The teacher ended the class on interviewing with a simple exercise. He wanted us to ask a question of the classmate sitting next to us.
We were a group of young journalists at the Poynter Institute ready to practice the most basic but powerful tool of our craft: asking questions.
How hard could it be? I wondered, as I got ready to start the drill.
But when my partner asked the question, I realized it wasn’t easy.
“What is the biggest regret in your life?”
To answer her question I had to go back to the time when I started in journalism.
It was the summer of 1993. I was a general education student trying to figure out what to do with my life. My father was so proud of me, an accomplished amateur athlete, that he allowed me to be an exception to the long family tradition to studying medicine, dentistry or engineering.
I didn’t know what career to choose, but I was sure it would be none of those.
I thought of sociology, law or social work. I wanted to study something that would allow me to make a difference in people’s lives.
My mother called my sister’s house at 6 a.m. September 11, 1993.
The night before I had declined my father’s invitation to dinner. Instead I spent the night at my sister’s house. He was going to visit my brother by bus in Atacames, a beach town on the coast of Ecuador.
“No, Dad, I’d rather visit Ceci,” I told him, with the arrogance teenagers have when they think parents will live forever.
My mother’s voice was quivering. She called to tell me my father’s bus had fallen off a cliff after the driver fell asleep. She didn’t know anything else.
My first reaction was to rush to the bus terminal and try to find more information. At the bus terminal, I found little help. It was a clear example of the chaos that rules in my country when it comes to finding information.
After I begged for help, somebody at the main office gave me the bus number. They also gave me 500 sheets of paper with the list of passengers and buses that left the terminal the night before.
I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. I hoped that somehow I could confirm that my father was not on the bus.
But he was. I found his name when I carefully searched through the papers. That didn’t mean anything though. He could have survived.
I asked for a copy of the passenger list and called my mother to ask if she knew something else, new information about the accident.
She told me my brother, a doctor called to the scene, said dad was dead.
The accident was reported on the news the next day. The announcer of a popular Sunday magazine-style television program read the story. It was published on the front page of the largest newspaper in Ecuador. The story highlighted the fact that the driver, who was among the survivors, had fled. Nobody knew his whereabouts. The police didn’t even know his name.
The announcer, who generally commented on current issues, said that the accident was an example of the impunity that rusts Ecuador. This was one of many car and bus cases in which the driver escaped and nobody took responsibility.
Police in Ecuador generally do not investigate these cases because of scare resources and the high rate of these accidents.
But this was not just one more case. It was the accident in which my father had died and I wanted somebody to take responsibility.
I wrote a letter to the announcer. I gave him the copy of the bus’ list of passengers. The list had the name and the signature of the driver on it.
“Here is the name of the driver,” I wrote. “What will the police do with it?”
The next Sunday, he read my letter, making public the name of the driver. The announcer challenged authorities to find the driver and put him on prison.
Police found the man in less than a week.
At that moment, I realized the powerful effect of journalism. One man pushed police to do their job. He fought the legal impunity that dominates Ecuador.
He did something the majority of Ecuadorians thought was impossible. He got justice.
After my father died, I signed up in journalism classes. I wanted to become someone who could change lives.
And here I’m well into my journalism career.
Sharpening the craft of asking questions.
My classmate waited for my answer.
I told her that I regret not having had dinner with my father that night.
I couldn’t tell him goodbye.
He couldn’t see me become a journalist.
