Coverage of the 2004 Edward R. Murrow Symposium with Peter Jennings

Good evening. I'm Alex Tan, director of the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication at Washington State University. Welcome to the thirtieth Murrow symposium, a national forum for the discussion of the important social, political, and communication issues of the day. At the symposium, We honor outstanding and lasting contributions to the fields of communication with the Edward R. Murrow Award. This symposium is made possible by the generous support of the Saul and Diane G. Haas Foundation of Seattle. Our school is honored to bear the name of our most illustrious alumnus. The Murrow family has entrusted us to keep alive the Murrow tradition by educating the next generation of communication professionals in the highest standards of ethical practice in journalism, broadcasting, and communication. I would like to read to you a message from K.C. Murrow, Ed Murrow's son.

On behalf of the Murrow family, I would like to thank WSU and President Rawlings for continuing to recognize my father's contributions to the world of communication. The symposium and the ongoing work of the Murrow School of Communication are important both regionally and nationally, especially in this challenging era. I cannot think of anyone more able to comment on the importance of high-quality journalism and communication than this year's award recipient and speaker. Thank you, Mr. Jennings. I regret that I cannot be with you in person today. I'm thankful for the Murrow faculty for upholding the Murrow tradition. That's a message from K C Murrow, I'm sure K C Murrow and Ed Murrow would be pleased with tonight's program, because tonight we are honoring a person who truly is a torch bearer of the Murrow tradition. Here is the order

of events for our program: Barbara Couture, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, will give welcoming remarks, followed by a video tribute to Edward R. Murrow, produced by school alumni and featuring Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw, Mike Wallace, and Sam Donaldson, to be followed by President Rawlings speaking on the Murrow Award. Then a special video tribute to Peter Jennings, produced by his colleagues at ABC News, with Charles Gibson narrating. And then the presentation of the Murrow Award to Peter Jennings by President Rawlings, to be followed by remarks from Peter Jennings and a question and answer session afterwards. Please, a round of applause for Peter Jennings. And now Barbara Couture, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts.

Thank you Alex, and congratulations to you and the students and faculty staff who have put together this wonderful evening. A big hand of applause for the Murrow School. To our esteemed supporters, our neighbors, and the visitors who are with us tonight, and fellow members of the Washington State University faculty and staff, we're very pleased that you've joined us here to celebrate the distinguished broadcasting career of Peter Jennings, and in doing so, we're also celebrating, of course, the legacy of Edward R. Murrow as we recognize outstanding accomplishment with the Edward R. Murrow for Lifetime Achievement Award in Broadcasting. It is worthwhile to remember that this event is also about the future, about our students, and about the amazing

careers that they will have in communication. Earlier this evening we celebrated the academic accomplishment of students in the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication with an annual award scholarship dinner. I find that this part of the symposium tradition is especially gratifying, because it's a reminder of the role that education can play in a successful life and a successful career. After all, it was on this very campus that Edward R. Murrow gained the skills which he later translated into an international reputation for excellence. As you're well aware, Edward R. Murrow is the reason we're here tonight. Murrow was the first to understand the power and the responsibility of broadcasting. The Edward R. Murrow School of Communication is dedicated to making certain that this important

awareness continues in every graduate who comes from this school. Thank you for being here, and I hope you all enjoy this splendid evening. Thank you. Edward R. Murrow came from a tiny hamlet in northwest Washington. He shaped his ideals and values as a student at Washington State College and in Europe, and through his style of journalism changed the way we look at the world. Ed Murrow was an inspiration not just to his generation, but to future generations of journalists to come. And for those of us who were lucky enough to work with him, he was our mentor. Ed Murrow made it plain to all of us who have been lucky enough to follow him at CBS News that he was a reporter with a conscience; that accuracy, fairness, and the

courage to face down pressure from government, from big business, pressure from power is a sure sign of a good journalist. He had his run-ins with all of the above and he never lost his way. His fresh eyes, his eloquence, and his willingness to go in harm's way made him a reporter's reporter. And I can think of no higher tribute. Murrow joined CBS in 1935 and was soon stationed in London. He brought World War II into American living rooms. Hello, America. This is Edward Murrow speaking from London. You can have a little understanding of the life in London these days. There are no words to describe the thing that is happening. Londoners come oozing out of the ground, tired and red eyed and sleepy. The fires are dying down. I saw them turn into their own street to see if their house was still standing.

From "Hear It Now" on radio to "See It Now" on television, Murrow expanded journalistic horizons with his courage to stand up against Senator Joseph McCarthy and his investigation into the plight of migrant workers in "Harvest of Shame". Edward R. Murrow's professionalism, his integrity, his courage are well known but I want you to think about another of his qualities. He was a progressive. He experimented with television. I think the popular phrase is, he pushed the envelope. He did things that hadn't been done before and he did them successfully. Murrow left CBS in 1961 and worked for the Kennedy administration as head of the United States Information Agency. He was knighted by the Queen of England, and in 1964 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom with distinction. A pioneer in education through mass communication, he has Bravo to his endeavors the conviction that truth and personal integrity are the ultimate persuaders

men and nations. His legacy does not need my endorsement. But I cannot imagine broadcast journalism without the early formative years of Edward R. Murrow. His ethics, his values, his dedication to the essence of the craft, of this business of reporting, seeing in a way in which he did it factually, but at the same time in a way the whole country could understand what it was that he was talking about and come to care about those events, however separated they may have been from them. His devotion to the truth and his fearlessness in going after it and then broadcasting it has set a standard that is going to live as long as journalism itself, I'm sure. I think it honors his memory far more to say, not let's do it exactly as Edward R. Murrow did it, but let's do it the way Edward R.

Murrow might do it today. As you know, the Murrow Award honors the person, organization [video break] through service or performance the professional ideals of Edward R. Murrow. Last year we, I went to New York with Alex and some others to award, to make the award to Sir Howard Stringer. And I had some conversation with a number of people, a number of broadcasters and journalists who were there, about, about this award and came to understand a little better that within the broadcast profession how deeply these values are cherished, the values of commitment and

professionalism and courage. We are very proud that Murrow is an alum of Washington State University and that the School of Communication bears his name. I have sometimes said jokingly it's a little bit like having the Einstein school of physics, you can't do much better than that. Our past award recipients are listed in your program. But let me just name them for you, because I think it is significant. 2003 Daniel Pearl. In 2002, Daniel Schorr, Christiane Amanpour, and Sir Howard Stringer. In 2001 Bernard Shaw. In 2000 Ted Turner. In 1999 Keith Jackson and Al Neuharth. In 1998 Moriyoshi Saito, and Walter Cronkite and Frank Blechman. And in 1997 Sam Donaldson. This year's recipient for

lifetime achievement in broadcasting brings honor to this award. Peter Jennings is a legendary television reporter, news anchor, and foreign correspondent, and has covered the most important world events of our time since he began his journalism career at a time, which is, precedes the birth date of most of you here tonight, even though he was exceedingly young at the time, 1964. Those events include then every major national election, the covering of the Millennium Eve of 2000, the terrorist attack of September 11, and currently the war in Iraq, its aftermath, from which Mr. Jennings just returned last week. I think we are particularly proud of this award because Peter Jennings' career is marked by its depth and integrity and its courage. And

many of you view the ongoing Peter Jennings reporting series, including the provocative "Jesus and Paul: The Word and the Witness" which aired last week. In addition to his 14 Emmys and a Peabody Award, he has won the Harvard University Goldsmith Career Award for excellence in journalism, the coveted radio and television news directors' Paul White Award. And in 2000 he was awarded the tall, Saul Taschoff Taish- Taischoff, I guess it's pronounced, Award for Excellence in Broadcast from the National Press Foundation. Here now from his colleagues at ABC News is a video tribute to Peter Jennings, as he receives what we hope is a pinnacle of awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award. For 20 years now my friend and colleague Peter Jennings has edited and anchored ABC's World News Tonight.

But a lot of people ask, how did it all begin for Peter here at ABC News? Peter was in his 20s when ABC surprised just about everyone and picked this brash Canadian reporter to headline the evening news. Peter went on to spend three years at the anchor desk. Then this young anchor suddenly found himself back in the field as a young reporter doing what he loved most, traveling and covering the world. This is Peter Jennings, ABC News in Calcutta. In reporting the news as it happened, being right there at the center of it all, in the Middle East. A great many people in the West look at the Sinai, and they say this is nothing but sand. As history unfolded almost daily, Peter was there. Captain, the Syrians have asked us to tell you that you are in a Syrian Hospital. He was there as the Olympic Games of Munich were shattered by violence and terror. If I were to guess at the moment at which of the commando organizations this group was to come from,

I'd be most likely to narrow in on a group called Black September. Event by event, Peter distinguished himself as a world-class reporter. Will you release the hostages and when will you release them? So much so that Peter was made foreign anchor on Roone Arledge's ground-breaking World News Tonight. And then it was 1983 that Peter was named sole anchor of World News Tonight. And of course he's been there ever since. From tragedy -- We're going to stay on the air until NASA tells us what it knows -- to triumph -- Someone actually reached up and handed me a small piece of the wall that they had chipped away. It's those small moments that make up this extraordinary day. Terror. To politics. There are two great nights in the presidential race. This is one of them. War. War against Iraq and occupied Kuwait has begun. It has been quite an extraordinary day in the long struggle between the United States and Saddam Hussein. To the great hope of peace.

Peter has had a front row seat to history. His thoughtfulness. So when you hear on the radio that seven people have been killed, what do you think? Passion. What happened to you? I was shot. His enormous curiosity. His drive to get the story right have made World News Tonight. What it is today. Why do so many Americans get their news from Peter? You need look no further than September 11, 2001. We're talking about massive casualties here at the moment, and we have... Oof. His compassion, his humanity. I checked in with my children and it... Who are deeply stressed. As I think young people are across the United States. And. So if you're a parent, you got a kid in some other part of the country, call them up. And when the World News Tonight cameras dim, Peter's still at it, working on some of the most daring, timely, and innovative documentaries seen on network television.

Who else could take on big tobacco and the big pharmaceuticals, as well as taking time to talk and listen to children? What do you think about the war? I don't like it. Can you tell me why? God made us all brothers and sisters and we shouldn't be fighting and killing each other. Give us The Century and go In Search of America as well as Jesus? And who else could pull the world together. As we entered into a new millennium. for a 24-hour global celebration? It has been a pleasure and a privilege working alongside Peter here at ABC. He has done us all proud, and he continues to do so. From all of us here at ABC News, congratulations mate. Peter, please join me.

It's now my pleasure to award you the Edward R. Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Broadcasting. I'm tempted to say about the film that the foregoing was a paid political announcement. And President Rawlings, yes, it is the pinnacle, without a shadow of a doubt. As I look at those... First of all, thank you for coming. The

place is full I'm told. I would love it if if the people who were running the houselights could turn them up just a bit so that I could, two things, one so I could see that, see you, talk to you. And secondly to make sure you don't leave in the middle without giving me some warning. I um... I don't quite know what to say. As I was looking at the pictures of Ed in London, our, the CBS offices and the ABC offices were quite close to each other in London. My best friend in London still is the CBS chief foreign correspondent there, Tom Fenton. And as I was looking at some of the pictures of Ed today outside All Souls Church, next to what was Broadcasting House for the British Broadcasting Corporation during World War II, I realized again two things. One, that my dad, who was a great international public broadcaster, and my wife's dad, Casey Freed's dad, was a pioneer

at NBC, that how lucky I am to have had not only these roots in my own family and in my, in my wife's family, but having had Ed and my dad as the reasons to want the job that I wanted, I think, more than any other in my career. And that was to be the chief foreign correspondent for ABC. Being the anchor for the last 20 years has been great, but I have to tell you that the years before that as the chief foreign correspondent, and before that as the Middle East correspondent, were the years which made a huge amount of difference in my life and I'm very mindful tonight that there are a lot of young folks here who may be thinking about doing this in the future, and perhaps in the question and answer service, period, we can talk a little bit about your future and not so much about mine. I want to thank some people and make some observations first. We have just come, some of us have just come, from the scholarship awards banquet, behind us over here as Mayor Johnson would

say, that's another Cougar first down. When I was very young and growing up in broadcasting, with my dad around the house, I always wanted to sound like Mayor Johnson and my, and I, so I would talk like this whenever I could. And my dad would come around and hit me on the head, back of the head with a ruler and remind me what I tried to remind some kids earlier today, which is the secret to good broadcasting, I think, is to be yourself. And in Mayor Johnson, it sure sounds like himself. I want to thank President Rawlings and Mrs. Rawlings particularly for having been so kind to us, both at their home and at dinner tonight. Your president has, as we, you probably know much better than I, one of these good old boy approaches to life, shucks ya know, but is unable to discuss a first, unable to disguise a first-class, a first-class mind. And I want to thank Alex Tan and his wife, who have been so gracious to us today.

We had a wonderful time, flying across the Palouse today. I've not been in this immediate part of the country before, though I made a film in Idaho a couple of years ago as part of the America series. So I just got up to the edge of this gorgeous country, and Casey and I had a wonderful time coming in today. And also of course, I'd forgotten until it was mentioned the evening, this is also where the great Keith Jackson went. And as ABC News and ABC Sports for many years were, were both run by the same man, the great Roone Arledge, the late Roone Arledge. And so I knew Keith well and, and worked with him at those famous 1972 Munich Olympics. And he's a great guy, so that's another one of whom you can be quite extraordinarily proud. I have to tell you that if I had my way, I wouldn't make a speech. I'd just sit here at the appropriate age and tell you stories about where I've been and what I've done and why it's been such a goldarn good time.

But then you'd think I was lazy and I hadn't prepared very well. So in this face-to-face confrontation, my wife says I should tell you one story at the beginning about how journalism happens to us on occasion and we were reminded, or she was reminded because of the banquet tonight. Some years ago I went with President Carter on his first and only trip to China. President Nixon, as you know, reopened the American-Chinese relationship, and it was something that President Carter wanted very much to do. I had been to Hong Kong before during the Vietnam War, but I had never been to China. I wanted badly to go. I called up a great China scholar named Mike Oxenberg at the University of Michigan who was also teaching many of the people in the White House, and I asked him if he'd give me some prep lessons so that by the time I got to, to Beijing I wouldn't sound like a complete idiot on the air. We flew from Washington to Beijing and the first evening, there was a banquet given by the Chinese in the famous Great

Hall of the People, which makes, you know, this entire area just seem like a closet, it's so big. And we were all very excited about going to China. I was. In a very banal way, I wanted to know what the food was like, to start with, and whether Chinese laundries were as good as people really said they were. And I was deeply disappointed that the first dinner, the very first night we got there, in the Great Hall of the People was, I didn't think, very good. And as we were walking out, I happened to make this observation to a correspondent beside me who was an old China hand working for the Financial Times. I said I was a little surprised that the food wasn't very good. And he said, oh no, I'm not at all surprised. Not only was the food not good, but it was all over in 45 minutes. There were no speeches of any consequence, and the band didn't play any American music. The Chinese are telling Jimmy Carter that he isn't yet welcome. Well, later that night after I'd filed my television piece and I was on the phone filing for ABC Radio,

Radio said, well, is there anything else? I said, well, yeah, the truth of the matter is, you know, this is instant knowledge, right, instant expertise. I said, you know, I think the Chinese are telling the president that he's not really quite welcome yet. They said, why not? I said, well, take the banquet tonight for example, the food wasn't very good, the toasts were minimal, it was all over in 45 minutes, and they didn't even play Turkey in the Straw, that great American song that they played when Richard Nixon was here. What happened, of course, was that ABC Radio took that and ran with it. And every other American news organization who had a correspondent in China with the President got a call in the middle of the night, all of us longing for sleep, saying Jennings is reporting Carter not welcome in China. How come you not report this? Well not only did I, did I reap the enmity of my colleagues in the international press corps, but I turned out, or should I say my colleague at The Financial Times, turned out to be dead right. And our whole stay in China

was ultimately measured by the menu. And when, when President Carter finally had a meeting with Zhou Enlai and it went very well, the Chinese then gave a final night unbelievable banquet, the likes of which we had never seen. I remember the carrots and the radishes were all carved in the shape of animals. And I had never seen Chinese food like that before in my life nor ever expected to again. But it's always been a reminder for me that in, in reporting the news, the little things really count, but luck counts more than anything else. Now, as I said, I didn't really want to make a speech, but the thought was, Professor Tan said that I might talk for 20 or 25 minutes or so, I have no idea how much I have written down here. And then we might have an honest to goodness face-to-face encounter in which I might get to hear from you and we could have an exchange. I

also don't like to be perfectly honest to talk about broadcasting. When I went overseas as a foreign correspondent, there was nothing in America called the media press of any consequence. The big newspapers had people who wrote about television, but when I came back, some 20-odd years later, there was a whole industry of media press, and I decided very quickly after coming back from overseas I had to do one of two things: I had to continue to pay attention to the politics of East Germany or I had to pay attention to the media press, and I'm sorry to say I thought that East Germany, this was before the wall came down, I thought that East Germany would be enough to occupy my tiny little mind, and so I never paid much attention to the state of the industry. But in some respects you can't avoid it. And I know there is some expectation here that in the, in the tradition of Ed Murrow, I might have something to say about the state of broadcasting in the country today. So let me try. It occurred to me actually that I might find some inspiration in what he was thinking

almost 50 years ago today. Those of you in the Murrow School know it well, but you may not all know it well. But I couldn't help but notice that in a 1958 speech when he spoke to the radio and television news directors, he first observed that he might be accused of fouling his own comfortable nest, and what he had to say might just not do anybody any good. And I feel the same way, and I echo the words he said then, that in every respect, these instruments of radio and television have been as good to me as I could ever have imagined, certainly, as Murrow said, beyond my view. You've had a slight allusion to it from the president, but within the last two weeks my company has given me, just within the last two weeks, my company has given me the time and the resources to do first a pretty tough hour-long examination, in prime time, of the government's drug policies. And if those of you who are young have not seen the program called Ecstasy Rising,

I suggest that you get it and look at it, or we'll send it to you, whatever the case. But when it was cavalierly described as the most irresponsible piece of journalism he'd ever seen by the Bush administration's Director of Drug Control Policy, my employers, and this is the point I'm making, were really quick to point out that it was anything but. So when Murrow was not certain about his employers, his immediate employers in 1958, I am very certain in many respects about mine. More recently, I have been given the resources and three hours of prime time to examine the roots of Christianity, and I must say that my company's commitment to a pretty controversial piece of religion reporting was made well before Mel Gibson made clear how interested the audience really was. And perhaps, if earlier today is an example, this is something we may want to talk about in the Q&A. I don't mean to suggest that commercial broadcasting in America has lived up to its potential by any means. But Murrow was right, and I'm mindful about this tonight

too, to remind us that just because our voices are amplified from one end of the country to the other, it does not necessarily confer on us greater wisdom or understanding than we possessed when our voices reached only from one end of the bar to the other. But with that admonition in mind, let me say just a few things, almost in shorthand, about broadcasting and broadcasting journalism today, bearing in mind that I don't like to talk shop but it may lead you to some thoughts which we could share face to face a little later. The current situation in Iraq and the public confusion about the policy, as we saw reflected, I think, in the president's news conference last night, leads me to ask whether we in broadcast journalism, maybe in journalism generally, did enough in the run-up to the war to foster public debate about the administration's stated intentions and the possible consequences. On my own broadcast, I tell you by way of experience, we tried and

ironically were castigated pretty seriously by some who accused us of A) not supporting the administration but even on occasion they said not being patriotic enough. I've had this experience before, and it is one that is troubling and worth talking about. But now that the U.S. has embarked on a major campaign in the Islamic world, I wonder if you think there has been appropriate debate. Now that we are there in Afghanistan and Djibouti, in Central Asia and in the southern Philippines, it is distressing to find the public as confused and divided as I think it is. In general and until quite recently, I think it was difficult for those in the country who had reservations about the war to be heard. One survey, and it wasn't a very well-done survey, I'm pleased to report, found that my own broadcast was the most negative of those reporting on the war. But an example of negative was an Iraqi plaintively asking out Reporter John

Donvan why U.S. forces weren't more helpful to his family, which was without food and water. But in the wake of 9/11, and perhaps you sense this already, we certainly do in the media, and until quite recently, the power of the White House bully pulpit was, well, quite powerful, and the enthusiasm of much talk radio and some of the cable operations for the invasion has been such that critics of the president's policies, whether in the media or out, have very often been questioned on the basis of their patriotism if they object. And I'm sad to say that I think this does give some people in the media pause. Not all by any means, but some. It's always difficult when the country goes to war, when American lives are at stake, to be aggressive reporting the potential dangers. And it does not help in the fog of war, or that in the fog of war, we are

at times overwhelmed by information and misinformation and disinformation. Sometimes those of you in the public wondered if we get the fact that we're being overwhelmed by misinformation and disinformation, and the answer is, we often are. The point I'd like to make is that we might well be in Iraq anyway if the public had been more fully informed. But a public informed and consulted, I think, is likely to make the longer-term sacrifices that such an ambitious military and foreign policy demands, as I think we see very dramatically in the last couple of weeks and in the need that the president felt to make his quite lengthy speech before taking questions from the White House press corps the other night. The U.S. is pretty much running the world right now, and in much of the media we are not doing enough, I think, to tell you what is being done. There is so much going on in the world, and none of us, I think, in the media generally has kept up as well as we could. Now I would like to think, or one in

my job would like to think, that if you in the public rattled our cage more vigorously and made yourselves clear that you value more reporting about the use of American power in the rest of the world, we would be more responsive. Sadly, and I hate to say this, I think that the competitive pressures in American broadcasting today have not only undermined the quality of many programs and encouraged some corporate executives to pay more attention to the bottom line than to the public trust, but have made some of my colleagues, and I mean this in the absolutely most generic, general sense, a little too timid about advancing the cause in which we quite deeply believe. Ed Murrow said in 1958 that if news is regarded as a commodity and only acceptable when it is salable, then I don't care what you call it, it isn't news. And I think that

Murrow's contention in 1958 has some particular relevance today. I don't think it behooves me to stand here and emphasize the dumbing down of so much television if I cannot convince members of the public to shake corporate executives out of their prejudices and show that you are interested in the rest of the world. But I should tell you, if you despair about it, that we have quite recently seen at least one dramatic example of how effective a public uprising can be. When many thousands of people decided that the big corporations, one of, for one of which I work, were going to get even bigger and perhaps ignore the local importance of local broadcasters and who believe that the role and place of local broadcasters in their communities fabric was being threatened, the Federal Communications Commission got such an uprising on its hands that it was forced to listen, and ultimately, if you

followed broadcasting news at all, to retreat. And whatever you think of the recent uproar about the so-called indecency on the airwaves, and that in itself I think is hugely debatable, when people got riled up things changed, at least a little bit. And surely after 9/11, I do not need to make the point here that events in distant places are having a profound impact on all of us. The television networks used to have bureaus in almost every part of the world. I opened, as somebody said I think here tonight, the first one in the Arab world. We now, each of us, have a handful of foreign correspondents to cover the world. And unless you rattle the cage, is there any reason for the networks and the cables to believe that you really care? I suppose this is a slightly plaintive way of saying that those of us who do care could use your help. But I also want to talk about something else tonight, and I really am, and I don't mean this glibly, I'm grateful for the

courtesy you give me of listening. It is 40 years since I came to the United States as a young reporter and was sent immediately off to cover the civil rights struggle in the South and I've had a wonderful great time, seeing the rest of the world on somebody else's money. It's true what they say in the propaganda, I've been there, I think, for every major significant news event, especially the overseas ones, in the last 30 some odd years. And in my entire experience, nothing has moved me quite so much as the coming together here in the country in the wake of 9/11, and it saddens me deeply, but in the wake of that shared experience, America has become so apparently polarized. The clue to my state of mind at the moment is actually something that Thomas Jefferson said: To restore harmony, to render us again one people acting

as one nation, should be the object of every man really a patriot. I don't know, maybe it started with the Robert Bork nomination to the Supreme Court, maybe it was the 1988 campaign using the image of Willie Horton, the convict, against Michael Dukakis, maybe it was the Clarence Thomas hearings, Whitewater, the Clinton sex scandal, the Clinton impeachment, and the 2000 election. Whatever it may have been, the public dialogue today, and surely you cannot avoid this, has become vulgar to the point where I think it's shameful. Now it's true we've been through ugly cycles before. But today I think it is made much worse by the constant need for the drama of conflict that many broadcasters seem to demand. Our national conversation is very often a shouting match, and too much of it is infected with venom.

I'm not naive, it's not to say that I imagine a world in which we all get along. And I do not think we need to single out the right or the left, or the talk radio ranters alone, or the angry columnists. To some extent, I actually think we're all culpable including the staid center, which by its silence is not without responsibility. But I really do wonder why it is that the best-selling books in the country have titles like "Shut Up and Sing", "Savage Nation", "Bias, Slander, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them", you know the titles as well as I do. They aren't just opinionated, which is what troubles me. They're mean-spirited name-calling from the writers, who characterize and caricature their enemies. Now the founding fathers wanted the country to have a robust public dialogue and it is true,

you students of history know this better than I do, that the founders had some pretty mean-spirited name-calling, even pistol-wielding arguments of their own. But they didn't have our modern communication system and other technologies, which have increased the volume of public argument to an unholy racket. And I don't know about you, I'd love to hear from you, but to me, our national conversation sometimes feels impoverished as a result. The founders believed that the success of democracy depended in part on a civil public arena. Thomas Jefferson's insistence on a free education for all was to ensure that people would have the intellectual tools to join the public discussion. John Adams stressed morality, because he believed that a moral people would edit their worst instincts and not let disputes dissolve into anarchy. George Washington, some of you know, actually wrote a book called

"110 Rules for Civil Behavior". I really recommend it. And number 110 is "Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." After Jefferson advanced to the presidency while caught in the middle of the nation's first big public political squabble, a chapter of intolerance he described as wicked and bitter and bloody, he pleaded with the nation to recover its voice, its better voice. "Let us restore to social intercourse," Jefferson wrote in his first inaugural, "that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life are but dreary things." Now the virtue of this principle has been in evidence throughout the country's history, and it shows that civility doesn't just promote decency.

It also leads, I think, to a fairer exchange of ideas and a greater chance of finding workable solutions to the kinds of problems that we face, and at the beginning of the 21st century we face innumerable. I think the problem of the exploding media in the country has made this a real issue for us. We now have news sources operating 24/7 with the need to constantly fill the airwaves and the Web sites, even when they have no real news to tell. If you've ever watched the dog being chased around on cable television until it finally pees on the bush, you will know precisely what I'm talking about. And it is this persistent need for conflict that Ken Auletta of the New Yorker suggests has led to a modern conflict bias on the part of the press, for what is more engaging than a cockfight? Bitterness may be corrosive, but there is no doubt that it is

also entertaining. Television interviews are often conducted as confrontations, with the questioner sometimes shouting down his subject until he reveals his hidden biases. "Do you consider yourself a liberal?" Demanded Neil Cavuto of Fox when Auletta was on his program to talk about his piece in The New Yorker. Was this a signal to Fox's conservative viewers that they could now discount anything that Auletta said? Much of today's journalism, I'm sad to say, seems to be grounded in the desire to hurt or expose or belittle. I think, you may disagree with me, I think of Michael Moore's ambush of Charlton Heston, already stricken with Alzheimer's disease in "Bowling for Columbine", or Move On.org's display of an ad morphing President Bush into Adolf Hitler. But just consider, if you would, the disrespect shown daily by some of the radio hosts to anyone

who disagrees with them. Whatever you think of Senator Clinton's politics, the caricaturing of her and the former president is designed to hurt. And in some cases, I think we have discovered that the greater the access, the better the radio performer is paid. Now there's no doubt that we mainstream journalists have some responsibility for this loss of political ethics and standards. In the past, I think the mainstream traditional bias to the left has caused many conservatives to feel left out. Standard free market theories would then explain why so many options emerged on the right. I've long argued in my own shop that more conservative voices would be a positive development. But market-driven journalism has become the engine of our argumentative culture. It's always cheaper to shout than to report a story. Reporting is not only expensive, as I talked to some students about

today, but it is unpredictable. It's a great thing about journalism in many cases, its unpredictability, but it very often introduces complexity that disrupts hard and right, or hard right or hard left points of view. For those of you thinking about journalism, and I assume that's a reason, one reason to attend this great university, I do want to say this, there is real joy in doing it well. I jest sometimes, as I did a little while ago, that journalism has enabled me to see the rest of the world on the company's money, which is true, but I know nothing so satisfying as doing a story. And by that, I mean any story, and to my dad too, wherever he is, the weather, and knowing that you presented it fully, contextually, and understandably to a large number of people. That is really the definition of making a difference. So it's probably only fair that I end this first portion, and let you have a go at me, by

saying what I would do if I could, or somebody said once, if I were king: I would do a weekly review of the news, every week, at a time when the public might be expected to watch, which means prime time, so that the public would be given some sense of context of the week we've just been through and what we might be facing in the week ahead. I would make documentaries on television a regular part of the primetime schedule. "Frontline" on public television is great, but it is not enough. And I would include regular programming from other countries. How they see us. How disturbing it is to see the Iraqis responding in ways that we didn't anticipate even a month or so ago. And why and how did it get to be that 55 percent of the people in Great Britain, our closest ally, in a poll not too long ago

believe that it is the United States which is a threat to world peace. And I would make, now that I'm out here on the edge, I would make network news an hour every night. Please do not think that you can be well informed or fully informed, let's be better, let's be a little more charitable to what I do for a living. Please do not think you can be fully informed by watching the evening news on television once a day for five days. You have to do more. And if I could, just for the record, I would institute a change that my late boss Roone Arledge came to believe in, after he discovered the downside of news as a profit center. I would make news and information programming exempt from the rating system, which in my... It is the rating system, and the competition, and the discovery in the 70s

and 80s that we were profit center, excuse me, which has driven so much of it in the direction of ad nauseam Michael Jackson and Britney Spears and Lacey Peterson. Oh, thank god. Such excesses, as you know, do not speak well for those news organizations which claim to have the public interest at heart. Excuse me. It means I've been talking too long. So finally my wife asked the toughest question. "Will you," she said the other day, "tell these young people at Ed Murrow's alma mater to go with a journalism or to do something else?" Tough question. And the answer is, if you believe what Murrow stood for and what my father stood for and what Casey's father stood for, that broadcasting is a public service, then I would say to all of you who are thinking about it, please

come into the business. We need you. And Murrow said it best of all: "There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought," he put it, "against ignorance, intolerance, and indifference. This weapon of television and radio can be so useful." Thanks for .... Listen, if you want to stretch yourself, that's fine. But if not, why don't you sit down? I'll take questions. Now in order to see even better, I've got to put on my glasses.

And by the looks of it, there are a couple microphones up in the audience. Maybe there are more than, I hope there are more than a couple. So those of you who'd like to have a go at me, this is the time. I like tough questions. I like opinion, and it hasn't taken you long at all to get there, so... Just tell me who you are. Is this on? Yeah. My name is Angie Dohrmann and I'm a doctoral student in history from the University of Idaho and a high school teacher in the central basin of Washington. You mentioned the, the silent center. And my question, I guess the point for you that maybe comes from my perspective, is in many ways, doesn't the large media encourage that and encourage that polarization? I've watched you, I hate to say for a long, long time. I'm old, I expect that. And I appreciate your foreign policy point of view and the

way that you grasp that aspect, that seems to be the sellable story. But at the same time, I work in a town of 1500 people, the high school of less than 200, we have kids sitting up here. We know five kids that are in Iraq right now. The story to me, or I guess the one that I would like to see told, is the small community, these quiet people in the center that really nobody cares about, outside of New York, Washington, Atlanta, Miami, the kind of middle America, silent majority-type folks that get up, go to work, farm every day, send their kids off. All these kids are in the Washington National Guard, which is one of the most mobilized National Guard units in the United States. We send our kids off, and we have a really direct connection to what is going on in Iraq. I mean you can sit there and connect, with the kids that are going to get up in the morning and go to school,

with a young man who called his mom crying because a bullet whizzed by his head when he was... He joined the National Guard so that he could get a discount to come to the university. We have a president whose father began cutting our military to next to nothing, you know, cut the numbers down, cut the numbers down. Now we have a massive array of civilian contractors who are now getting kidnapped and killed and hauled through the streets, and we're overpaying them to do a job that soldiers are supposed to do. Is it Angie or is it an Annie? Angie. Is that shut up and ask my question? No, no. But can I just take a cut at, can I take a cut at some of that stuff? Sure, sure. It's interesting that in this war, unlike other wars, we have been criticized in the nati- You've said a lot of things which have a lot of answers to them from my point of view In this war, more than any I, any campaign that I can recall,

Desert Storm, some of the expeditions in Salvador, and certainly Vietnam, we have been criticized ironically in the national media, in television, for concentrating too much on the American soldier and the circumstance of the American soldier and marine in Iraq today, rather than on what the administration believes, and I think with some legitimacy, is the broader construction or reconstruction issue of Iraq. So on the one hand, I actually think we are doing quite a lot of what you suggest in terms of being focused on American servicemen. At the same time you raise something which I think in many respects is a better issue for your local television, which is to say, if you've got a good local television and you do in this area, which is far better able to make the kind of connection I think you and others are looking for, in terms of the men and women in your National Guard. And I would be very surprised at a local television operation that does not have or has not attempted to make those kind of connections for what I call the sort of

hometown market. I only agree with you wholeheartedly on one thing, we don't cover enough farming. I have a son who's a farmer, and I come from a farm country, and I've never been able to convince my employers to spend enough time on American agriculture. But on the war, I'm not sure that if you look with any degree of care, I don't want to get into the debate with you what you think of the president or not, I think if you look at the coverage just even in the last two weeks you'll see policy being very vigorously debated in the national media, not only about 9/11, but also about the current policy in Iraq. But I actually disagree with you a little bit about our connection this time in terms of American servicemen and women on the ground. I'm not sure that satisfied you. I guess, my point, and you make this point well, with this corporate and the business angle that news media has, it's hard for local news...It shouldn't be. But it's hard for local...

Don't, don't let your, don't let your, don't let your local station use that as an excuse. I'm sure at the ABC affiliate in the region would not use it as an excuse. Foregoing was a paid political announcement. Can I go on to somebody else? Well, no. One more thing, in that sense. Be fair now. There are a lot of people there. When Murrow took on McCarthy, right, it was sort of the beginning of the crumble at the end. So there is a difficult, difficult time for local affiliates to take on extremely controversial problems. Look what they've done to you. Well, actually so far they've been pretty good to me, to be perfectly honest, so I', lucky to work for company that's given me a lot of freedom to, not to criticize, but to ask tough questions. So in that respect, I think I'm quite lucky. Yes ma'am. Can you hear me at all? Yeah. You're actually supposed to ask the question and jump up and down the same time. Thank you.

OK. I have a question. I know that you did a lot of foreign correspondence, and I was wondering in my current history class, that in Murrow's days especially, that a lot of the American press was censored by foreign governments and foreign factors. And I was wondering what you had personally run into, especially in the Middle East, how you or your reporting coverage might have been censored. Well, you saw that, what's your name? Christina Bell. Christina, you saw the picture of Ed Murrow tonight in uniform during his service overseas with the American armed forces in World War II. Part of the time he was based in London, working basically as a civilian foreign correspondent as we have all done, and sometimes in the second war, if my memory serves me correctly, foreign correspondents got the rank of captain and were subject to all kinds of censorship. We are far less circumscribed today, though covering a war is always complicated if you are with the troops. We had an embedded system in the campaign against Iraq, which in many respects

enabled us to do more reporting than, God knows, than we were able able to do in Desert Storm. Desert Storm, the, the military actually locked us out. And people sat, you know, in Saudi Arabia, you know, waiting for the invasion of Kuwait to be ordered. This time I think it was a much better thing. But there's been no formal censorship in this regard. If you were an embedded reporter in this war and you violated the sort of rules of where is the unit at this time, you violated what they would call security or safety, you could lose your embed position. But we don't have formal censorship. There'd been formal censorship in other countries. I must tell you that when I arrived in Syria, in Damascus, it is an old enough story now I probably won't be persecuted for it. But Syria had censorship in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. You saw that picture of me in an operating theatre with an Israeli pilot who'd just been shot down. And they had a cens-, they had censorship but they didn't have a censor, and they didn't know how to run a censorship office, so we foreign correspondents very smartly told them how they should run it.

And I remember, I remember going to the souk in, the market in Iraq and we got a big rubber stamp made, said "passed by the censor" and we gave it to them. We all, it was a breeze. But. we, most of us who have been foreign correspondents, have spent our lives trying to get around the censors. Yes. Hello, I'm Charlie Youtz and I'm studying to be an education major. My question is in 1968 Walter Cronkite. Went on the air. And part of the decision that Johnson decided not to run again was his comment that we cannot win the Vietnam War. Did you agree with that commentary, and would you see the major broadcast news anchors doing that today? It's very interesting, you know, because one of the things that Murrow argued in his definitive speech in '58 was that we in the networks should take commentary more seriously, that we should do commentary both either on our daily broadcast, but that we should have editorial positions and we should label them as such. Cronkite as an anchor person, to take an editorial position as he did on the war after the Tet Offensive, is,

Was a very unusual and had a huge impact. Remember are only three television networks at the time, actually there were only two and a half, there was NBC, CBS, and us. And so it had a huge impact, the likes of which I don't think any one of us would ever have today if we chose that route. It's not a route I would choose. I'd be happy to have commentary come back on the air. Howard K. Smith was a great commentator for us. Eric Sevareid was a great commentator for CBS, John Chancellor for NBC. All added editorial input, editorializing to the broadcast, but the trouble is, as I said, I'd like to do an hour. We don't have enough time on a daily basis to do all the news, now that we have the technological reach, we can do news all over the world, and today there is no delaying it anymore. So we don't have enough time. I'd hate to give it up for that. I'm a little sad to see my friend Bill O'Reilly at Fox, who used to work at ABC. He's always telling me that he wants to hear my opinion more. "You should get out there and express your opinion, like me", he said and I point out that that's

not, it's not the most useful function, I think, for an anchor person. I prefer that people hear other opinions, not that I don't have one, and not that you don't see it expressed in the news, you see it to some extent expressed in the editorial selection we make of stories to cover and put on the air. But I think that sort of taking the time for the anchor person's editorial opinion on a daily basis is not the best use of our time. Yes ma'am. Hi, my name is Lauren, and I was wondering. You talked a little about how the British have a different opinion of us than we do, than we do ourselves. I've heard that from other international people as well. Why do you think that is? And is that a function of the news that we're getting, is it the function of reporters? What what do your international friends that are reporters in other countries think? I don't think you have to talk to reporters in another country to get something of the same impression. We are now the most powerful superpower in history. And we have at the moment not only a very aggressive foreign policy but we have a very aggressive commercial policy.

Much, many American businessmen's idea of globalization is to do it the American way. And so, and you also have very, very profound in the case of the British, and the French to some extent, very profound different opinions about what leads to an ultimate solution, if such a solution is possible in the Middle East. If you look at the daily reporting of the Middle East in the United States and Britain, you would sometimes think you were on two entirely different stories. British press for the most part, French press to a lesser extent, are infinitely more interested in the Arab and Palestinian point of view than the American press has traditionally been. So when you get a combination of power, a country and an administration that clearly says, quite openly in the president's case now, that we'd like to have our way in the world, our way in the world being to promote democracy and freedom in a fashion which the current administration subscribes to, then I don't think

we should be surprised to find resentment. And if you put that together with the fact that... I'll give you an example. I grew up in Canada. I got in trouble once for saying this, so I'm already in trouble for it, I don't mind saying it again. My mother was a profound imperialist, and actually quite anti-American. So I as a young man, you know, grew up being sort of indoctrinated about these terrible people to the south. Well, the truth is, it was all about bigness, and it was all about power, and it was all about the influence that America as a culture and a power was having on this tiny little population to the north. And it's much that way in the rest of the world. Our arrival in the 21st century, I think, is going to be China, which has, which we can watch emerging from its inferiority complex almost day by day. But other countries in the world on which we have a very profound effect can sometimes find themselves unable to resist the American way, it can be very very very resentful. Yes ma'am.

Thank you for coming today, and also for suggesting that more documentary and debate is needed in the media. I agree with that. Are you a documentary maker? No I'm not, a documentary watcher. My question today is, during the Afghan war my family and I were fortunate enough to have access to the British, German, Canadian and U.S. news. We found consistently that in Germany, Canada, and the UK, the news was available about 24 hours ahead of the U.S. What causes that delay? And what role does editorial influence play in the U.S. news? The latter, the second part of your question is so general that it's a little little hard to answer. I mean, we all, in every news establishment in the country, has an editorial point of view or many points of view. And in newspapers, which have, for example, publishers with very strong political points of view, you should not be surprised to see that reflected on occasion, certainly in the

editorial pages, and maybe even in the selection in the news pages. A good newspaper publisher believes that the best service to his or her community, and we believe this in television too, those of us who are idealists about this believe that the best service to the community is fair and objective news on a full-time basis. I don't know what to say about the first part because the truth matters, and Afghanistan was such a difficult place to cover that we were all to some extent reliant on one another and to a large extent reliant on some of the Arab television networks, most notably Al-Jazeera, who was reporting from Kabul during the time of the serious U.S. attack on, on, the air attack on Afghanistan when nobody else was there and able to report. So I don't know why they're getting stuff on the air a day before we are. There's no question of censorship here. Maybe a question of delivery systems, but in many cases we've been using much of the same raw material. And so I can't answer that question either. I'm sorry. Ma'am.

Hi. Last year I was on the front row of the controversy surrounding Senator Patty Murray and her comments about the war on terrorism in Afghanistan and the impending war in Iraq. And I was just wondering, I have two questions. How do you as a journalist balance selling the story and maintaining truth and integrity, and also how, or what can you suggest to those of us who are highly disconcerted by the media today in selling a story and having the ratings be the priority or seeming to be that priority, rather than telling the full story and getting the truth or more important facts behind a crisis. I hate to, I hate it when anybody would suggest that I'd try to sell a story. But I'll accept your criticism. The most effective thing you can do is to turn it off, just turn the, turn the television

off, or turn the radio off, if you feel as strongly as you do or as you appear to about the lack of context or lack of fairness or that somebody is trying to sell you. So I'd turn the television off or I'd turn the radio off. I'd go somewhere else and look for context. One of the things we're so profoundly, should be so profoundly grateful for in America is a, is a body of news information and opinion on every imaginable subject in a variety of different ways. Now it's true that most of us have grown up and are accustomed to television, it's a nice passive medium, and, and quite frankly some of the time I think we do a darn good job. I don't mean to, you know, to step too hard on what some of us do for a living, but if you ... The other the thing to do is tell us about it. You just have, in one respect. My father, who was, as I said, earlier a public broadcaster, would roll over in his grave if he heard me promoting as I sometimes do. "Coming up on World News Tonight tomorrow", you know, "World War Three, pictures at 11". I'm not quite that bad, but my father would just die if he heard

me doing that. It seems to be a reality of modern broadcasting that the people who do the news tell you what's coming up next. That's the least offensive, less offensive, I think, than people who hype the news and tell you you're going to get something, which ultimately you're only going to get a little slice of. But you clearly are aware, you're clearly all aware, that in this competitive environment of which I spoke, in which ratings have become so important to these corporations, that you're going to get people rushing for the bottom on occasion. And you're smart enough to know that, and you're smart enough to go somewhere else when you're dissatisfied. Yes sir. Two questions. What do you think of Fox News and what some perceive as a pro-administration perspective, but also what do you think of the use of consultants and Richard Clarke on ABC? Can I answer the second part first, because that will give me time to think about the first part?

I think as some of you may know, this gentleman clearly knows, that Richard Clarke is a consultant to ABC News. That means we pay him for his expertise. We also pay generals. We also pay some people in science, but not very many. We over on it, over the course of a year have periodic relationships with specialists with whom we make financial arrangements, and we label them very carefully. In fact, the other day when I had to cover Condoleezza Rice's testimony, I took about a minute explaining our relationship with Dick Clarke before we got into her. We did not imagine when we hired Mr. Clarke that we were hiring anything other than one of the most serious counterterrorism experts in the country, if not the greatest current one, having worked for the Clinton administration and being carried over by the Bush administration. I for one, I don't think anybody had any idea that he was going to write a book which would suddenly make the news as dramatically as he did.

And once he did make the news in the, to the extent that he did, both we and he were very careful on how we used him subsequently. We did not nor will we use him as a foil for Condoleezza Rice. But given the fact that the Bush administration went for his throat in every imaginable way after he testified, we thought it fair at the time of her testimony, to have him on briefly to comment as to whether anything there had caused him to change his mind. Fox is a more interesting question. I feel, I feel, I feel both good and bad and excited and indifferent by the presence of Fox. First of all it's run by a man who is one of the, Roger Ailes is a guy I like very much but he's one of the great salesmen and communicators and packagers and product managers in the country. He's a really smart guy and he knows exactly what he's, what he's doing. I like, in

some respects, that Fox is what it is and that I know Fox is what it is on some occasions. It was clear to anybody who watched the coverage of the war that Fox was far more disposed to the administration without criticism than some of us were in the rest of the media. Didn't take me long to figure that out. And I think as long as you know what Fox is, that's just fine. And by the way, Fox is populated in some respects by really good reporters, including Brit Hume, who does a nightly news program, who used to be our White House correspondent, who are really good journalists. I think Bill O'Reilly has a legitimate pay, a legitimate place on the debate page, provided you know exactly what you're, you know what you're getting. The one thing I think I do not like about Fox is the occasional, maybe it's more than occasional, because the moment I say this to you, somebody's going to pick it up in New York, is the notion that in their advertising there is something absolutely dead right

down the middle about them. We report, you decide. I would be happy if Fox were not using that slogan. In itself, it's not a harmful slogan, but I think it's a little bit on the disingenuous side. But I'm glad that they're here. But as I said earlier, I am unhappy with anybody in the media, whether they're on Fox or CNN, which has gone out of its way to try to compete with Fox on something of the same level, anybody who thinks that the public debate today is best held at the highest decibel. I'm one who prefers calm conversation. Hope that was diplomatic. I just looked at my wife for approval. Sort of, you know, you didn't get yourself in too much trouble there. Yes sir.

Some would argue that Sidney Lumet's film "Network" offers a rather cynical and perhaps extreme approach to the issue of the mainstream media. Have you observed any manifestations even on a minute scale of the film's claims of sensationalism trumping all else? And furthermore, what is your opinion of the film? God, I hope you don't take this seriously. I live for the day, I live for my last day in broadcasting. Please don't take too seriously. I live for my last day in broadcasting when I can look in the camera and say "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." It, it is, it is one of the great lines. It is one of the great lines in broadcasting and I do not know an anchor person, male or female, my age or younger, who hasn't had that kind of day with the company. Yeah, there's some truth in the energy and the pace and even in the skepticism and occasional cynicism about the industry which appears in the film, but like any other form of entertainment, I think you know

as well as I do, just looking at the media that you can find that sensationalist dimension in some parts of broadcast and you won't find it in others. So I think it's not, when people... We get visitors. I don't want to make this a mass invitation but we get visitors who come to see World News Tonight every day. We actually have a little veranda up top because we get so many people who want to come and see the broadcast, we come, and when they come, anybody I think has seen "Network", as I sit down for the broadcast on the chair I go like this. Remember? The anchor guy in the broadcast making sure his jacket's pulled down before he... I do it and they just break up. They think, oh he really does it. But the answer like so much of, so much of life, it was, it was true in many parts, but caricature in other. Yes, ma'am. Good evening, Mr. Jennings. How are you? Fine, thank you, so far. Just wanted to ask, making sure. Anyways I wanted to personally thank you. My name is Christine Armento. I'm a freshman here at WSU and

I want to thank you for your representation recently with, for children, the younger generation, especially covering the war in Iraq, you found opinions of children and also with the school shooting. Answering children's questions. Yes. It's been a lot of fun Anyways, furthermore, my question to you is, obviously as you know, you work for ABC. They told me that these WSU people were really smart. I try. They said it wasn't all football, you know. All right, this is where it gets hard, OK. So ABC is part of Disney and recently has been in the news that Disney has been in talks with Clear Channel about merging to be one of the biggest media conglomerates we've ever seen. Comcast, you mean? Comcast. Oh, what the hell, they're all the same. I meant Comcast.

So my question to you is... You know, you and I could take it, we could go work downtown when we're finished here the two of us. I would be more than willing to do that, seriously. My question to you is, what is your opinion on that, and what is your opinion on the growing trend of media ownership, and how can future broadcasting, radio and television organizations, ensure that media diversity? That's a really good question. First of all it's Disney and Comcast, and Comcast made what my boss would, Michael Eisner would call an unfriendly takeover bid for ABC, and I'm not sure we've seen the last of them. But I don't have the vaguest idea. I am neither party to any of that. And just some of those things in life you can't worry about. Disney, I worked for Cap Cities but for ABC, and Disney bought Cap Cities, and life changed and life went on. So I don't know much about their business arrangements. I read in the newspapers, I think yesterday, that Disney's looking for a slightly better return on its stock this year. But I have a rule in my shop, which my wife used to have in her shop. I don't let people,

I try not let people in my office even look at the Disney stock ticker, because I think it will affect somehow way down the road or somewhere, you know, their perception of that we need or want to do something that's good for the company. My view of working for Disney is quite simple. If Disney is, does something bad or dumb, we report on it, because I think it's good for us. Good for you I hope. And it's certainly good for Disney to be known as a company which expects that kind of treatment from an independent news division. And one of the things I think anybody in news today worries about is whether or not the people in the corporation are breaching the firewall that has existed throughout my career between the news division and the corporation. And when that firewall gets breached then I think we're all in greater difficulty. I agree with you philosophically, or I think I agree with you, with the implication of your question, philosophically that the more media in fewer hands is not necessarily better for the country. And I made that reference to the FCC in which, we actually had, we're the only broadcast that covered that story at a pretty regular basis. And there was a small town, I think it was in Montana,

which had had a chemical spill in the town, and they were looking to their local radio station for some kind of warning and guidance on what to do. And it had been taken over by some big broadcaster in the East that never went, they didn't even have the vaguest idea what was happening in town. That's just bad for, it's bad for broadcasting, that's bad for the town, that's bad for a community, it's bad for everything. So I mean, I mean it's fairly, for me it's a fairly sensible position to have. The greater the diversity, the better it is for the country. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. We've got time for about three more questions and then I'm told, I'm told I have to be out of here by, let you go home, it's like the bars close at a certain hour. Your name is? My name is Angela Hill. Hi Angela. Hi. I am a recent graduate of, graduate of the Edward R.Murrow School of Communication here at WSU, and I'm curious to know if there is anything early on in your career... I think it's very important that you tell stories that mean something, or you tell stories that make a difference

in someone's life. And I'm not sure if there's anything that stands out to you, with all that you've covered over the years, that stands out to you as this is why I do what I do, and this is what makes it all worth it. I think the thing for someone at my stage in life, things stand out all the time for a variety of reasons. We had a little news conference today, which in itself was an uncomfortable experience for me because I'm used to being on the other side of the camera. But there were some very, there were some kids from the high schools here, and they asked me, you know, what should they know about their careers, and I said, for goodness sakes, to be cautious. And I reminded them that I, my first inauguration was Lyndon Johnson's inauguration in 1965 and I studied pretty hard. I'm a guy who really does his homework ,and I thought I really had it down pat. But halfway through the day when the parade was coming down Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House, I got cocky, and I said, "And here come the Marines playing their song Anchors Away." Everybody in the country except me remembered that it was Navy, right. And in a similar

broadcast, having done a lot of study, for some reason the Civil War came up, and I said, you know, "The great surrender ceremony at A Palma Tox." Now, it's a long time ago, mind you, OK? And I've become deeply committed to American history since. But it was, that's 40 years, 40 years ago. I remember these things today as if they were alive because they reminded me about caution. And I'll tell you one more story, and then I probably should all, let you out of here. I'll take him last. Which I have told before, but I think is a worthwhile story for a young would-be journalist. In 1969 I was living in Rome and having a ball. And my bosses called me up and said we want you to go to Beirut. I hung up the phone. And they called back, they said "no, we want you to move from Rome." I hung up again. And they called back a third time, and they said "Scuse me, you know what's going on in the Middle East, you've been in and out of there a few times. We want, you're going." So of course I figured I was going to move, and I left my glorious residence in

Rome where I was having a ball, and I moved to Beirut. And on the first night I got to Beirut, there was a big fight going on between the Lebanese army and the Palestinians in the south, and I didn't know anybody in town, and I had to file by like 5 o'clock in the morning for what was the forerunner of "Good Morning America" called "AM America", and I called up the one journalist I knew in town, said "could you come down, and have a drink with me, and tell me what the heck is going on?" and he agreed. And I wrote down every single word he said, and I then typed it up, and I broadcast it the next day without a slightest piece of editing, I don't recommend this on a regular basis. And I was absolutely right. And everyone in New York was, oh man, were they impressed. I was absolutely right. My apologies. And it was the last time in my six years, six and a half years, of permanent coverage of the Middle East that I was ever right. And it was the first reminder to me, and I've been reminded in every story in every part of the world and every part of the country that I've worked ever since, truth is really hard

to get at and that you just have to... And part of the thing, it's about nuance, nuance thing I talked about earlier, part of the great thing about what we do, and what I hope some of you will do, is going out and trying to understand the mix of opinion and philosophy colored by age and gender and geography and economic circumstance, that makes what we do so absolutely profoundly exciting. So that's, that's the best I can do on short notice. Last question. Yes, sir. How's it going? My name is Arlen. I was wondering during your speech, you spoke about rattling or shaking the box. What can we do as viewers to press newscasters to give us a better story? Well, let me just ask you, just quickly, what's your definition of a better story? More detail, like when you're talking about how the feelings other countries have towards us. But the news doesn't always show that.

Well, I suppose there are many ways you could, I mean you could, the boring way, you could send an e-mail to the companies you think you'd like to give you more. I mean it sounds a little primitive, but it works. You could watch those programs which some of us slave over, which try to give you a sense of context that you might not have got otherwise. It sounds a little pompous, that last answer, but, but you know we try, and you should look for places where those programs are on, and you should protest. I mean we were talking, I was talking to the president earlier this evening, or actually he volunteered it. I have a son still at s..., at college and there's a certain passivity, some of us older guys think, about the current generation of university student today. Kind of wonder what you're upset about or wonder what you think should change and is, I mean I made my early bones covering student protest in the late 60s. In every major college campus in the world there was some kind of uprising in which reporters, you know, were

deeply engaged. We are now, the country is at war. There's a huge inequity in the country between the rich and the poor, and every indication tells us the rich are getting rich and the poor are getting poorer. Don't have to be a liberal or a socialist to realize that there's some consequences to that. We have problems of immigration in the country. What do you think of the country's immigration policy? There's so many ways, I know I sound like an old geezer, don't I? There's so many ways that you and your mates could get involved and have a really good time doing it. So nobody, you could make us feel, you could make us defensive with far less effort than you probably might imagine. I read all my mail, I answer my angry telephone calls as best I can, I try not to respond to those with anthrax in them. My poor... we had an anthrax incident in my office, and a child of one of my producers, we thought it was a spider bite, it turned out to be anthrax, but my poor

young assistant the other day... Some woman somewhere in the country sent me cookies with powdered sugar all over them, and my secretary just threw them away, and then she realized, oh god, went around the rest of the day with her hands in her pockets, not touching anybody. But I, I want to talk to all, I want to talk to the angry people. This story we did on Jesus and Paul, a lot of people in the country thought it was great and I was thrilled. A lot of people in the country thought I was a blasphemer because I hadn't taken the New Testament absolutely literally in every respect. We love this kind of engagement with the public. You think I like just sitting every night yakking at you? I'm not even sure I haven't even yakked at you too much this time. Thanks very much for coming ... ... Thank you very much. Peter Jennings. And thanks to all of you for joining us tonight.

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