Scott Carney got involved in reporting on the body part business through an unexpected personal experience — he was responsible for exhuming the body of an American student who had died on a class trip to India, under his supervision as a teacher.
Despite the fact that buying and selling body parts is illegal in many parts of the world, business is booming. Classroom skeletons that sit in many of the United States’ most esteemed universities have been traced to grave robbers in India. Tsunami survivors living in refugee camps in India are selling their kidneys for a fraction of the dollar that Europeans and Americans are paying for them.
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In his new book The Red Market (William Morrow) Carney goes out on a limb to report on these nefarious deals, expanding on his work for magazines like Wired, Fast Company and Mother Jones. And his diligent research and willingness to take risks proves that, even in an era of watered down blogs and regurgitated news cycles, investigative journalism is alive and well.
Most everyone in the world thinks that they are genuinely a good person, from the most hardened mafia don, to the black market person, to the cop who brutally beats some innocent victim. Everyone has a way they rationalize that what they do is a good thing. The trick is going into the interview empathizing with your subject and trying to see the world from their view. Say I’m talking to a kidney broker. They don’t really think about themselves as a person who kidnaps someone and steals a kidney. They look at themselves as lifesaving individuals that bring organs to people who might die otherwise.
Is it a dangerous job?
A lot of these people are doctors, adoption coordinators. They are a professional class of people who are involved in a black market trade. They are not necessarily thugs with guns who go around shooting at random journalists.
In the story about discovering a raid on stolen bones, you got tips from the local journalists and police in India. How do you work with local police and local newspapers to get your story?
The bone story was originally reported by Reuters and listed the location of the bone factory. It’s not that difficult. When news reporters go into the field, they are not necessarily looking for crafting an interesting feature about a story. They go in for the quick, dirty reporting: Here are the facts on the ground and we’re out of here and onto the next story. They don’t necessarily see the potential for a larger piece, so I found a lot of leads in local newspapers.
| “The trick is going into the interview empathizing with your subject and trying to see the world from their view.” |
The question about police is tricky in India. Sometimes they are amazing to work with; sometimes they are horrible to work with. If you have a cop who feels like it is his duty or his honor is at stake with a certain crime, then he will go to the ends of the earth to solve it. These guys want to be like superheroes. And if you get a superhero cop, they are usually very helpful. But a lot of the police are corrupt and don’t do anything. It is sort of like a potluck when you get out there.
Have you ever had to bribe anyone?
I don’t believe in bribing people; I think it muddies the waters. The worst part of paying somebody to speak to a journalist is that you start creating this economy for stories, and no journalist who follows up on your work is going to be able to get the story without bribing the local people.
How do you ensure accuracy in your reporting?
For most of these [stories], I am present. I went into the surrogacy clinic. I saw the women on the beds. I’ve met people with obvious kidney extraction scars and I’ve seen medical files. I do a lot of background work to be sure that, as much as possible, everything is accurate. And, since a lot of these were magazine stories already, I had the enormous benefit of having a fact checker for at least half of the book who would go through and actually call up every single source and look at every single report.
Have you ever had to lie and say you were shopping for a kidney or that you wanted to adopt a baby?
That is something that I have had trouble going forward with. Obviously that is the easiest way to do it. To go forward and say, “Hey, I’m a customer or I want to sell my kidney.” But then at some point you have to reveal that you are not lying, and if I want to fact-check the story and have it verified later, no one is going to come forward and say “Yeah, that is true.” I believe that it is better to tell upfront who you are and why you are talking with them and get them to talk with you despite that. Occasionally, I will send some probing emails out first where I don’t reveal who I am, but I don’t say I’m not who I am. So it will be like, “Hey, can I buy a kidney at your hospital?” If they would say that to anyone, then I figure that is not subterfuge. That is just their marketing plan.
| “The worst part of paying somebody to speak to a journalist is that you start creating this economy for stories.” |
You tracked down a child who was kidnapped from a family in India and adopted by an American family who went through what they thought was a legitimate agency. How did you decide to tell the American family that their adopted son was stolen?
I couldn’t see a way to do the story and not tell the American family that they had adopted a kidnapped child. I went there when I was about 99 percent sure that I was accurate. I had done three months of ground research in India — going through court documents, talking to covert sources, police, you name it. I was really running the length and width of Chennai to be sure that everything was accurate. I was in a very difficult position, because we were dealing with a minor. We were dealing with a family that didn’t know that they were involved in some sort of trafficking, and I had this moment when I was parked outside their house in a rented car where I didn’t know what to do.
I just really worried that I could ruin a kid’s life, but on the other hand, this kid’s life has already been irrevocably changed by these adoption agencies. So I went in and I knocked on the door and I did my best given that situation. Obviously, I was crossing a line that a lot of journalists are uncomfortable crossing and I was uncomfortable crossing, but there was no other way to tell that story. Since I finished the final manuscript of the book, we have gotten word from the FBI that the DNA test was processed by an Indian laboratory, and there is a genetic link between the child that I saw in the Midwest and the family in India. So, I am positive it was the same kid.
Scott Carney’s tips for conducting dangerous investigative reports:
1. Make sure you have the assignment first. “Don’t go on one of these stories just on a lark, because you are going to invest a lot of resources into this, and if there is no guarantee that it is going to be published then you are going to be in a world of financial trouble.”
2. Empathize with your subject. “There is always a logic to why they do what they do. You need to understand what that logic is before you go in there, or else you are going to sound like you are trying to uncover their horrible crime.”
3. Accept uncertainty. “I am never 100 percent sure that I will get what I want, but I will be upfront with the magazine about this. I usually give them a best case scenario, a second best case scenario, and a third case scenario for what sort of information I’ll be able to get back.”
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Dianna Dilworth is an eBookNewser contributor.
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