A Better World

The respected NBC news anchor talks frankly about one of the emotional—and spiritual— challenges he faces in his work.

- Lester Holt, New York, New York

It’s a question any person of faith struggles with, not just a journalist or newscaster. You see misery in the world, terrible suffering, and wonder how it can be fair. How can you go on living your life of abundance when others suffer such deprivation? How can some have so little while others have so much?

My work has taken me to places that have been devastated by war and natural disaster. I’ve stared into the hollowed-out faces of people suffering hunger and thirst. I’ve seen refugees living in abominable conditions. I remember visiting Somalia, where thousands of people were dying of starvation in the midst of civil war. We flew in to cover the story and spent several days on the ground. Then it was time to go. We returned to the States a few days before Christmas, images of the suffering we’d left behind etched into our consciousness. It seemed so unfair.

But nothing was worse than reporting from Haiti after its catastrophic 2010 earthquake, in which more than 200,000 people perished. Here was death on a scale I’d never seen before: mass graves, whole neighborhoods leveled, survivors living on the streets and desperate for food and medicine. All of this less than 700 miles away from the richest country on the planet.

My crew and I initially slept in tents on an airfield where we’d erected our portable satellite dish and computers. We had shelter and food. So many did not. I would be there only a few days, our NBC News team several weeks, shining a light on the most abject human suffering. As always, however, the demands of other stories dictated that we would move on. And yet the disaster we’d leave behind would still be there for weeks, months, years.

My God, I thought, I don’t ever