Metta's Story: Corey Flintoff

NPR Foreign Correspondent Visits USU
By Metta Ray
April 16, 2008

LOGAN—NPR personality and foreign correspondent Corey Flintoff shared stories and experiences from Iraq today at the Utah State University Performance Hall on campus.

Flintoff’s speech was brief, lasting a little less than an hour, but it was informative and impactful. A man with a sense of humor, Flintoff also had some heartfelt comments. He talked about working as a reporter imbedded with the troops saying “they are your best friend” when they are there to protect you. Visiting different classrooms during his time at USU Flintoff said he was asked by one student, ‘if you had information concerning the enemies whereabouts or a planned attack, would you report it to the troops?’ Flintoff said “yes. If I thought I could tell the troops without jeopardizing my informant, then yes especially if we were about to be ambushed.”

During his first visit to Iraq in August 2006, the “sound of bombs and gunfire was common”, but in December 2008 Flintoff “heard scarcely any gunfire at all and only a few bombs.”

Making the audience laugh with political satire was something that seemed to come easy to Flintoff, but he also had some very somber stories to tell. One was of his colleague, who had been kidnapped and held for ransom. He was tortured and then left for dead in the desert once his ransom had been paid.

Working with the Iraqi people is usually left to the locals because they are more likely to be trusted and accepted by the locals, but for the price of $2,800, which buys a one way trip from the airport to the hotel in an armored car with body guards, NPR can get an outside reporter in to the city. This gets very expensive and Flintoff says “it’s too expensive to keep reporters there”

Before becoming a correspondent with the NPR Foreign Desk, Flintoff was a newscaster on NPR’s All Things Considered, a reporter for NPR’s newsmagazines, and understudy on Carl Kasell’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! He was Alaska Public Radio Network’s executive producer for seven years and hosted the newsmagazine Alaska News Nightly. Flintoff has freelanced for NPR, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Monitor Radio and the Associated Press. In 1989, for his coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Flintoff won the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Award. He has also written and produced television documentaries that have been shown on PBS and are currently part of the Smithsonian Institution’s collection about Alaskan Life.

Flintoff attended the University of California at Berkeley where he earned a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and received a master’s in the same at the University of Chicago. Flintoff was born in Fairbanks Alaska and now lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his wife and daughter.