Why journalists should always talk to their taxi drivers

Everybody has a story to tell. Just listen, writes Andrew Buncombe

Yes, working as a taxi driver involved long hours for not a lot of money, and the threat of abuse. Yet it was nothing to what he had endured in Kenya (Getty)

There is something of a rule for journalists, that you do not quote your taxi driver when covering a story.

The idea has at its core the experience of being dispatched somewhere to cover a breaking news event, and then scrambling not only to get there, but to find out what is going on, and locate somebody to quote for your story. The cab driver could do all three.

There are several downsides to this: the taxi driver might not actually know what is going on, be biased one way or another, and no matter how hard one seeks to disguise them – “Mr or Ms So-and-So, a taxi driver” – it is always obvious to the trained eye that it is your taxi driver you are quoting. Colleagues accuse you of being lazy.

That does not mean journalists should not talk to taxi drivers, whether we are on assignment or not. Everybody has story to tell, and often they have a remarkable background.

In Washington DC, for instance, it is something of a cliche that many cabbies are doctors or engineers from nations in Africa or South Asia, who were working as drivers having emigrated. While I was there, they listened 24/7 to National Public Radio, and were invariably better informed about what was happening on Capitol Hill than I was.

Last week, I took a Lyft to Seattle airport for an early morning flight to Florida. The driver was a young man born in Ethiopia, who had come here some years ago after growing up in Kenya. Our conversation began with me asking him whether business was picking up amid the pandemic.

He said it was, but said that it was still a tough job. The day before, he had been racially abused by a woman who had been angry when he asked her to wear a face covering before getting into his car, one of the company’s rules for countering the spread of Covid-19.

He said the woman claimed she did not have a mask and so he handed her an unopened packet of new ones. She took one out and then threw the rest onto the street, before getting into the taxi.

The driver said the woman asked where he was from, and he explained how he had been able to come to the US after being sponsored by an American citizen. When he said how good it had been for him, she replied: “Yes, but bad for us.” I asked the man what colour the woman was. He said she was white.

What made the story even more startling was just how thrilled and delighted the man was to be living here in the States. Yes, working as a taxi driver involved long hours for not a lot of money, and the threat of abuse. Yet it was nothing to what he had endured in Kenya, which he said was blighted by corruption. He was aware of his relative privilege.

The man said that for a number of years he had lost track of his mother. Eventually he had tracked her down. And this very month – the same month a woman had dared suggest this young man was not an asset to the country – his mother was visiting from Ethiopia, where she had been living. I cannot remember how many years he said it had been since he last saw her, but it was in the order of ten. Their reunion – and her first meeting with her grandchildren – had been highly emotional. “When I get off my shift this morning, I get to go home and spend the day with her,” he said.

Any country is the sum of its parts, and the US is lucky to have this young man living here. I was certainly fortunate he came to collect me at 4.15am the other morning and share his story.

Yours,

Andrew Buncombe

Chief US correspondent