John Pomfret quotes

John Pomfret is a renowned journalist and author with a deep understanding of China-US relations. Serving as a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post, Pomfret's expertise lies in East Asia's political, cultural, and historical landscapes. With his insightful analyses and compelling storytelling, Pomfret's literary contributions include "The Beautiful Country and The Middle Kingdom," a critically acclaimed book on China's history. His extensive knowledge and coverage have made him a prominent voice on China-related matters. Stay informed with John Pomfret's expert perspectives on global affairs and China's role in today's world.

The work is a calling. It demands that type of obsession.

- John Pomfret

The desire to become a journalist came really because I very much like living abroad, and like to travel, and wanted to be paid for it.

- John Pomfret

When you do a job like this you have to like having cold sweat on your back.

- John Pomfret

Good journalism, I think, represents life and if you try to organize something too neatly it usually blows up in your face and doesn't really happen the way you want it to.

- John Pomfret

The one indication that I got that I was doing the right job in Bosnia was that at different periods of time all the factions came down very hard on me.

- John Pomfret

Whereas with foreign coverage there's a much broader disconnect between you and your audience.

- John Pomfret

One of the problems that we have as American journalists is that we bring the American cultural baggage with us and we plop it down and it follows us around and that's just a fact of life.

- John Pomfret

And when they do spin out of control there are important ramifications that affect America, not just its direct national interest but its broader interests as a nation which has thought of itself as a beacon to other nations, of freedom, liberty, democracy, whatever.

- John Pomfret

I went back to the States and started at a small newspaper in Riverside County, California, covering the police; I was making $280 a week covering the police.

- John Pomfret

I've been shot at on numerous occasions.

- John Pomfret

But on the other hand, in the midst of the chaos, you find normal people. You find people who are willing to risk their lives to tell you what they saw, even though they have no dog in the fight.

- John Pomfret

Srebrenica was a horrendous war crime and it had to be uncovered.

- John Pomfret

A lot of times when we work overseas we tend to put the experience of someone who lives overseas, a Chinese person or a Korean person or a Bosnian person, within the prism of an American life.

- John Pomfret

When I see somebody being mistreated, my eyes tear up and I want to stop it. And I believe that the best thing I can do is to write about it, because if I insert myself into the equation it doesn't really do much good, but if I write about it I think it could do more good.

- John Pomfret

I was posted to China in the summer of 1988, which was the greatest time ever, I think, to have been in China.

- John Pomfret

I grew up in New York City in the late '70s, at a time when U.S. - China relations were something that was on the front page of The New York Times on a regular basis.

- John Pomfret

Stanford had no journalism program so I just learned by doing, effectively.

- John Pomfret

I think to a certain extent in Bosnia and among the Hutus in Rwanda and also among the Tutsis in Rwanda who then took revenge on the Hutus, there is a sense of being swept up and a sense that the society in which they live has gone mad.

- John Pomfret

I think some of the best reporters are the ones who can really illustrate the differences between societies, at the same time trying to connect the fact that there are a lot of shared values in addition to those differences.

- John Pomfret

My main form of transportation at that time was a bicycle, because bicycles could move though the crowd.

- John Pomfret

In some ways the domestic reporting is a lot easier because Americans will talk to you about anything.

- John Pomfret

And then I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to go to China in 1980, which was quite early.

- John Pomfret

I had my life threatened by Bosnian Serbs on numerous occasions.

- John Pomfret

For me the much more significant question is what did the Americans do, if anything, to help the Croatian army, because they are the ones that changed fundamentally the map of Bosnia, not the Bosnian army.

- John Pomfret