Longtime public servant ‘guardedly patriotic’ as America turns 250

VPM | By John Burnett

Published June 30, 2026 at 8:55 PM EDT

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

As the U.S. turns 250, we are hearing reflections on America from across the country. John Burnett brings us one from Houston, Texas.

JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Rodney Ellis will celebrate our 250th birthday at picnics around his precinct in Houston with barbecue pork ribs and iced tea, and a heaping helping of worry about the nation’s future. The garrulous 72-year-old county commissioner is guardedly patriotic.

RODNEY ELLIS: We should be celebrating that America is a process. It’s not finished yet. We’ve done some great things in this country. Patriotism, to me, is not just pretending America has no flaws. Patriotism is telling the truth and doing the work to repair the harms that have come about over these 250 years.

BURNETT: The son of a maid and a landscaper, Ellis has served 43 years in public office, first as a Houston city councilman, then state senator and now as a Harris County commissioner. Fifty years ago, during the bicentennial, Ellis was a public affairs graduate student at the University of Texas in Austin. In 1976, there were 18 Black representatives in Congress. Today, there are 67.

ELLIS: But we’ve made tremendous progress since then, tremendous gains. And so when I compare what was happening then to what’s happening now, I look at how quickly a lot of those fundamental rights, those gains that we’ve taken for granted, have rolled back so quickly.

BURNETT: He ticks off areas where he believes America has lost ground, clean air and clean water, people of color in key positions in government, owning up to uncomfortable U.S. history and selfless public service.

ELLIS: We got, you know, a certain level of narcissism in government, and as opposed to celebrating America’s independence 250 years later, you have people celebrating themselves.

BURNETT: But, says Commissioner Rodney Ellis with a broad grin, that’s how it’s always been in America.

ELLIS: Progress is made, but along the way, sometimes you take two steps forward and 10 steps back. But you don’t give up.

BURNETT: For NPR News, I’m John Burnett in Austin.

(SOUNDBITE OF PAPI CHURRO’S “LA OFRENDA”) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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John Burnett

John Burnett is a national correspondent based in Austin, Texas, who has been assigned a new beat for 2022—Polarized America—to explore all facets of our politically and culturally divided nation. Prior to this assignment, Burnett covered immigration, Southwest border affairs, Texas news and other national assignments. In 2018, 2019 and again in 2020, he won national Edward R. Murrow Awards from the Radio-Television News Directors Association for continuing coverage of the immigration beat. In 2020, Burnett along with other NPR journalists, were finalists for a duPont-Columbia Award for their coverage of the Trump Administration's Remain in Mexico program. In December 2018, Burnett was invited to participate in a workshop on Refugees, Immigration and Border Security in Western Europe, sponsored by the RIAS Berlin Commission.

Though he is assigned to the National Desk, his beat has sometimes stretched around the world.

He has filed stories from more than 30 countries since joining NPR in 1986. In 2012, he spent five months in Nairobi as the East Africa Correspondent, followed by a stint during 2013 as the network's religion reporter. His special reporting projects have included working in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina, as an embedded reporter with the First Marine Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and continuing coverage of the U.S. drug war in the Americas. His reports are heard regularly on NPR's award-winning newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.

Burnett's 2008 groundbreaking four-part series "Dirty Money"—which examined how law enforcement agencies have gotten hooked on and, in some cases, corrupted by seized drug money—won three national awards: a Scripps Howard National Journalism Award for Investigative Reporting, a Sigma Delta Chi Society of Professional Journalists Award for Investigative Reporting, and an Edward R. Murrow Award for the accompanying website. His 2007 three-part series "The Forgotten War," which took a critical look at the nation's 30-year war on drugs, won a Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award for Excellence in Reporting on Drug and Alcohol Problems.

In 2006, Burnett's memoir, Uncivilized Beasts & Shameless Hellions: Travels with an NPR Correspondent, was published by Rodale Press. In that year, he also served as an Ethics Fellow at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida.

In 2004, Burnett won a national Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative reporting for his story on the accidental U.S. bombing of an Iraqi village. His work was singled out by judges for the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award honoring the network's overall coverage of the Iraq War. Also in 2003, Burnett won a first place National Headliner Award for investigative reporting about corruption among federal immigration agents on the U.S.-Mexico border.

In the months following the attacks of September 11, Burnett reported from New York City, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. His reporting contributed to coverage that won the Overseas Press Club Award and an Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Award.

In 2001, Burnett reported and produced a one-hour documentary, "The Oil Century," for KUT-FM in Austin, which won a silver prize at the New York Festivals. He was a visiting faculty member in broadcast journalism at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in 2002 and 1997. He received a Ford Foundation Grant in 1997 for a special series on sustainable development in Latin America.

Burnett's favorite stories are those that reveal a hidden reality. He recalls happening upon Carlos Garcia, a Mexico City street musician who plays a musical leaf, a chance encounter that brought a rare and beautiful art form to a national audience. In reporting his series "Fraud Down on the Farm," Burnett spent nine months investigating the abuse of the United States crop insurance system and shining light on surprising stories of criminality.

Abroad, his report on the accidental U.S. Air Force bombing of the Iraqi village of Al-Taniya, an event that claimed 31 lives, helped listeners understand the fog of war. His "Cocaine Republics" series in 2004 was one of the first accounts to detail the emergence of Central America as a major drug smuggling region. But many listeners remember the audio postcard he filed while on assignment in Peshawar, Pakistan, after 9/11 about what it was like being, at six-foot-seven, the "tallest American at a Death-to-Americarally."

Prior to coming to NPR, Burnett was based in Guatemala City for United Press International covering the Central America civil wars. From 1979-1983, he was a general assignment reporter for various Texas newspapers.

Burnett graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

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