Radiolab conducted an interview with Eng Yang, a man from Laos who witnessed firsthand the deaths of many of his people after the U.S. took out troops when the Vietnam War “ended.” Kalia Yang, Eng Yang’s niece and translator for this piece recounted her uncle’s story of when the Laos communist government would come into their village and kill indiscriminately causing the people of his hometown to recede into the jungles for safety.

When the Hmong people escaped to the jungles, a yellow rain was cast down and Eng Yang says that this was the cause of untimely and horrendous deaths of his people. However, after conducting research, the hosts of Radiolab told the Yangs that this was not possible. One cohost pushed the envelope was Kalia Yang insisted that her people were poisoned and her uncle was an eyewitness account to this fact. However, Krulwich continued to push and test whether the eyewitness could really be trusted against the scientific data collected by experts to the point where he made one of his sources cry and call for an end to the interview.

At this point, not only was I disgusted, I was sad. I was horrified that an interviewer could want to so badly prove a point about a story that he forgot about the humanity in the people that he chose to involve in his research and detailing of the story. Not only does he call into question their reliability, but he makes them appear to be the enemy, hearsayers, and conspiracy theorists. This was not necessary to the story, it was not necessary to get a “fair and balanced” story, it was not necessary period.

As the Huffington Post article points out, it is okay to leave the story open ended. It is okay to say, “This is what the scientists found in their research, but here is what a man who lived through this horrendous event has seen and wants the world to hear about.” Because is it possible that Eng Yang was wrong and that it really was just bee poop and his people were dying from exhaustion and dysentery? Sure. Is it also possible that the yellow rain was toxic and something in the environment or the construct of the chemical caused the lab results to show that they were non-toxic? Call it a shadow of a doubt, but there is no reason to completely disbelieve Eng’s story.

I don’t believe that there is a conflict between getting to the truth and being sensitive to the sources. Was it necessary to ask whether Eng saw the planes before seeing rain in order to prove the point that perhaps there was an instance where that did not happen? I do not personally think so. I don’t think you need to push someone in that way, especially when the story is so fragile and delicate. A person going through that kind of experience is not documenting when the planes come and do not come, but they are sure of one thing and that is, the planes were there. And this happened many years ago, so the listeners know that there should be some reasonable doubt that this man may be mis-remembering. But to outright question it seems unnecessary. There needs to be a sensitivity because at the end of the day, this is someone’s story. Not their news story. Not the story they want to be famous for. But their life’s story.