W 2007 roku amerykańskie radio NPR (National Public Radio) przypomniało nagranie rozmowy z 1988 roku z Ryszardem Kapuścińskim. Wywiad nieznany w Polsce.
Ryszard Kapuściński’s selected quotes from the 1988 interview for National Public Radio (this interview was broadcast again by NPR in 2007):
I think the main thing is that people are not trying firstly to make revolutions, they are trying all other means of improve their lot, improve their living conditions and improve their situation. But if they fail with other peaceful means they are just trying to make revolution as a last desperate step. And of course they are also failing quite often because most of the revolutions are unsucessful. Because most of the revolutions are just a change of power, I mean the change of group of people in the power.
(…)
We are the people who are trying to first of all to establish the truth, what’s going really on, because all official reports we get from the governments involved in the war – they are pure lies. There is a lot of exaggeration, a lot of distortion. And only by journalist to go inside is to establish the truth. He has no other way but to risk his own life and to risk everything just to get in.
(…)
I don’t treat my profession as a simply the way of writing on making money. I understand it also as a sort of social work and also a sort of mission.