartbreaking and impossible scenario. I'm sorry. I don't have any hard, hard, clear answers for you, but it's just so complicated. I don't know that there are any, and I think this is part of the human condition, right? Is that we think back to World War II, it was so easy to see those lines of delineation between good versus evil, right? It was Hitler versus the good guys of the world. And that, you know, people refer to that as the last great war, et cetera. You know, ultimately we liberate all of these European cities, et cetera. And that is many people's current paradigm for war, right? Is like, that is what it should be at the end. We should win. We should come home. We should have ticker tape parades and we should go down in history as the white knights, right? Like that's, that is how we would prefer the narrative to be.

we would prefer the narrative to be. And it's a much more satisfying narrative than, uh, it's really complicated. You guys, you know what I mean? Like that, that is a much less satisfying narrative to be like, it's really hard. Absolutely. And, you know, in the U S I mean, there are many U S soldiers who, you know, were there with good intentions and so many who have spoken out about how horrified they are about what happened there and the questioning of what they were doing there when they were there. And listening to those voices has been so powerful and fascinating. And on the other side, there were a lot of U.S. atrocities on civilians as well. You know, the most recent being this kind of, oops, we thought it was ISIS, but actually we just killed a whole family in this house. And it's like,

you know, from the perspective of the rest of the world, the U.S. is committing atrocities. It's hard to see that when you're here and you want to think of your country as this kind of hero, but it's just way more complicated and a lot darker than that. There have been just so many blunders and wrongdoing on the U.S. end as well. And so that's something that I think the country in looking back at this war is going to really need to reconcile with. I would love to hear more from you too about one of the issues that has been very controversial with Americans is the amount of stuff that we left behind. The equipment, the tanks, the vehicles, the helicopters, the incredible amount of

just military items that the United States left behind in Afghanistan. And there's been a lot of outrage about the waste of money, about how we are assisting the Taliban by leaving these things behind, assisting them so that they can use them for their own purposes. Can you shed any light on that subject? Again, it's very complicated yeah you know the U.S. when they were leaving Afghanistan they did destroy some of the stuff they left behind I mean this is you know what billions of dollars certainly wasted and being used now by a lot of equipment used by the Taliban. It's hard to say. I don't have the answer on whether this was an agreement of some sort of deal or negotiation with the Taliban. If you let us get people out, if you let us do this, this and this, we will leave our equipment behind. Or if this was, this, and this, we will leave our equipment behind.

Or if this was, this is as much as we can take and we've got to get out and we've got to get out now. And this is kind of what we can do. So what the answer to that is, I'm not exactly sure. Those are the two kind of possibilities. And I mean, it's a, it's a tremendous, it's a tremendous waste. Of course, it's a tremendous waste that our tax dollars have gone to this kind of failed venture. I think that part of it is the hurried nature of this transition. from folks who have been covering this a long time is that this was so rushed. And had there been more thought and time process put into this, maybe that's one of the things that could have been avoided as well.

But on the other hand, a lot of people are saying that this is kind of the load that Joe Biden was handed and that the president had to kind of pull the final plug and someone was gonna have to do it and it was always going to be messy. So you kind of have those two sides of it. But I mean, the American populace should be outraged. It's heartbreaking on so many different ends.

I think that we should be heartbroken for the lives lost on the US end, but we should really be thinking about the Afghan people and whatever we can do right now to support those who have been able to flee and who have landed in this country. There are many, many ways that we can be supporting those refugees and thinking about the people who are still on the ground, particularly journalists and people who are still trying to hold that power to account

and who are being targeted because of it. And there are organizations that are supporting them as well. So my hope is that the American populace does a lot of thinking about the U.S. involvement in the rest of the world and in foreign wars and in starting foreign wars, but also that frustration and anger and confusion can be focused into trying to help those who suffer the most, which is really the Afghan people. What has transpired? What are the Afghan people experiencing under Taliban rule today in 2021? So, I mean, everything that I've seen is not from the ground since the Taliban took over. So that's an important caveat. But I have been following,

you know, the brilliant journalists and voices that are on the ground or some that were. What we've seen on the ground is that women are still trying to protest and that those protests are being crushed in many ways, that boys have been allowed to attend school, but whether young girls are going to be allowed is still up in the air. That college classes have resumed with the separation of the sexes and full covering for women. What's being taught is focused around the Quran and religious education, but we know that people are still trying to fight back. We know that people are still trying to live their lives and survive. What do you hope people take away from watching your documentary about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan? What do you hope some of the takeaways are? Well, our six-part series was really right before the Taliban took over. And we also focused on really the consequences of what was going to happen when they took over, and particularly

what was going to happen to civil society. So we followed Anissa Shahid, the journalist, and we documented the killing of a female judge outside her home and the family that was left behind. She was supporting her entire family of like 20 people. These people, these women have been holding people up and lifting society. way as you have, you know, this isn't just a war-torn country where all is lost. This is a country with brilliant people who have culture and ideas and want to create a better society for their people and have been kind of robbed of that chance and have fled. And so that, that is a big takeaway. And I think also just that we weren't paying attention or the public wasn't paying attention, at least, you know, I think people were like, what Afghanistan we're leaving this whole thing's happening, the airport, but our series came out in February and was very clearly kind of a precursor to what happened. And so if you look back, we'll tell you a lot about where this was and how clear it was, where it was heading. We interviewed the vice president,

we interviewed the warlords, we interviewed the Taliban. And what I would also say is on the Afghanistan issue, and I cover a broad spectrum of topics, but particularly on Afghanistan to, to continue to follow local journalists there, because those are the people who are on the ground and who understand the people and the culture and the stakes. So that's, that would be my, that would be my kind of takeaway. I know we're almost out of time, but I would love to hear just like, can you give us a very high level overview of your piece about being an undocumented immigrant during the pandemic?

Absolutely. So, you know, I've had the privilege of working at a number of wonderful news organizations. I've worked with the New York Times. I've worked with PBS, NewsHour for Afghanistan and Time Magazine. But one of the best jobs I've had is leading visual journalism at the Marshall Project, which is a nonprofit news organization that focuses on criminal justice. And during my time there, I was able to spend the better part of the three years that I was there focusing on immigration in America and undocumented populations who are particularly vulnerable. And obviously, it's a long and complicated issue that we don't have time for today. When the pandemic hit and

really started creating this epicenter in New York, I reported on the first cases to break out in detention centers in the country. And I was very hooked into that network of people who were detained, who had no idea what to do, who were not being given masks or precautions and were kind of just left. They're not people in prison or jail. These are people merely being held by the government until they can have their immigration hearing. That is what immigrant detention is. So these people were in there, not for any crime that they were being prosecuted for, but just waiting for their immigration hearing and waiting to contract

the virus essentially with no protections. And I got a text message from a woman named Norma. from a woman named Norma. And Norma said, my husband is in detention. I was living on the floor of my mother-in-law's house with my five children. She now has the coronavirus. We have nowhere to go. We are in my car and we have nowhere to go. Can you help us tell our story? And that was the beginning of that journey with Norma. And a big part of the pandemic for me was making this frontline PBS documentary following Norma and her five kids as they searched for shelter, as they searched to stay away from getting infected. And as they worked so hard to try to get the kid's father out of immigrant detention. And these kids were as young as eight years old. And they barely had enough to eat and were moving from place to place, sleeping in the car,

sleeping in a motel room. And it was heartbreaking. And to me, it was important because it was like, we're all going through something crazy here. What about these people on the kind of We're all going through something crazy here. What about these people on the kind of edge of our society who are undocumented? We don't know about them. They are living in fear and don't have any kind of the supports. They're scared to go to a hospital. They're scared to get help. These are people who have usually have fleed tremendous circumstances like war or abuse, et cetera. And I thought it was important

to underscore their experience as some of the most vulnerable in the country. And so that's what I did. That's what I did during the pandemic. I have so many questions and I know you have so much insight and I know we could talk for a lot longer, but I wanted to just wrap up by inviting people to watch your work because you've been nominated for Peabody awards, Emmy awards, like your work is really just some of the best out there. So they can find your pieces on your website. Can you tell everybody where to find you? Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for the kind words. Yeah, my work can be found at emilycassie.com. I'm also on Twitter and Instagram at emilycassie. The work

can also be seen on the New York Times and PBS and Netflix. I was recently directing on a series where I got to do a big episode on climate change and the climate crisis. And that's a whole other thing. And I am currently working on a feature documentary following a search for unmarked graves of indigenous children at residential school in Canada. So that is what is up next for me. Do you have a release platform for that? Not yet. That is still, we are still very much in the kind of production of that. We'll have to connect again when that comes out because that is shocking, horrible, and an important story for people of the world and people of North America to understand. I look forward to seeing that project when it comes out.

Thank you so much, Sharon. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind-blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.