General Vincent Brooks, the U.S Army’s chief of public affairs at the
Pentagon and a 1998 Kennedy School National Security Fellow, returned
to Harvard on November 29 to take part in a brown bag lunch. In an
hour-long discussion Brooks shared his views on what constitutes
effective communications in today’s global information environment.” As
he lamented how the military’s mission-focused culture often leads to
reticence, Brooks conveyed the difficulty of achieving transparency in
an industry that depends on secrets. With the ever-present stream of
information available to the public, the ability to manipulate
communications complicates the Pentagon’s relationship with the media.
Within this environment, Brooks described how the military is seeking
to find its place within new outlets of communication such as blogs and
podcasting.
On November 22, Roger
Rosenblatt, the Shorenstein Center’s Edward R. Murrow
Visiting Professor of the Practice of Press and Public Policy,
discussed what entices people to write. A satirist by trade, Rosenblatt
began his talk by positing that writers—an inherently awkward
group—are drawn to their profession out of a desire to watch the world
rather than engage in it. Rosenblatt discussed several other
reasons why human beings are compelled to write: to break silence, to
express freedom, and to civilize humanity. By writing, we declare that
we will live according to our own will and not that of another.
Although we often lack reason, Rosenblatt said, humans are a narrative
species, and our evolution is marked by a constant endeavor to get our
story right.
On November 14, Adam Nagourney, national political
correspondentfor the New York
Timesand a current Fellow at the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics, led a
discussion he called “The American Political Landscape: One
Journalist’s Perspective.” Nagourney focused on the current pressures
that journalists face, many of which can be attributed to the rise of
blogs and the 24/7 news environment. In terms of campaign coverage,
Nagourney described how the pressure to predict winners often results
in “premature journalism,” with reporters making predictions before
voters have begun to pay attention. Meanwhile, the increasing cost of
keeping journalists on the campaign trail, combined with financial
cutbacks in newsrooms, threatens the quality of reportage produced on
presidential candidates.
Zanny Minton Beddoes, a Kennedy School
graduate who is currently Washington economics editor for the Economist,
returned to Cambridge on November 8 to discuss her experience working
for the magazine in a talk entitled “The Inside Outsider: Covering
America’s Economic Policy for the Economist.” As one who has written
extensively on Latin America, Beddoes touched on the recent collapse of
free trade talks in the region, calling it a PR victory for Venezuelan
president Hugo Chávez. The majority of her talk focused on some of the
key differences between the Economist and
other periodicals, among them the strong presence of opinion and rare
usage of quotes. By keeping conversations off the record, Beddoes
claimed, reporters at the Economist are
able to build greater relationships of trust with their sources.
Nonetheless, the onus of interpretation then falls on reporters rather
than their readers.
On November 1, Michael Massing, a contributing editor at the Columbia Journalism Review, addressed concerns about reporting on the war in Iraq in a discussion
entitled "The Glaring Gap in the Press Coverage of Iraq.” The author of Now They Tell Us, a collection of articles about press coverage on the
war, Massing described how the mainstream media has fallen short in
relaying the status of the reconstruction efforts in Iraq. As the
nation debates whether American troops can be brought home,
journalists, Massing says, must be unflagging in their duty to apprise
the public of whether the situation can, indeed, be approached
differently. To do so, he suggested that journalists consult think
tanks and the Pentagon more often while also covering
counter-insurgencies and the internal politics of Iraq in greater
depth.
On October 25, Roberta Baskin visited the
Shorenstein Center to lead a discussion entitled “What’s Right with
Journalism.” A former chief investigative correspondent for the CBS News program “48
Hours,” Baskin is now executive director at the Center for Public Integrity,
a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that conducts investigative
research and reports on public policy issues in the U.S. and abroad.
According to Baskin, it is both the best of times and the worst of
times for the mainstream media. While many view the industry through a
myopic lens, focusing only on the perils, Baskin endeavored to dissuade
such tendencies. While a recent Knight-Ridder survey reported that
one-third of high school students believe the First Amendment goes too
far, she said, the internet’s ability to provide instant access to
information has revolutionized news gathering.
Suzanne Malveaux, White
House correspondent for CNN, spoke to
students and other members of the Kennedy School community on October
11 about her
experiences covering the Bush administration. While unable to speak
with complete candor about the inner workings of the administration, Malveaux—who has covered the Bush White House for four years and who
covered the last nine months of the Clinton White House—offered a
discerning look into the contrasts between these presidents’
relationships with the press. Malveaux discussed coordinating with
other members of the media to ask critical questions during press
conferences, a collaboration she said is highly beneficial, despite the
administration's relative openness toward the press in its second term.
Karen Tumulty, national political correspondent for Time magazine, visited the Shorenstein
Center on Tuesday, October 4th to share her views in a talk she called "The New
Cronyism: How Many More Mike Browns are Out There?” As New Orleans continues to
roil from the shock of Hurricane Katrina, many have begun to question the
credentials of those leading our federal agencies. Bush’s nomination of Harriet
Miers for the Supreme Court—a personal legal advisor with no formal judicial
experience—has stimulated more discussion on the president’s appointments.
According to Tumulty, the Bush administration has employed a systematic,
centralized, and coordinated restructuring of the bureaucracy. While many were
busy counting ballots on December 3, 2000, during the Florida recount, Tumulty
claims, now Vice President Dick Cheney spent the day poring over
organizational charts of the federal government. In the midst of this climate of
cronyism, Tumulty asserted, the press must cover appointments to the best of its
ability within its time constraints. Likewise, Congress should be wary of
those they appoint, cognizant of the qualifications they bring to the table.
September
On September 27, Michael Isikoff, investigative
correspondent for Newsweek magazine, spoke at a brown-bag luncheon
entitled “Sourcing the News: Perils and Pitfalls.” Isikoff’s
talk focused on the controversial incarceration of New York Times reporter
Judith Miller and its implications for the future of
investigative journalism. While Isikoff touted confidential
information as the heart of investigative reporting, he
stressed that the primary duty of reporters is to their
readers and not to their sources. Although many seek to draw
parallels between the relationship of doctors to their
patients and that of reporters to their sources, journalists work with
confidential sources so as to inform their primary client: the
general public. Rather than shying away from off-the-record
conversations, Isikoff proposed that journalists should
instead practice a more aggressive form of investigative
reporting: On the one hand, promises of confidentiality must
be kept; nonetheless, these promises must not prevent
reporters from having further conversations with those
sources—on the record—in their effort to inform the public.
On September 19, the Shorenstein Center kicked off its annual series of
brown bag lunches with “A Conversation with Judy Woodruff,” moderated by
Shorenstein Center director Alex Jones. In the wake of
uncharacteristically aggressive reporting on Hurricane Katrina and the
recent incarceration of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Woodruff’s talk largely focused on the issue of
objectivity and whether reporters feel free to voice their own opinions.
While Woodruff acknowledged that objectivity is an intangible ideal for
all—including journalists—she emphasized the need for reporters to
present both sides of a story. Woodruff also conceded that journalists
remain aware of commercial and political pressures. Indeed, with the
wave of patriotism that followed September 11th, many reporters began
censoring themselves in their criticism of the government. Despite this
and the evolution of the media presaged by the growing popularity of blogs and talking heads, Woodruff expressed her hope that the public
will continue to seek out news organizations that present stories in a
balanced light.
Summer 2005 newsletter available