Coverage of the 2003 Edward R. Murrow Symposium [part one]

It's. A. Good evening. I'm all X10 director of the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication at Washington State University. Welcome to the waiting room. Mauro's symposium

a national forum. For the discussion of the important social political and communication issues of the day and the venue at which we honor outstanding achievement in communication and related fields with the Moro award. The Symposium is made possible by the generous support of the Saul indictee has foundation of Seattle. Our school is privilege to bear the name of our most illustrious alumnus and to be the torch bearer for the morrow a tradition which calls for the highest standards of ethical performance in journalism broadcasting and communications. I would like to read to you a message from K.C. morrow at Mauro's. Two generations of bad Mauro's offspring are grateful for W-S use continuing recognition of his legacy through the morrow's School of Communication. We are also proud to see at

Mauro's name associated through this symposium with that of Daniel Pearl a determined and talented journalist whose death we all mourn with best wishes. Indeed we have an exciting in and form of the program for you tonight highlighting people and journalistic performance that Ed Murrow would have been very proud of. Here is the order of events. Barbara good to hear the end of the College of Liberal Arts give welcoming remarks to be followed by a tribute to Edward R. Murrow produced by school alumni and featuring some of broadcast journalism journalism legends the Rollins president of Washington State University will then speak on the morrow tradition to be followed by a video tribute to Daniel Pearl. This year's recipient of the morrow for President Rawlings will then give the moral war excepting for the Pearl family it

could not be with us tonight will be will be. Brian Grilli Danny Pearl's friends. And colleagues. At the Wall Street Journal. After the award presentation we will hear from a distinguished panel about war and words. The challenge for today's journalists tonight's program can be viewed live via video streaming through that through the W-S. And the Moro web page. I would like to welcome the Pearl family and staff from the United States State Department who are watching. It is now my pleasure to call on Barbara to her being of Liberal Arts for welcoming remarks. Good evening. Thank you Alex and thanks to all of you who are joining us tonight and especially to our supporters who have traveled great

distances to be here. I want to give a special welcome to the students from high schools and community colleges across the state who are here for career day. It's really wonderful to have you here. We hope to see you back as students in the rural school of communication. You know one of the great privileges of university life is taking part in academic discussions in a collegial environment. Tonight's discussion promises to be a shining example of that tradition considering world events as they exist tonight. I really can't imagine a topic of greater importance for this year's Merle's symposium than the role of journalists in times of war. The Edward R. Murrow school has brought together individuals with the expertise to provide a broad stimulating and important dialogue on this topic. No I might not be the only one who has been reminded of

Edward R. Murrow while watching recent war reports. However Amuro was one of the first and one of the best when he brought the impact of World War Two to life for Americans. He set a standard of excellence that reporters today still try to emulate. Merle taught our nation. And the world not only what it meant to be a good broadcaster but also what it meant to be a responsible journalist. When you consider the history of Edward R. Murrow and its a and the Edward R. Murrow war which will be presented tonight in memory of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl you began to see a pattern of excellence which has attracted many of the brightest and the best from print and broadcasting to this campus at Washington State University. The tradition of excellence is alive and well among the faculty

staff and students of the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication and those who attend the symposium as gifts to lend their expertise and their support. I thank you and I hope you enjoyed tonight's program. 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. And Murrow was an inspiration not just to his generation but to future generations or journalist to come. And for those of us who are lucky enough to work with him he was our mentor and 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 but 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 would soon stationed in London. He brought World War II into American living rooms that no other bird would be anti-guard by the and thereby not like or dealing directly overhead. Now in order to work in the moment they are going from here at now on radio to see it

now on television. Merle 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 his 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 and like the popular phrase is he pushed the envelope. He did things that hadn't been done before and he did them successfully. Merle left CBS in 1961 and worked for the Kennedy administration as head of the United States Information Agency. He was knighthood 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 had to live in his endeavours the conduct that truth and personal integrity. Arvai platers

man and the. Because 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 what he was 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. 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. His devotion to the truth his fearlessness and going after it and then broadcast into a set of standards that is going to live as long as journalism but so far

I'm sure good night and good luck. It's my great pleasure to be able to recognize the rural Award winner Muro award honors a person or persons exemplifying through service or performance of professional ideals of Edward R. Murrow those ideals that we just heard described and that many of us with gray hair remember the performance and values that were expressed to him. I thought I would just list some of our all of our past award recipients. Daniel Schorr 2002. Christiane Amanpour who received the Edward R. Murrow Award for distinguished achievement. Sir Howard Stringer for

International and intercultural communication. Bernard Shaw for lifetime achievement in broadcasting. Ted Turner for his lifetime achievement and communication Jackson and alumni for lifetime achievement in broadcasting and Neuharth for achievement in journalism. Morio Saito for international intercultural communication. Walter Cronkite for lifetime achievement. Frank Blethyn for lifetime achievement in journalism and Sam Donaldson for lifetime achievement in broadcasting. This year's possumus award to Daniel Pearl is I think very appropriately given the whole nation was deeply moved as we watched the saga and heard the story. But as we learn more about Daniel Pearl and as we reflect on his career we understand that not only

his tragic death but his wonderful life and the values that he expressed really are deserving of this great tribute. We now have a video tribute to Danny Pearl. The world got to know Daniel Pearl as the president of the rowlock reporter who lost his life in one of the world's most dangerous trouble spots. But Danny was more than just a great journalist. He was a man who loved the music of life. He had a gift for storytelling. Danny went out to see the world for himself and he wanted to tell people what he saw and found. Danny grew up here in Southern California. This is the face of a boy who would spend his life trying to make the world a safer place. The Pearl family album is full of pictures of people who are enjoying each other's

company. It's clear that Danny's humanity was homegrown and he would pass it on to others when he started writing and living my life you know. Danny was also a musician and chef. As a teenager. It was always lots of fun just having him around them all by heart. Rivered. As a foreign correspondent Danny was a born reporter who loved to dig for original stories that were hard to find. He had a great eye for detail and a gift for explaining the human side of complex international

situations. Here he interviewed Soviet dissidents you know someone who was. An active activist a Jew but it didn't matter if he was or did not try to it is it isn't much different than what. You do and you don't know what to do. With him. Danny loves life and he was lucky enough to find love of his wife Marianne. They met in. Their life together became an international event.

Then Marianne became known around the world for her courage and grace as their story became part of the current crisis. Last month on May 28 Marianne gave birth to their son. She said. That he will live through me and our son. They have blown out a candle but the light is still on. The moral hoard will be accepted tonight for the Pearl family. Brian Gulli friend and colleague of Danny Pearl the Wall Street Journal member of optimize pain and.

Not only one. Thing. Weighs more than Danny. I'm so honored to be here. Thank you. Never been to Pulman before flying in today. It's gorgeous. This is a beautiful beautiful place you have. It's a great university a beautiful campus. And this is such a classy program. Ganti would be so honored is so honored to be here tonight like that. So thanks. President Rollin's distinguished

faculty and Ruth Murray on camera in the shower if you're watching and especially to the scholarship winners. Congratulations on winning. $500 $2000 $2000. Enjoy it because that's about what you're going to make your first year. I have some remarks to read from you and Ruth but first I just like to tell one little Danny story of my own and I direct this in particular. To those young people out there who are striving and aspiring to do it that he did which is make it easier for all of us. Big small white black. Young old. Female Male whatever.

Martian person to communicate. When I first came to the Journal in 1995 which is a difficult place to learn it's a weird newspaper if you've read it you know. It's a little different than other newspapers and it's really different inside. And I was supposed to occur with the Justice Department about which I knew almost nothing I mean nothing actually. And the reporter who preceded me who had left the paper was to leave me what we call a beat memo beaten up always like a list of here are the sources you need to know names and phone numbers and some advice on what you're supposed to do. The memo I got from my predecessor. Was it was it was a whole page but she could have cut it off had half the page because there was only 13 names on it and I knew most of them and it was useless. Three months later Danny went off to the London bureau. Against our wishes. We wanted him to stay in Washington and he went off to. And he left I

took over his beat which was telecommunications and Danny sent his beating up. It was over 30 maybe he was over 40 pages long. There were over 300 names and numbers. There was an additional 15 to 20 pages of story ideas. Some of them were good. Kids and they were all. And then woven throughout. Was little bits of advice from dad on how to deal with sources. This guy if you get him out to shoot pool he'll talk to you. This woman only called her home because she's afraid to talk at work. This guy likes this kind of angle but he doesn't like that coming. My favorite was about a guy who I developed into a great source and Danny gave me the ultimate warning simply by writing. His name Joe Blow his number 2 0 2 5 5 5 1 2 6 5.

And then in parentheses spin spin plus spin plus spin plus spin equals lie. And that's all I needed to know about this guy. And the reason I tell you that is. That. 40 or 50 pages said so much about Danny. He was filled with his intelligence with his hard work with his sense of humor and with his generosity. So my young friends colleagues. You want to know what it takes you want to be the next Danny Pearl. You want to be a great journalist. That's what it takes to do it. This is a message from the Pearl family on behalf of the family of Daniel Pearl. We would like to express our gratitude to the faculty and students of Washington State University. For honoring our son. All right that's enough time.

For honoring our son Danny Pearl. With the 2003 Edward R. Murrow Award for distinguished achievement in journalism. It has been heartwarming for us to see people from all walks of life. Reaffirming their commitment to the ideals for which Danny stood in truth decency and compassion. We draw great consolation. Seeing Danny's legacy turning into inspiration for young people to pursue these ideals seriously and consistently as he did. This is especially true for students of journalism. Like yourselves. Who will soon be following in Danny's footsteps. We know that many of you armed with sharp pens. And sober eyes. Will continue Danny's quest for truth and understanding and will venture to eradicate the ignorance and hatred. That took Danny's life. Inspired by the unfinished mission of reporters like Danny

you will carry the banner of dialogue to remote corners of the earth. And like him. You will not compromise fairness and truth. In the face of adversity. Take pride in your new profession. You are now Danny Pearl's kin. We wish you great success in your new career the pro family. Thank you. Thank you very much Brian. Certainly a fitting tribute to Danny Pearl a journalist in the moral tradition. We are fortunate to have with us tonight a distinguished panel of journalists and noted scholar from the Morris school to discuss one of the most pressing issues of the day.

Press coverage of war. I would like to introduce our moderator who will then introduce the panelists Peter Badia. Our moderator is executive editor of The Oregonian. Under Peter's leadership the Oregonian won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service the most prestigious of the Pulitzer awards and another for feature writing among his former positions. Our executive editor of the Fresno Bee managing editor of The Sacramento Bee and managing editor of The Dallas Times Herald. Peter is the president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. He is a member of the Mauro's school's professional league professional Advisory Board. Peter is a native of Pullman than the former. Hi. So welcome home. Peter. Good evening everyone. Let me let me just begin by saying

Go Greyhound's and go Cougars. It really is a great honor and privilege for me to be with you this evening at Washington State University. Played an incredibly important and pivotal role in my life as many of you know my father served on the faculty here for 40 plus years. And the way I look at it is everything I've been able to accomplish in life everything I've been able to do in life is directly a result of this great university if for no other reason because it gave my dad steady work for all those years. And indeed I grew up grew up literally a block from here when I was a kid where we sit today was many of you will probably remember well this was a big flat playfield where my buddies and I used to run wind sprints getting ready for high school football back in the late 60s when we were going to high school here. So

it's it really is really is something for me to have this opportunity to be with you this evening and thank you very much for that for that privilege. It's certainly been an extraordinary last month for those of us who labor in the trenches in journalism you know embedding has become a word that we all use without hesitation which you know used to be sort of what happened in the spring around here when things were muddy and you threw something into the ground and embedded. Now it's a term dart in journalism that we've that we've come to accept in that we've that we talk about in our newsrooms every day as as we've as we've tried to cover the extraordinary events and watched the war unfold in an extraordinary way over the last several weeks in Iraq I'm sure the timing for this evening's event couldn't be better in the sense that the war is in some fashion winding down. And the moral school has put

together an incredibly talented and able panel of journalists and and people otherwise professionally involved in these matters to talk about it this evening. So with no further ado what I would like to do is I will introduce each member of the panel one by one and ask them to come up as I introduce them and then we'll begin by asking each of them to give some opening remarks and then we will dive right into the conversation. One thing I want to emphasize is there are microphones in the audience and I hope that you will be aggressive as as we would as journalists in joining in the conversation. When you when you care to pose a question or to join in the conversation please identify yourself and your affiliation whether students faculty staff somebody who just walked in off the street because they thought there was a basketball game whatever whatever the case might be. So please please introduce yourself when you when you ask questions. So the first panelist I'd like to introduce is Danny Schechter.

And these are all these biographies are also in your program so although you'll hear a few details that perhaps are not included in program Danny is the author of media wars news in a time of terror a book that is being released as we speak it's available in Europe but I hear from reliable sources it hasn't made it to the book yet but it should it should soon. Danny is the co-founder and executive producer of global vision a new york film and TV production company. He's executive editor of media channel dot org. The world's largest online media issues network for which he writes a very spicy weblog that I've become hooked on in the last few days titled The news dissector. He's a graduate of Cornell has a master's from the London School of Economics and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and has had a long and distinguished career in broadcast and print journalism and perhaps most importantly has an 8000 Album Record Collection. Please welcome Danny Schechter.

We're fortunate to have with us this evening daily choose the Seattle bureau chief of The Associated Press in your program you'll know Tom Kent the foreign editor of A.P. was to originally join us. He's a little busy these days. But we're we're grateful that Dale can be here in his stead. Dale's been in Seattle with the AP for the better part of the last decade. He's worked for the AP for the past 22 years. That's taken him all over the country. Columbus Albuquerque any number of other places. He's a graduate of the Ohio State University. Worked at small dailies at the beginning of his career and like many of us in this business has the has the dubious distinction of being a sports editor in his past. He's also covered the State House and any number of other issues since coming to the northwest to anchor a peace operations here. Please welcome Dale. Next to Susan Ross who's an associate professor here in the rural school she specializes in

the law the First Amendment and media coverage of under-represented groups. Professor Ross has an impressive academic resume including her undergraduate degree from Wisconsin a master's in journalism from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. from the University of Florida in mass communications. She's been a cougar since 1996. A recitation of her publications on mass communication related topics would more than fill the rest of our time this evening. But she's written extensively on a variety of issues around the first amendment including contemporary issues related to terrorism and public access to meetings in the electronic age. But perhaps the most shocking thing I've learned about her as a Pulman native is that she lives in Moscow Idaho. Next is Peter Kovacs. Peter's been with the foreign service since 1980 and is the director of the Office of Public Diplomacy Bureau of East Asian affairs in the State Department.

Prior to that he was the director of the State Department's foreign press center's director of the agency charged with coordinating U.S. government communication efforts directed at foreign audiences and director of the USA's Office of Strategic Communications. He served overseas in Japan Morocco Bahrain and Yemen. His behavior is from west land and he holds master's degrees from Berkeley and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He studied overseas for a year as an undergrad at Banaras Hindu University in India which happens to be my father's undergraduate alma mater. Previous to the Foreign Service Peter worked as a teacher a freelance photojournalist a dormitory headmaster a stevedore and as a stonemason. Finally you've already met Brian brulé He's a senior editor in the Washington bureau of The Wall Street Journal. He was part of the journal's team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the paper's coverage of 9/11

and wrote one of the journal's lead stories for the next morning's editions. He also is a songwriter and wrote a song dedicated to Danny Pearl's son Adam that's been featured on CNN and elsewhere. He grew up in Detroit. Graduated from Notre Dame and has already tried to make a bet on next fall's football game with President Bush. And. And you should note his first car was a 1970 olds 98 midnight black with a red pinstripe. Amazingly after that he is now a responsible father of three children. Please welcome Brian again. So we'll begin with not to make this sound like a political debate but we thought everybody should have the chance to make some opening remarks on this broad topic and from their particular fields of expertise. And I think we'll go in the reverse order of the way people were introduced.

Brian forger's I'm going to go first to go first. OK. In remarks on a separate hand but I have to say one thing first. This is for all the kids young people who are here. I go to schools. I like to take the young journalists out. This involves an intense debate we had earlier but where do we go. I'm going to go to the president's house for a little cocktail one thing and then I'm going to show up. There was debate back and forth back and forth my office Ricos my office record. It's Ricos. If you show up. I'm buying sort of Dow Jones buying. I'm serious. I'll be there. You'll be there. OK. See you have what it takes. Let me the first annual Danny Pearl cocktail hour. And it maybe will go down the street to the other place that will be the first panel Danny Pearl pub crawl. OK this is what I think after and I'm like you you know I didn't I've never covered terrorism per se and

I'm not a war correspondent never happening. But like all of you I've watched and read like crazy war coverage and. You know that guy's an idiot. Why did he say that. Boy that's terrific. And why didn't they write this story why did they do that you know just because we're like this is acting like real Americans. You know people who have know nothing about supposedly know nothing about journalism probably know a lot more about it than we do the readers and viewers and to at the end. I was thinking about this today and I thought that the coverage with the embedded in all this intense way inside coverage of the war. Has in a way exposed our greatest strengths and our greatest weaknesses. So very briefly among strengths it has done what all great journalism should do. Which is take. The person who reads the paper or turns on the television or turns on the radio or clicks on its

computer take them where they can't go. You can get there because you have press pass. My wife asked me she does where all those reporters in Iraq. I said because they can go there. They let them go so we go we have to go which we should not go. We have to go. So just like if you're covering a city council you want to take them behind the closed doors or in the corporate board room or in the huddle of the Cougar you know the cougar football huddle. You want to be there. You take your chances that you're great journalists will find the great stories. And I think we've seen them on TV we've seen images that have startled and amazed us and kept us interested and in print we've seen. I'll give you one example. Bill Branigan story in the post. You all remember about the poor Iraqi family in the van that drove up and they didn't hear the warning and the soldiers blown away. And the Pentagon put out one thing

and it was about 60 percent of the truth. But Bill Branigin was there. In his story the next day. Aside from being just one hell of a read. Was the truth. What really happened. And I am glad we were indebted to that as well. I think one of the other strengths it is exposing us and I think this is true as well of the 91 Gulf War was our ability and particularly in print to explain and illuminate things that aren't so easy to put in images through no fault of my colleagues and broadcast. But you know let's talk about how difficult it is going to be to reconstruct Iraq and what various military military strategies are and how the war affects the economy in Peoria. Or Pullman for that matter. And I'm struck as well by images that you are either too stark or too jarring to put on television

but that work well in print and I'm thinking of two colleagues of mine one of whom Mike Phillips who just got to Kuwait City today finally out wrote a story last week about a marine encounter group where they're talking about killing people in this story opened with the image of Marines seeing an Iraqi laying on the floor. He was reaching for his rifle and his 21 year old man pump two bullets into his head. I'll make you read the story. And it's hard. It's hard to do that as graphically on TV. You can do it in print though and then you can take readers into a world and think about the complexities of killing someone and experiencing somebody firing on you that you couldn't do otherwise. I think as well of my other colleagues Helene Cooper story and this was at the very end of the story where she toured an encampment of Iraqi soldiers who had just departed maybe two hours before whether there were still warm souping in a big pot. And the captain was taking her around through the various parts of this

encampment this building and it came around a corner and he said and now you will see the dogs of war. And there was a mother dog there who had died and her puppies were all. Eating her insides which was a stark and horrible image. But boy it brought home what this is all about without any Rajar flyback. It also brings up our weaknesses. I think our tendency to be homers. It's sometimes it's almost like. And forgive me if there are sportswriters in the crowd but you know this is the way it is it's it's sportswriting. And I think the first several days of the war before we figured out would be a little tougher than than we thought. You know it's it's kind of raw raw and you know God bless the soldiers and Marines and sailors. But. If every single one is an all American kid and every single one is a

great kid and he was the true Marine and the best marine ever. Well then it diminishes all of them. They're human beings and I'm waiting I think six months from now we're going to start reading real stories about these people in the same way. I think it hit exaggerated our tendency to see things in black and white and go like this. You know that the for the pendulum to go back and forth because for four days we were just kicking butt. We're creaming these guys and then all of a sudden oh we're going to get creamed we're going to get killed. And you know it was amazing. And for one thing it just in the narrow focus we have right now looking at the war it seems like we were wrong. But the truth is we're not going to know the real winners or losers of this war for 10 years 20 years 40 years. We're not going to know Lasley it has as always is often one big stories shown our tendency to be seduced by the temptation to become the story. The reports I would see where the

anchor would say and here's so-and-so and Karbala and boy he's doing a good job for us. Well I have no doubt that he was doing a good job and I don't want to hear that. I'll tell me that the readers don't want to take me to Karbala. We know he's there. Journalists are supposed to be invisible. You know behind a camera behind a notebook invisible. And then there's Geraldo. And you know what the thing is. A lot of Americans they remember Geraldo and remember Mike Phillips and hotlink over they remember. That one bad apple spoils the orchard but I'll predict two things. Is that the best stories about the war. Aside from those terrific insights snapshots the best big stories about the war won't be written for a while in newspapers and magazines and on TV and documentaries. And my last prediction is that that Iraqi flak

the minister of information will be on Letterman. Because this is America. And we are like a knucklehead. Who. Should be a top ten list that. Makes some great points there. We'll come back to Peter. Well I guess I've been kind of a distaff perspective to this. Some of you may wonder what a public diplomacy type does. I guess I need to acknowledge how humbled I feel being here where Ed Murrow went to school because he was also one of the deans of my professional world. As a son in a family of news junkies we got our first TV set. The year he went on TV in 1951. So I grew up with him as a nightly image in my living room. He as a high schooler a fairly precocious and news event conscious kid he became a member of the Kennedy

administration and in fact the head of my agency his legacy there is writ large. Two of his stock phrases about our trade are still valid as ever. And we're real watchwords at stages in the dissolution of USA and the incorporation of my profession public diplomacy into the State Department a few years ago. One is he said that the public diplomatists need to be in on the policy take offs as well as the hard landings. By that he meant very simply that in an increasingly democratic world it's important when you consider policy options to consider how they're going to sell abroad and how the reception of those policies by foreign publics are going to enhance them or possibly doom them. Normally I think some of our State Department colleagues that are traditional diplomats look at us to clean up the crashes when a

policy crashes and largely crashes because of its unpopularity abroad. The other thing he said well let me let me expand on that actually before I go on to the other thing he saw I think uniquely that the kind of world that was evolving a world of the literacy or at least semi literacy he saw the importance of information I think before we really were in the information age. And so in many ways his example as a journalist turned information specialist in the government was was a beacon. The second phrase of his that's become a stock phrase is that we take the information products so they're churned out by. And nowadays the office of international information programs or the exchanges the bedrock of public diplomacy the programs that

create mutual understanding and build bridges. The Fulbright program that I'm sure the university has benefited from university linkages the international visitors program that we take those the last three feet when we are serving overseas on an embassy staff and I think it's in that respect that I identify very very much with the plight of a modern journalist covering a difficult story in an unstable society whether it's a Muslim society or not. A lot of my colleagues that work in the Arab world where I've spent most of my career have been in recent years and thanks to I think Charlotte Beers leadership is as our undersecretary had a lot of supplemental money to spend on programs to build bridges to Muslim audiences especially young Muslim audiences around the world. But getting out of the embassy getting out behind the telephone and the computer screen and actually going out and meeting those people and building enough

trust with all the negative stereotypes at considerable personal risk I think puts us a little bit in the same shoes. So it is a slightly different scenario. I mean in some ways being a diplomat and being seen as a U.S. official complicates it and simplifies it. But at the same time. So where we're in that position in my current bureau we have five countries with significant Muslim populations and a lot of our extra program money is there to reach out to those people and a lot of my challenge will be to make sure my P.A. goes in the field my public affairs officers have those resources and in my case and based on my earlier career experience they'll I'll will encourage them to go out when I go out next month. I'm going to want to meet some of those people I'm going to want to go out to the Islamic parochial schools the pesantren in Indonesia I'm going to want to do some of that legwork myself.

So in a way you know when Danny Pearl was kidnapped a lot of us and I think especially those of us whose careers have centered on the Arab and Muslim worlds felt an awful lot of apprehension and empathy because in a way we've been there. That said I think I want to talk a little bit about embedding from my experience. One of the unfortunate things about my career is it's been defined by Iraq's last three wars which have been a fairly central part of my life and times in the Foreign Service. And the second one I remember that the opaqueness of the U.S. government and its spokespersons became the story the best we could do in that war was the equivalent of what you see from Doha. Every day when there's a CENTCOM forward headquarters briefing frankly and candidly a crashing bore not newsworthy or really thin

gruel frustrated journalists hundreds of miles from the scene and betting. I think from our point of view was a risk it carried risks that bad behavior on our part might be caught on camera. It carried risks that some of our journalistic colleagues and I say colleagues advisedly because I think in the field we really are there to enable journalists to cover the story. We briefed them we briefed them on the record. We briefed them on background if they come into our town for a few days to get a story they'll come and see us and we'll give them the best advice we can on how to best use their time and try to open doors for them official or unofficial. It is really a huge risk and I have to say as a consumer of news I think there's been a very high reward. Yes maybe journalists and maybe this time you guys have become the story but I think that the benefits of that have been great. I also have to say I take my hands off my hat my hat my hat off and

my hands off for the way to the courage of the so-called unilateral journalists the ones that are uninvented the ones that were in Baghdad in really grave danger physical danger. I think we all recognized because they were provided a kind of a compliment to the journalists that were with the troops that may be because of the physical danger identified with those troops because of the need to bring a graphic image of American boys and girls at war back to their hometowns maybe play that superficial hometown story a little too heavily. I thought we got a very nice balance of coverage in that we're still getting that because of those journalists and I frankly take my hat off to the courage of journalists on both sides of the line. I think I'll let it stay there and I'll be very interested to see what kind of questions you have.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Peter. I'm no longer a practicing journalist and when I was I didn't cover wars and probably the greatest danger I ever ran into was an irate reader who was responding to my editorial page and I have not devoted my life to the Middle East so I assume my role here is that of distance of perspective of context. And as usual the Wall Street Journal has stolen a lot of my thunder because I think that Brian did a great job of summarizing a lot of the strengths and weaknesses that that I see in the coverage we have been getting of this most recent military engagement. So I think what I will do is just highlight a couple of points that

perhaps the rest of the panel will feel they'd like to respond to or perhaps those of you in the audience would like to respond to. The first is that already we've heard this engagement jargon embedded unilateral that they have new meaning those terms that they didn't have before and it struck me quite early on that. I guess this is what Daniel would call spin spin spin spin spin because I think of those unilateral journalists as independent as free whose movements are uncontrolled. And I think there are very strong implications for use of the term unilateral. The same is true for the term embedded. I believe it was Dan Rather who

said that. It reminded him of the term entombed. When I heard that he'd said that I thought well maybe embalmed but you know that may be too strong. So and and as a scholar It is my job to look at the impact of words the words we choose and the way that they are used. It has everything to do with the message conveyed and the fact that I actually went on LexisNexis this morning my great I'm a great fan of databases and did. A search of news coverage for the last months which of course was thousands and thousands of hits but it was really very very difficult to find commentary discussing why the journalists so readily adopt the terms that the government labels them with or labels anyone else with. And it's also very difficult virtually

impossible actually to find news coverage of the details of the contracts that those embedded reporters had to sign in order to spend the time there following round the troops and giving us those personal stories that were both frightening terrifying heartwarming. But why was it that the reporters these purveyors of truth didn't feel that they needed to tell us the terms under which they were operating. The first hit that I could find that actually detailed the terms of that contract which every embedded journalist was supposed to sign. I don't know whether they did or not. I suffer under the same imperfect information that the rest of you do. But according to what I found the first story that actually gave details of the contract came out on April 1st. And while that was April Fool's Day I don't think that was the reason it came out.

I think it came out because it was the weekend previous that we had had the debacle with Peter Arnett and Geraldo Rivera. Not to go on too long. It is I recognize very easy to sit in academe and criticize and it is extraordinarily difficult to work under deadline pressure. The thing that I think I would would hope to talk about a little bit tonight is the fact that the conditions that we see in reporting of wars reporting of conflict reporting of terrorism are the same kinds of things that we see in routine media coverage of events. There is a tendency to dichotomize there is a tendency to engage in boosterism if you will. There's a tendency to demonize the enemy. There

is a tendency to stereotype. There is a tendency to simplify. There is a tendency not to contextualize not to give broad issues not to develop trends not to talk about the history of events and the nature of the environment in which these events occur. As a first amendment scholar I think this deeply disserves the voters and the citizens of this country and I am I'm deeply concerned about it. But I also think it deserves journalists because as a former journalist I think that a lot of the journalists I've had the privilege to know really have a missionary zeal that fires them that keeps them going that drives them into these huge situations of danger. And when we agree to jump in bed with or become embedded with the military our ability to exercise

that zeal independently is at least subject to question and those questions undermine our credibility and make it incredibly difficult for citizens who want to make reasoned and reasonable judgments to know how to do that. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sure. I'm sure will come back to. You. Well Susan you're certainly opinionated. Oh you didn't know that before that. I think that there's a lot of there's certainly a lot of truth to what Susan says about the dangers of embedding journalists into with you know military people and certainly. That entire story remains to be told. We don't quite know how much. I mean there wasn't there wasn't censorship in the traditional sense but we don't know how much self-censorship

may have taken place because people were writing about the people that they were also living with and who were also responsible for their protection in many ways and who might have been responsible for whether or not they got food or anything to drink. The next two hours. So you know there certainly is. And you know I think there certainly are questions that we need to consider. But I think that you know the notion of embedding while in a war situation is unique. It's not altogether different from many of the things that journalists do every day in covering stories because you do become close to sources in many instances when you ride the boat with the whale watchers. And you write the story about the whale watchers. You have a tendency to sympathize with the whale watchers and what they're doing. And I think that our role as journalists is the same

as it has always been to distance ourselves and to maintain as much professional distance as we possibly can from the people that we are writing about. Regardless of how dependent we might think we are on those people's protection or ability to feed us information in the future. Any reporter on a beat knows that much of what you write in much of what you don't write is dependent in part on the people that you're covering. You know you always walk the fine line between burning a source and not burning a source. I think that it takes on a completely new degree when you are in a battle situation. Indeed it is life threatening. It's not a matter of whether or not this person is going to talk to you the next day it might be a matter of whether or not they're going to tell you to duck when the bullets start flying. So I think that that there are questions I think that

there certainly have been benefits to embedding reporters. I think that we have been able to see stories and to learn about stories that otherwise we never would have learned about or only would have learned about weeks months or perhaps even years after the fact. One of the things I'll if you'll indulge me for just a few minutes I'll talk about the A.P. and one of the things that we did in this war that was different than the dozens of wars that we've covered since 1848. Is that for the first time we opened ourselves up to questions from the public. Many of you who don't know how the AP operates don't understand perhaps that we're a news cooperative. We generally deal directly with newspapers and broadcasters who call our local bureaus and ask questions about stories that were moving on the wire when we get a call from a member of the public it's really bad because the phone rings and somebody in the NEWSROOM says

oh my god it's a member of the public. What do I do now. And so this time for the first time we opened ourselves up to the public. We had a feature that we called quick questions and we invited people to go to our Web site and submit questions. And we actually answered. A lot of those questions on the wire. And I think it was it was kind of eye opening for people at the AP to see number one that there were people who actually knew who we were and would ask us things. And number two to see the level of some of the questions that people would ask good. And I brought just a few of them as examples. What gear goes with pilots when they get a jet from their planes. How are gas masks tested to make sure they work do the tanks have air conditioning.

I've got the answers if you really want to know. But this was an interesting experiment for us and it was something that you know in our history we had never done and in and I'm sure it's something that we will probably do more of. But I think that you know it has as a wire service it brought us a little bit closer to the to the public that ultimately reads a lot of what we're were writing and distributing. I guess as a kind of a closing note I might mention that. I feel a little bit like a fish out of water because I've never been overseas I've never covered a war. But as I sit here and I look at all of you I think most of you probably won't either. And in one sense you feel rather inadequate. When you see somebody like Daniel Pearl in it and the sacrifices that he did that that war correspondents make and certainly the Daniel Pearl made.

But at the same time I think that as beginning journalists and that's what many of you are. It's important to remember that. A large part of their sacrifice was their commitment. And any of us can have that same commitment. I can think for example of one of your own students Kevin Germann who was covering a football game for us it's probably one that you'd all rather forget it was the apple cup this past year. But many of you remember at the end of the apple cup you know things started flying out of the stands and most of the. Big time photographers at the football game ran for the exits. And Kevin Gurman turned around and took a great picture of somebody throwing a bottle out of the stands. And that picture got used in newspapers all over the country including the big metros in Seattle. And that's because of a commitment that that he had to tell that story and then

show that story. And it's that kind of commitment that that any of you can also have and demonstrate and you don't have to go to war to do it. You can do it in many different ways. And I would simply encourage you to have that commitment and be willing to demonstrate it down to the west for the first round. First of all I think we could honor Danny Pearl's memory tonight by joining the various press freedom groups around the world who are demanding a full investigation an accounting of the murder potentially or certainly the killings of journalists in Baghdad. The killing a bit of collateral damage a British journalist the lobbing of shells into the hotel Palestine. All of these things have upset and angered many in the media world to want answers to questions

about why this happened and was this part of the policy. The American government has denied that there was any policy of targeting journalists American government as a practice of always denying accusations in some cases that later become proven to be otherwise of the truth to be otherwise so I would ask you to remember the journalists who died covering this war. And the unanswered questions about their deaths. I think that's one way we can honor Danny Pearl's memory to join with the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Frontiers and others who are demanding a full impartial investigation of what happened to these journalists. Secondly I would like to begin with a comment a quote from Edward R. Murrow who also like many of you was my mentor as well and he very very neatly summarized and a challenge for journalists and he said the obscure. We see eventually the completely apparent

takes a little longer and I think those words point to a problem of not simply finding out what the news is but understanding the truth and the reality of what happened. I think all of us know that history tends to be revised over time that what we originally thought to be true wasn't true. Alex 10 and I would talking about the Spanish-American War the the Vietnam before Vietnam and as you'll recall the Spanish-American War started with the pretext that incident the sinking of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor. Fifty years later they went back. They looked at what happened there and they found that in fact the engine room had blown up there was an accident in the main that everything we thought had happened that led to the killings of literally hundreds of thousands of people were traced to an incident that was badly understood at the time a pretext for war. Marshall

McLuhan talk about the coverage of war he said if any were in his provocative way if there were no coverage there would be no war. Yes the newsman and the media man we should add media women that came after him are actually the fighters not the soldiers anymore. There are two wars that we've just seen. One of them we saw part of and that was the war in Iraq. Or if you look in the Arab world it was described of described as the war on Iraq depending on your point of view. You lived in Europe most of the media in Europe spoke of it as the war on Iraq in America. We spoke on it spoke about it as the war in Iraq. Well there was that war and we're discussing tonight or we've heard some admissions from people in mainstream journalism that in fact we may only have seen a very small portion of what happened in that war. But a lot of what we think we know and what we think we saw may not in

fact be what we did see what what really happened. And I'll return to that in a minute. But there was a second war and that was the media war and that media war is still under way and that's a war that's taking place within the media between media companies for market share for positioning for ratings for power for presence in our society to speak of journalists as individual players who decide uniquely how to cover events how did decide what they'll be assigned to do and then how to do that whether to be embedded or not and how to deal with embedding this to understand the transformation of journalism in our age. The transformation of journalism that began many years ago that may have been responsible in its very early infancy with pushing Edward R. Murrow of CBS pushing Walter Cronkite years later out of CBS. And that's the corporatization of journalism. We're not

dealing today with individual entities individual players. There are journalists of conscience and try as best they can to serve their values to practice fairness and balance in this in the search for truth in journalism. What we have today many companies that do not have journalism as their first priority they have the bottom line as their first priority. And what that means is is that giant networks are not owned by journalists or by companies committed to journalists and they're owned by entertainment companies companies ABC owns Disney Viacom owner of MTV VH 1 BT owns CBS today and across the spectrum we've seen media mergers that have transformed the marketplace. That was once dominated by 50 companies in our country to five to seven car companies. Moreover there's been a second merger that's taking place that you have to

study and appreciate and that's the merger between show business and news business and attempt to add storytelling and entertainment values to the presentation of news and information. We saw this in an in a new degraded form to use a word that was used to go out and the coverage of the war during this particular the reporting of this of this conflict particularly on the cable networks where each of them had their theme music their packaging their graphics the the overall presentation which could change on a dime. Suddenly MSNBC a news channel was running promos that say God Bless America support our soldiers. Next day let freedom ring when the United States appears to be successful in Baghdad before that city began to be looted and trashed without adequate protection by U.S. soldiers except that two ministries which were not looted and were not trashed. One

ministry was the ministry of the Interior. The intelligence center in Baghdad the other was the Ministry of Oil. All the other ministries were burned to the ground but those ministries not burned to the ground but burned them and defiled those ministries were protected by U.S. soldiers. What I'm suggesting here today is that what we saw was a packaged event. I speak as a pop of person who have been part of the startup team at CNN who spent eight years at ABC News and has worked in and out of and around network television for many years. I run a media company and does join the media really to help spotlight the problems of the world came to see that the media is one of the problems of the world an unexamined one if you will a problem that often is not analyzed in terms of its corporate structure and in terms of its own interest I had to go to England to find an article which reported just last week on the

political contributions and donations to this administration by major media companies particularly the news company owned by News Corp. owned by Rupert Murdoch and NBC owned by General Electric. This was unreported in most places. Most of us have never thought about the possibility that the coverage that we've been seeing which has which has fused jingoism with journalism may have something to do with the interests of media companies. It's not nice to think about that perhaps companies put their own interests before the public's interest. But in this particular case on June 2nd in our country coming up soon at an FCC near you is the likelihood that new media rules and regulations favoring the largest media companies in our country will be enacted with most citizens in this country knowing nothing about why and what the interests are because it's simply not covered in the media.

And this is a dangerous situation. Michael Powell the head of the FCC said recently that we need large media companies. Why. He said because only the large media companies can afford to cover the war the way these companies did in the war in the Gulf. I'm suggesting this to you because I have time here to make an empirical argument with a lot of evidence. I try to do that in my column I've done that to some degree in my book media wars and in my earlier book The more you watch the less you know which you know is easy to get hold of. But I'm suggesting this to you I'm suggesting this to you because others have written about this in more detail than I. I'm suggesting this to you Chris that if you want to really know what's going on you can't rely on instruments of mass deception and mass distraction for that information. You have to investigate it for yourself. Teachers have to teach about it. Students have to ask deeper questions

about it. This is what's worrisome to me. I try to promote the coverage of the coverage because when you do that you begin to see what's missing. Why people in other countries are getting information about what is going on in Iraq and elsewhere that we're not getting in our own country. And the evidence is that many Americans are going to Web sites of newspapers and other countries because they are dissatisfied with and feel uninformed under-informed propagandized by our own media system. And I think this is a problem that I think if Ed Murrow were alive today he would be raising it. Certainly Walter Cronkite in joining with us on media channel. ORG has aligned himself with those who are asking these deeper questions about our media system. The challenge today is really about the future of journalism and journalism of the type practiced by Ed Murrow. This is no longer very popular in the United States the investigative journalism

that he and he engaged in and the willingness to stand up and speak truth to power. Is not something we're seeing in the media system today. I'm suggesting all of this to you only because I would like to invite you to join us and try to look at that the synthesis in some ways the synergy between vested interests and distorted news in our country and see what we can do about it. Thank you. So how do you really feel about. That. Well I I'm going to ask the minister of information interactive help help us out here. So that was wonderfully said I don't agree with everything you said but it was wonderfully put. Let's. Let's return to the topic of embedding which we've been talking about. Around here. And you know if there's anybody from the English faculty I apologize for the

brutalization of grammar that this inherently involves. But last night one of our embeds came home from Iraq and I sat down with him for about half an hour and chatted with him about his experience there. He is a seasoned veteran reporter in his late 40s. He said The hardest part was being a fat middle aged man running around with all the hard bodies who make up the military. And and but but he's a hero he's a pros pro and he him quite well and I asked him I asked him to describe to me what it was like and how it felt. And I asked him flat out. How did he deal with the fact that he was literally living in the same tent with these guys as it happened his squad was was all guys. And of course naturally there was one from Oregon so there's always a local angle but he he told me about how the soldiers came to view him as

our reporter quote unquote and how they talk to him. You know they kept asking him did you volunteer for this you know. Who did you who did you upset to get this assignment. Are they paying you extra for doing this as they inhaled dust in the desert and rolled towards Baghdad eventually. I have no doubt that and of course I've read his 20 some reports from Kuwait and ultimately from Iraq that he was not compromised that he did not sacrifice his credibility that he did is that he did his job. But I think Susan raises some very important points about ultimately as journalists what we own more than anything else our most precious commodity is our credibility and it's the contract that we have with our readers. So I guess what I'd like to everybody do and please anybody just jump in as we look back on this and knowing that. You know to some degree inherent in this was yeah we did have to make

a deal. Too to be there we had to sign the contracts that said we would not reveal we do every day. We did not we did not reveal that we can the Watergate story. We can say there's nothing else we can say there's no we can say we're in southern Iraq we couldn't say we're 14 miles south of Al-Masry or whatever the case was. And in fact when they moved into Iraq we were blacked out for 48 to 72 hours. While the initial operations were going on you know the question the question for me that I would pose to everybody is is is this contract has this violated our our credibility in some way. Have we have we sold our souls to the devil if you will in this case although I'm not characterizing. But let it be clear I'm not characterizing the military the United States as the devil but I'm just resorting to a cliche which we do a lot of in journalism and is this any different from what we do any other time. Is it different from the you know what sports reporters do in the locker room is it different from what government reporters do in dealing with their sources.

Day in and day out inside the beltway this kind of deal making is something it is normalcy so. So how does this how does this get started how this specifically. Is it a positive fit in. Is it possible to stipulate to the purposes of argument here that all the reporters were conscientious that none of the reporters were censored suppressed and or self-censor themselves. They all did a heroic and great job. Can we say that. And can we still say at the same time that we were not fully informed that we were not offered the context the perspective the background that we need to make an assessment of what happened here that this conflict was presented more like a sports event. Play by Play boys with toys descriptions of weapons systems and the like. Then as pilot what war really is which is politics by other means. Do we know the origins of the policies that led us to Iraq. Do we know the policies that are likely leading us into other conflicts like this. What do we know and what don't we know. And I think that

you could say that the reporters all did a good job but you could also say in some ways they were like that frog in the well the frog looks up sees the sky thinks that the sky the frog sees is the whole sky but it isn't the whole sky. Well I won't answer it because I can't speak for all of it. I can speak for hours. And actually there are a lot more reporters covering the war than the Indians. I mean we had a whole Washington bureau we had reporters all over the world. And we also had a couple of what do you call unilateralists hero Topham often and Chip come into an embed said Amadeo. But when Mike Phillips or Elaine or Nick or yo Karim would find something from Baghdad it would be a file. Now it goes to Gerry side who covered the Iran Iraq war and covered wars over there it was that was a hostage there. And and it goes to Carl Robbins who covers the State Department and he goes to Neil King who covers the CIA and all of these people have sources and none of them have any agreements with any of those

sources. And it should be a hall. This is a collaborative experience. Not just one person. I would stipulate that it would be great it would be terrific if we could be that pure in every instance to say everything's on the record. Everything you say and do is always always 24 hours seven days a week on the record. But that's not how the world works. There's no Watergate story. It Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein don't cutting deals. Sorry. And there's all sorts there's all sorts of we can go up and down the Pulitzer list. I'll bet this year's Pulitzer list. I'll bet there's very few of those. There's not some even on set deals and could talk about signing contracts that make any difference even legally even in a court of law saying somebody this is on background. That's a contract. It's just as binding as if you signed it. So in your newspaper your newspaper which has done an excellent job that part of your newspaper that was generated from two newspapers that the

Wall Street Journal. What is the outlook for that. It's hard to get gascón like editorial section is a liberal they are. The other was the. News section but I guess there was an article on the media coverage which quoted Kenneth Bacon the former head of media relations at the Pentagon who said this former Wall Street Journal and one former Wall Street Journal reporter who said it and was quoted as saying that you know the Pentagon couldn't hire actors to do as good a job as these journalists have done to sell and promote American policy that was in the Wall Street Journal too. But you know Danny I think you know I think a lot of what you say relates more to cable television than anything because you know I mean you've got 24 hours of airtime to fill. You've got to talk about something. And so you end up talking about a lot of trivial things. And I think that we all saw that and you know at times we were amazed by what we saw and at times we were

appalled. I think that you know the print equivalent was you know you had the local reporter on the USS Lincoln who would write about you know what they ate that day and you know it's kind of trivial but you know the people that are reading the paper back home are no. No reporter embedded with an Iraqi family why was there no effort serious effort made to get at the truth of civilian casualties in this war. I think the war as you have Tommy Franks saying we don't do body counts. The other day the Pentagon said no they will not release any estimate on civilian casualties. Yes the story has been referenced it has been referred to but as a sidebar more than as perhaps the main story in terms of the number of people who have died and will continue to die. Now that story is coming out now the cluster bombs the unexploded ordinance and the rest of it. But this has been largely presented as a

sanitized conflict with some deaths some destruction to be sure. But I think the reality of this war has not been presented to the American people the way people in other countries have been seeing it. We'll come back to some of that in the cable TV context. And I do want to get back to the question of ultimately where readers served by the embedding process. I think you have to look at this in the context of a lot of different kinds of reporting that were going on simultaneously. The embeds the people the unilateralists the people outside the embedding the people in the State Department the Defense Department and in gutter. And you know in those briefings asking very tough and hard questions asking contentious questions. My clientele were the foreign journalists in Washington grilling the SEC Secretary Powell yesterday from from my former podium the monthly magazines NPR that I think took some very hard looks at that central questions. And I think we're because radio is a little bit less of an engaged media

I think we're able to step back and ask some of the conceptual questions about the direction of the war about implications. I think they had some great stories on that Danny would have liked a lot on what's been covered what's not been covered there. I think there was really it was really to me as a consumer of media as well as someone that works with media. I think it was it was a real feast because I think it was the complementarity and that there were no reporters were embedded with Iraqi families. I think that speaks a lot to the kind of regime that just felt. I mean one who was minister of information I think it was was a lovable buffoon at best. I mean you know let's face it did provide some comic relief. At. The risk. At the risk of redirecting your comment I guess I would like to follow up on your analogy to sports reporting and also Brian's comment that we make these kinds of contracts all the time and I think that would be my concern that indeed we

do. And I think there is a huge certainly from my perspective constitutionally there is a huge difference between boosterism in the coverage of the cougar football team and boosterism in unilateral military action in Iraq that this president justified by saying there were huge hidden catches caches of weapons of mass destruction. And I do find you throughout the day of the weeks of the engagement to find the media really looking at that issue and now there is reporting going on saying they haven't found the smoking gun yet. I think that that reflects an inherent acceptance of the government line. I think it reflects the fact that by and large the media interests are aligned

with the government speakers on whom they depend for their daily diet of content and at and if you analyze the content of the media you will see how much the media depend on the speaking heads of government to fill their pages every day not just when they're at the door. So the question that I would like to pose is not is America served by sending embedded journalists to the U.N. to Iraq. But is America served it by a journalism that has increasingly become embedded with government. But Susan I think that there were plenty of. Instances before the war. I mean there were plenty of instances of questioning about you know where are these weapons of mass destruction. I mean there you had U.N. inspection teams in there for weeks that couldn't find anything. And so I think that there was a pretty healthy skepticism going on that about whether or not these

weapons existed. I think certainly now the fact that virtually nothing has been found as far as as far as I know something's come up today. There's going to have to be some explanation now so far I think the the requirements for accountability have been slight because I think that we are still in a situation there's still a certain amount of combat. There's there's some danger still being posed. I think once you reach a point at which people aren't feeling threatened. I mean if we were not feeling as if you know troops are threatened I think that the level of accountability is going to ratchet up considerably. I hope you're right. I would just say that I haven't particularly seen that in a year or so since we stopped actively engaging in Afghanistan.

Maybe you're right. I hope you're right. I think we also have to look at something else in the government information policy is not simply like a reporter asks a question. Here's the information you asked for. There's what they call the message of the day. Is that a persuasive form of communication that's trying to persuade us to echo back. What we're hearing often through constant repetition and often even echo back impressions that we have it's called perception management. And that's a lot of what the government is attempting to do. Let me just cite something for you in the January 7th Knight-Ridder Princeton research poll 44 percent of the respondents said they thought most or some of the September 11th hijackers were Iraqi citizens. Only 17 percent of those polled offer the correct answer none in the same sample. 41 percent said that Iraq already possess nuclear weapons which not even the Bush administration claimed

68 percent of the respondents claimed to have a good understanding of the arguments for and against going to war with Iraq. Only 13 percent of young people could find Iraq on a map in a National Geographic survey. We're dealing with a population that has over the course of 15 or 20 years since most Americans rely on television for most of their news unfortunately have been deprived of ongoing coverage bureaus have been closed. Correspondents have been cut back. What tends to be covered in the world is what the United States is doing in the world not necessarily what else is happening in the world. And I think that we have to understand how a population can be persuaded to believe things that isn't necessarily true and to be reinforced in that belief the Associated Press for example was criticized by the anti-war movement. Why. Because they they basically were arguing that that or they were

reporting in a sense that when people said they were for the troops or supported the soldiers they were in effect supporting the war. Many people in the anti-war movement said that they supported the soldiers. They wanted them home safely. They were not criticizing the soldiers but they were criticizing the policy. Yet that distinction was often blurred and blurred over in some of the coverage so I think you have to look at what's what's the starting point here. For most people who has an interest in persuading people to think a certain way and I think if you see the way the polls have moved on the basis of assumptions and impressions that are often totally inaccurate and often reflect a kind of a feeling about what the media is reporting through constant repetition the breaking news the updates of the updates that are constantly being pounded into us it's not surprising that most Americans when asked that don't have very much of an in-depth understanding of these issues it's not their fault it's not our fault.

We're not taught it in school. We're not it's not reported on in most media. That does not mean the Wall Street Journal doesn't do a great job it does that doesn't mean that other reporters aren't doing a great job they do. And I think a lot of credit has to be given to journalists who've been trying to get at the real facts in this. So I'm not criticizing it in a kind of blind way you know kind of crude way. Every journalist but I think you have to. You can't exempt the role of television in the coverage of this because it's the principal arena if you will. And when you see what happens in most of the coverage you know the anchorman cuts to the Pentagon cuts back to the State Department goes to the military expert who has a chart and is showing you the battle plan et cetera and so forth. It's not surprising you're not getting any contrary perspective. Know I was thinking of marketing myself as a retired general. I'd have to shave though so I don't know what I want to again remind you that we would welcome

questions from the audience so let me. Oh please go ahead. Well a quick question just for everybody can hear it is about this a young journalist asking about the constant struggle to improve and to get better and to cover the complexity. The good news is that one of the reasons being a journalist never gets dull is that that battle never ends. The

struggle to build sources to get stories to discover the truth. And that's what we're about. We're about discovering and printing the truth. Printing at least in in where I live and that that is not something that comes easily. The great bulk of reporters who are out there are honest hardworking driven people who are trying to get it get at the news to be sure in this atmosphere at this time that it's harder than it's ever been. Personally I think it has a lot more to do with the current administration in Washington D.C. that it has to do with corporatization of media ownership. There is a determined and relentless drive to control administration and to in my personal opinion restrict freedom of information in a way that runs contrary to the spirit of the law that was put in place 36 years ago the Freedom of Information Act that's being controlled by by executive order and by by practice and

by overreaching laws like provisions of the Homeland Security Act that in the context of this war that are making our jobs a lot more difficult. But in fact that's going on on the local level too. We have to go to City Hall and battle for every document every document no matter how public it is if the city makes a deal with the developer. The city will argue that that's private. We have to threaten to sue we eventually get the documents. So that's happening across the country. To me that's a larger issue frankly than than some of the other ones in terms of what we're trying to do. I'm sorry I'm the moderator and I suppose you don't want to I guess I have to play some somewhere I have to tell on action that you would please as I have served every president since Carter. I'm a bureaucrat. I'm not an administration flack except that I am. With each passing administration in the State Department I think this regime is one of the most open I've seen in my career. There is access to journalists in a way I haven't seen I would say probably since Carter

the assistant secretary allows ambassadors to go on the record which wasn't the case in the last administration. There is more access to senior officials on background. There is the guidance process which is our daily process of responding that the press is absolutely driven by the press. I mean there are people and at 4:00 in the morning to see what the stories are there by about 6:30 or 7 every morning in the State Department there is a tasking list which basically calls every likely question that will be a follow up to the reporting of the day before it's farmed out to bureaus. By 10:00 the answers are in and by eleven thirty or so they're put in a book for the spokesman who goes out there are journalists in the State Department asked tough contentious questions. If there is a kind of groupthink among the American journalists which I would argue there isn't there are a lot of different styles in that room.

There are a number of foreign journals. Again larger corporate journals I have to admit and and wire services and TVs that attend the briefing daily when there are topics of interest any of my nine hundred odd foreign correspondents accredited in Washington are free to go to the briefing and inject questions from their own perspective which sometimes is quite contrary to the American perspective. So I think we're actually at the State Department. I really can speak for the State Department I'm only willing to I think we're in a more open era right now. Thanks valuable perspective. I'm sorry. What's your name. NATASHA. You should just tweet me and you here. You should strive to have. The absolute truth no fear or favour. Everything's on the record always stetch the ideal you always strive for. Ottawa Ontario says when you get out there it gets ugly. It's difficult it's complicated.

Should you name a 12 year old who kills her tenure. Should we name rape victims. Should you know should we have. If you know if you if you if you don't talk to this person because you can't keep them anonymous the public's going to the public is going to get screwed. Is this city culture that's going to give his brother a five million dollar contract you say well I'm the turn I'm going to be purist what we're and you constantly you're swimming upstream and you're making millions and millions of little tiny decisions little ones you don't even know you're making half the time and you strive towards the ideal and once in a while once in a great while you get there. In the meantime just try to put the paper out or put out the TV and if I knew all the answers to those questions I'd probably go do something else. I don't and that's why I keep doing it. I'm at a time I try to keep this moving fairly quickly just because there are people go ahead. I promise to keep this really short. I agree with both of you. I think that there there is.

At perhaps the practice in the state department. I'm not there reporting. I don't know how free journalists feel the information is. But I would say from the perspective of a legal scholar the statutes executive orders and other policies that have come out of this administration are. Mind boggling. And but I don't want to put the blame on the administration because I'd like to know where the media has been as all of these laws and policies that go back more than a decade I can point to era anti-terrorism laws that were closing down information very unilaterally. More than a decade ago. And it wasn't in the headlines and the average citizen doesn't know any more about that than they know about the FCC dropping off the cross-ownership regulations which are going to open up media consolidation to an

unprecedented level. And so I'm an equal blame player here this evening call up the boy and he gets a very first statement. I was one of the people that was. Getting there and was discussed the media has a tendency to like the media does have a tendency to act as coalition advocates in your opinion. You know what needs to change what are reporters doing wrong and what do they need to do right now to ensure that we are getting both sides of the story. Up. Just do what you're supposed to do. I mean you can't. I was thinking more I thought that the first week of the war I was embedded myself at Fort Benning and so to speak. I was just there. They didn't know I was there really. And. I watched a lot of coverage because it was part of what I was doing.

And it just felt really raw and it's complicated because what do you do. Well how many times do you tell the other side of the story. It's it's like Ganesh says and likes his it's our Susan says is you have to take you know every opportunity is to Dolly back the camera and tell the history and get other people involved at your paper at her broadcast organization who have different perspectives who don't have this narrow focus on here's what happened today at Kerbala or on Nasri. So do we need to like rehire everybody because it seems like everyone's pretty much do we need to hire more people. Yes we've got everyone in there. I would I would make a suggestion. You know I think that we can't let ourselves off the hook either. I think we have to take responsibility for our own media choices for what we read and what we don't read and to try to seek out more diverse sources of news and information you're talking about consumers right. I'm talking about students and

people who want to know what can be done or how they can find out. There are many sources out there that you can easily access now. In our own case again you know a little a little plug for a non-profit project but we came to see that about 80 percent of all the news of the world was coming out of two wire services some of it was quite good. But a lot of other perspectives were not being heard or seen. We set up something called Global Vision news network G.V. news dot net who has just written up an editor and publisher we're trying to aggregate news and information from 350 different news outlets all around the world so that when you look at a particular story you can see how it's being covered by the right wing in Israel by the left wing in Israel by you know a whole range of different sources and you can do that on line every morning and find out a lot more than what you're getting simply by relying on the media you're relying on now so I think we have to take responsibility to know

who won. One suggestion that I came across my desk last year when I was running the foreign press centers was that the NPR co-produced with several other sponsors a Washington Week in Review for audiences abroad taking some of the better foreign journalists in Washington to do all the coverage. And my suggestion back to this person at NPR I was talking about is an old friend was. Why don't you give them five minutes on the domestic Washington Week in Review and we might get a little truth of a different sort. And get some of those perspectives that come up one when my journalists would come to the state department briefings and throw their their verbal bombs of contrarian thought and a different perspective. I think that would be a great idea. I mean we have 2500 foreign journalists roughly in this country residence. It would be I think very good if if some of the news media would take advantage of their presence and their perspectives. Let me pose a question to everybody. That is something that's been that's been

kicking around my head which is often argued as a great vast space but at least by my wife. But one of the things and this really speaks to her question. There is. More than any. War and I'm not old enough to remember very many of them but there is an expectation on the part of the public to a large degree that the coverage of this war should be supportive. You used the term jingoistic I don't know if I want to go all the way to jingoism But you know for example one day 10 days ago and I see it sir and I'll get to you as soon as we get through this. We ran a picture on the front page of an Iraqi man who was driving a cart in which there were coffins of five or six members of his family. This was after several days of frightening pictures of American soldiers doing this that and the other thing

that day we had 70 cancellations of the paper which is an extraordinary number for us. And basically now part of this of course because of the times we live in was apparently fueled by a local talk show host although I can't quantify that in any fashion. But there's something going on out there in this war that's different. There's an expectation on a significant percentage of the populace of our readers who are pretty sophisticated people that that we should be supporting the war effort. I'm used to that when it comes to you know Lord help us. Oregon and Oregon State football where I live but I don't expect that. Serious issues of the day. I haven't encountered that from my readers before. Is that something we've done. Is that something. Is that something that's going on in our society is that the nature of this war. Is it because of embedding. What's going on there. Any views on that.

Well I can't imagine that. I mean in World War II for example. You know I'm sure that you know there was a lot of jingoism and there was a lot of support for what we were doing and you know I can't imagine that now. I mean I would think now if anything it might be. A notch below. I think that you know some of it is fed by just the more media sources you know because you have a lot of media sources that are not you know traditional and do not you know do not feel feel compelled to abide by the same standards as most news organization. I mean you know you've got talk radio stations that. You know while they play a role in disseminating information don't pretend that they're journalists. They classify themselves as entertainers and yet their audiences view them as.

Just like they view us except they trust them more. And so I think that you have that in play. But I'm not sure that I would agree that people are you know necessarily what cheerleader. Just just to follow up on that comment about the talk shows and whatnot. It brings to mind that Thomas Patterson wrote called out of order and in the. In-depth study of media coverage he particularly alludes to Perot's Kandace candidacy and Clinton's saxophone playing on Saturday Night Live etc. and the citizens of this country embrace those opportunities to hear the candidates speak directly unfiltered through the media. And at that time there was a lot of media response and saying yes we understand we have to go to longer sound bites we have to

allow. We have to cover the speeches of candidates we actually have to cover the content of their directives and yet study after study indicates that that hasn't happened and that each subsequent election has shorter and shorter soundbites and I go back to a comment that was made earlier I think by Brian that you know the media are increasingly covering themselves. I remember not that long ago just being stunned one morning coming to work when when I realized that NPR was constantly interviewing its own reporters and I thought when. Did this happen. And it happened while I was not paying attention. And I think it happened well. Maybe a lot of citizens weren't paying attention. But I think if we did a nice content analysis of how much of the war coverage is is journalists interviewing journalists none of us would be very happy with the results. And to answer your question look here. It's just natural. And if you

run that photo you know Japanese turn and turn Japanese back in 1945. You had. Have. 7000. Cancellations. But it's natural to get mad. I have a friend who used to cover AT&T when he did a story on page one of the journal. It just depends. The CEO of AT&T and the PR person called him that dangerous. And. John says hey it was like getting a kiss and hug from the kids. I mean you do what's right. You strive to do what's right. And. I wrote a whole book about corporate education at Knight Ridder and is there an insidious effect that it goes to that young woman said do we need more people. Of course we do. We need more resources because the more you throw at it the better it's going to be in the end. But. Really really think about. Some young journalist 27 years old. He's covering whatever.

He's thinking. She's thinking. I have a choice. I can. Tell the readers this great story because it's a great story. And you know maybe I'll win some prizes and it will be really cool and my pals will toast me or she thinking I'll just lay off it because we'll get more advertising and our stock price will go up. Come on. It's not all here. Mostly it's here. That's right. You wouldn't be here. You can come here to get rich did you. All those who came here to get rich for far after some others got right to the bar of the room. So you've waited patiently I'm sorry. I'm Captain Bird. I teach journalism across the border at the University of Idaho. Like to return to the world of words. In the months leading up to the actual beginning of hostilities was the Bush administration's central claims or justifications for this war was that Iraq possessed the capabilities and was on the verge of producing nuclear

weapons. And it turns out that a central piece of that evidence was completely fabricated forged documents. What explains the reluctance of the mainstream media to greet that claim with more skepticism at the time it was made. And in general the lack of questioning of the rationale the justification for war in the months when it might have made a difference in terms of the policy outcome. Thank you. Well I think there was there was a lot of skepticism and there was a lot of challenge but I mean you know we don't know. I mean you know ultimately we don't know what's there and what isn't and we still don't know for sure what's there and what isn't. But I think that there was plenty of skepticism from the mainstream press in advance of the war about whether indeed there was anything there. I mean if all you had to do is listen to Rush Limbaugh for a couple of days and you know I mean if we were all Communists because we were questioning the administration's validation for going into Iraq.

And so I think that there was you know that there was skepticism. But I don't think most people wanted wanted to hear it very much. Well there was I recall briefing after briefing where were hard questions were asked at the time I also will say that on the chemical weapons story without you know talking at all about conclusions that Fox News I think is covered it better than any of the TV stations and that's you know over cable but I think to an extent maybe we all love to hate what they've done they've they've done a pretty good somewhat sensationalized but they're hitting the story and I think they're probably pushing us and government to come out a little sooner than we like to conclusions. You know at the risk of alienating anybody I have an already alienated and and members of our panel who I just realized they're all print guys of course and other journalists here so of course look askance

at even a TV critic. You know it's like the old story of the guy that says he's an anti-Communist and somebody else says I don't care what kind of communist you are. You know I'd like to be really heretical. Having worked at CNN in the days when CNN had a 1 rating after the Gulf War CNN had an 11 rating. The Gulf War. Go for one filter CNN has a global news brand. I believe that there were many television news organizations that couldn't wait for this war to happen. Looking forward to it that we're investing a lot of money in it even though it meant a form of advertising temporarily. I don't believe that journalists calculate what's in the interests of their companies necessarily when they make coverage decisions. I think that's that's too much of a conspiracy theory but I do think that the companies do have interests and the war is a great story. War sells war brings viewers back to television. And so I think that there was

a lot of interest in this and it's have to you have to go back to 9/11 and recognize that a trend towards a certain patriotic correctness particularly in television media anchors wearing the American flag American flags in the banners and attempt a desire not to get ahead of the audience in any way at a time when when journalists could be accused of being traitors The second thing that's new and I wouldn't underestimate this in terms of your experience is that there are new so-called news organizations the media companies that specialize in the politics of polarization. They want polarization they promote. New York Post is now you know running daily features attacking the New York Times and trying to deal with Gittis made at Fox News attacking MSNBC. And you know a friend of mine Michael Wolff who writes for New York magazine goes to the press briefing in Doha writes an article that says the last place you could

possibly find out what's really happening in Iraq is to go to the CENTCOM briefings. He writes a very clever column about all this I would urge you to read what happens Rush Limbaugh gives out his e-mail address on the air and his computer system is attacked and it is immobilized in essence. In other words there's a way in which media people see themselves as righteous warriors for whatever beliefs they happen to hold and are willing and interested actually in trashing everyone else the other day. Just yesterday actually I got a call from the Bill O'Reilly radio show and what Bill O'Reilly was interested in was. Having the defense CNN has the head of news coverage and CNN admitted that CNN withheld some information about its Iraqi staff for fear that they would be persecuted and therefore they had knowledge of certain human rights abuses but they didn't report it. So one of those gray areas that you were talking about where you have where

things get ugly and you have to make certain decisions and CNN decided not to report this and then admitted as as much and try to talk about it. Fox News jumped right on them. You know of course they're a competitor and we're looking for somebody to defend CNN Why couldn't do it. I was coming to the end of Washington State University. So I was on the plane. So another media critic was called and the media critic said well I'm willing to discuss what CNN did. But you know it's a kind of a gray area. And he said well we don't want you. Thank you very much. We're looking for black and white to shade it that way so that they could they could polarize the issue. And it's very much like President Bush saying you're either with us or you're against us. And when you get into that kind of bipolar world truth goes out the window. We're we're just about out of time but if it's all right Alex I'd like to have a couple of people waiting so if we can.

Ladies we'll take your questions. One of us will answer them all to bring this to a close. Go ahead please. All right. I'm a student here actually to say University and one of the class that has been for me most is my conscience which was taught by Dr. Rick. He's a doctor patient. Guys it anyways something he said we're learning about framing. In our case we learned about a little owl. Yeah. And basically what he said is that the media tells us what to think about. And I know that the media has sensationalized the war just because they can make a lot of money off of it. I mean that's what people want it. They want the media to tell them what's going on. And I know that consequently since we're doing so well in the war that Bush's approval rating has soared by over 25 percent which is you know common if you're going to win a war. But then what if the media's was initially really critical of his domestic policies and now that it's focus to international policies.

I was just kind of wondering what you guys thought about when is the war coverage too much when should we focus on our own problems rather than those related to the war. Well with all respect to. Your professor framing is it's something we spend a lot of time in journalism talking about and worrying about and the way stories get framed whether it's in print or broadcast her on on radio is generally in the eye or in the head of the reporter. And here she is trying to figure out a way to tell the story in the most compelling way. And to. Well of course I don't know a lot of broadcast reporters but the reporters I know don't set out with the ambition that you that you just described they're just trying to tell the story in terms of you know one of the things that that's really hard to know. I come from a school of journalism that's lowercase s lowercase J

where it's you know you give you give your readers everything you can give them and they'll decide what they want to read or what they don't want to read and and things have a natural lifespan. We tend to ride the horse with whatever story we're on until that horse is dead. In other words we tend to we tend to stay with stories too long. I don't feel like that's been the case with the war although you're noticing at least I'm noticing nationally that papers are ratcheting back their coverage as things wind down and that will lead to arguably the biggest story nationally in the coming months. And this is where the framing comes into it is will. Bush the Younger. Repeat the mistakes of Bush the elder in terms of not paying enough attention domestic policy. You can see Bush was at a. Factory and the president was at a factory in St. Louis today making a speech on the economy you know trying to pump up support for the tax cut that's gone from 750 billion to 550 billion and will probably be 300 billion or

something like that. And in fact that shift is beginning to happen already. It seems to me but that does not necessarily relieve the media of its obligation to be very thorough about trying to desex some of these issues because they they are arguably still very important go ahead. And that's an excellent question because because you just turn the question on its head now now that the war's winding down. How much is too little. What I'm really worried about. Is that we're not going to hold the Bush administration's feet to the fire on chemical weapons. What's going to happen. We're going to move on. The spinmeisters will begin. And you know what's going to really change. The Democrats are going to start running for president and they're going to start harping on it. And as weird as it sounds when John Edwards and Howard Dean and all these other guys start harping. It will not make the issue bigger. It will diminish it because it will look like a political issue. It won't be a real issue anymore and it'll just be this back and forth between nine year olds arguing over

semantics. I'm sure it is. I'm really serious about this. And the end back in Washington. Those are the ones we should worry about the ones that were there thousands of journalists who were never going to leave and say well we're moving on now to trade with North Korea. That's the story is clear and that's what I'm really really worried. Clearly you asked a really hot button issue up here because I'm going to have to go back and maybe somewhat disagree with Peter because as Gates said framing is is defined by the fact that when journalists are looking in one direction they do not see what is in the other direction. None of us can look in two directions simultaneously. And I would suggest that as long as the journalists are looking out the government's window they will be following George Bush's agenda and that I for one am not sure why the economy hasn't been an issue for the last months. I didn't know that the economy stopped being important because we were at war.

Well you know the war is over because Madonna and shark attacks are back on CNN hopefully in the same story. So. Last question right here. Hi my name is Beth Ballinger I'm a lawyer from Spokane so I guess I'm one of the ones who walked in off the street. I did start as a journalist. I was a reporter for the Wyoming eagle. In Cheyenne Wyoming and then went on to last fall and ultimately And before I went to straight into litigation I worked for the government accountability project in Washington D.C. that represents whistleblowers people who blow the whistle on health and safety issues. And to answer it well just to respond to that one question or two. But I think that Brian is right that sometimes people have to say things anonymously and working with. The results of people who speak out speak the truth because it's the right thing to do. People's lives can be destroyed by that kind of thing.

And so being responsible in that regard is good. I came much as I enjoyed these symposium I came because of Danny Pearl and I saw the article that said that he was going to be honored here