10 Plus 1: The Correspondent Responds

(CBS)

So, what do you do for a living?

I'm an investigative correspondent. I look at general news stories from the opposite of the prevailing view to find out if the pack reporting is missing an important viewpoint or facts. I dig up original information on waste, fraud and abuse wherever it can be found. I track widely-used medicines and products that sources say can be problematic in some people, and uncover cases where dangers may have been hidden from the public. I explore undisclosed financial conflicts between government health decision-makers, physicians, researchers and pharmaceutical companies. Lastly, I expose cases in which widely-accepted "conventional wisdom" is legitimately questioned or just plain flawed. Most of the stories I look into turn out not to be an investigative story for me, because things are exactly as they seem: The drug works. The product is safe. Nobody is wasting money. The stories I do end up putting on television, because of my investigative specialty, are where things aren't as they seem, or aren't as the public widely believes. In short, I try to give people relevant, important information they don't already know ... and haven't seen anywhere else.

We can never do too much original, investigative reporting.

At my first job in local news, when I announced I was getting married, the general manager called me into his office and gave me $50 for a wedding present. He told me to use it to go buy a bikini, take a picture of myself in it, and give it to him.
(No, I didn't).

Sean McManus.

Some form of writing and teaching.

I'm pretty sure it's happening right now.

Recent movies I remember: "Madagascar," the Penguin documentary, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." (I have a 10-year-old daughter).

Books I remember: The Star of Kazan, Tragic Indifference, The 9/11 Commission Report.

Walter Cronkite doing the CBS Evening News. I think I was about five years old, and I was running the house around in my underwear and he was on the TV screen. I began to think that maybe he could see me from that side of the television. To test my theory, I smiled, waved and spoke to him in the TV and his eyes seemed to react as he continued reading the news. I suddenly became very self-conscious since I was undressed, and ended up hiding behind a chair until the news was over.

Preferably, no.

Fascinating: Too many ... I've always loved interviewing our space heroes -- the true pioneers of our time. I've been inspired and fascinated by the many whistleblowers I've spoken to who've put themselves in the line of fire for their beliefs. Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams was incredibly charismatic and complex. H-bomb inventor Edward Teller couldn't have been more fascinating. I remember Robert Goulet and Itzhak Perlman as surprisingly funny and endearing when I spoke to them off camera before live interviews back in my CNN days. Timothy Leary was a trip, man.

Jerkish: I don't think it would be right for me to name names, but there are a few. One of them was a football player for the Tampa Bay Bucs when I was a local news reporter. I was trying to make small talk while the photographer got a cutaway shot of the two of us after the interview was over, and I casually asked him if he'd found a place to live in the area. He was so full of himself, he thought I was making a move on him.

Thank you for your question. I have done a lot of traveling over the course of my career. However, much of my work as an investigative correspondent is "thinking" and "research" work which I can do from my office or most anywhere, as long as I have a phone and access to the Internet. When I'm ready to shoot elements for a story I've researched, it often involves some travel. Many times, it's close to home. Lots of my stories center on Washington, D.C., where I'm based. Sometimes it's a day trip or overnight trip.

Recently, for tracking relief money during Hurricane Katrina, I was on the road for a week and a half. And I'm sometimes assigned to stories off the investigative beat that take me overseas. For example, I embedded with the Air Force during the Iraq War. For that, I attended "boot camp" in New Jersey, and was on assignment in England and Germany. Previously, I flew on a B-52 combat mission over Kosovo which required some training here in the United States and a three-week trip to England building up to the flight itself. I also took a fairly lengthy, fascinating trip to Bosnia, Turkey and Greece while covering Hillary Clinton. And I was away from home for quite awhile when I deployed with the Army on what was, at the time, a "secret" Defense Department mission in the Amazon of Peru. When I was called up for that assignment, under the rules of the Defense Department media pool, I wasn't told where in the world I was going or how long I would be gone. And I couldn't tell anyone else I was going. My husband watched me pack my bags and slink off early one morning after the call. All of that would interfere with my personal life if I didn't have such a wonderful arrangement with my husband. He loves that I do what I do. Furthermore, he's available anytime to stay home with our daughter if I'm away, and he knows her entire routine inside and out. So I can pick up at a moment's notice with very little disruption in our family.

I'd have to say the B-52 combat mission is a highlight for me not so much for the travel, but because of the challenge. The training to go on the mission was intimidating, although nothing was as difficult as what the real airmen have to do before they fly in combat. It involved getting certified in a hyperbaric chamber, taking abbreviated pilot, escape and P.O.W. training (just in case ...), parachute practice via virtual reality, ejection-seat instruction and more. The ejection-seat instruction was very complicated and quick ... and since I was told I'd probably fly in the instructor pilot's seat (which does not have an ejection seat) I didn't worry too much about it. But the day I got a mission, my crew pointed me toward a weapons seat which I knew to be an ejection seat. I said, "Hey! By the way, I didn't really understand the ejection instructions..." but the crew was worried about getting themselves buckled in. I managed to "arm" the ejection seat properly while keeping my itchy finger off the red ejection button for take off. Once in the air, I squished my way around the cockpit shooting video of the crew and asking questions (my photographer wasn't allowed on board at the last minute so I did the shooting) and discovered that it was each one's first combat sortie. We were all novices. It all turned out fine and I got an incredible glimpse at a mission from the inside.

I also loved my trip on an F-15 combat air patrol mission after 9/11. I got to experience "g-force" (ouch!) and was treated to the most incredible views.

Images of the amazing Turkish ruins of Ephesus are forever imprinted in my brain.

Chasing a hurricane up the East coast and getting to stand in the strongest winds as needles of rain prick your skin was exhilarating.

And you just can't beat getting to see the wilds of the jungle along the Amazon in Peru.