On November 17th, 2007 nearly 500 people gathered in Robsham Theater on Boston College's campus for annual symposium. Our topic this year was timely and important.
A free and independent press is essential for democracy. The press has a responsibility to inform citizens about both the policies and the actions of the government and about credible challenges to those policies and actions, to report on conditions that may require new or different government initiatives, and to raise timely questions itself about debatable policies and the rationales presented for them.
With the recent controversies over the failure of the press to fully live up to its responsibilities in the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the role of the media in the outing of a covert CIA agent, the rise of the blogosphere and so-called citizen journalism, and the impact of increasing financial pressures on newspapers and magazines, public confidence in the mainstream media is at an all-time low. What are the implications of this for our democracy? How might our faith in the press be restored?
Our fall symposium consisted of a special morning session for high school journalists and an afternoon session consited of three interrelated conversations, each focused on a different aspect of our theme. The symposium was free and open to the public.
Audio recordings of the morning high school session, and the second and third afternoon sessions, are available now by clicking here.
Streaming video of all three of the afternoon sessions will be available on frontrow.bc.edu after Thanksgiving.
Photos from the days events can be viewed at www.whiteglobaled.net starting Wednesday, November 21st, 2007.
Mark Bowden, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and author of Black Hawk Down
Samantha Power, Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
Anthony Shadid, Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the Washington Post and author of Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War
David Greenberg, Professor of History, Media Studies and Journalism, Rutgers University; author of Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image
Moderator
2:00pm Session 2: Political Reporting
Joe Lockhart, political strategist, former White House Press Secretary
Todd Purdum, national editor and political correspondent, Vanity Fair; former New York Times bureau chief; and author of A Time Of Our Choosing, America’s War in Iraq
Margaret Talbot, staff writer for The New Yorker magazine and Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation
Marcy Wheeler, citizen journalist, blogger, and author of The Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy
Alan Brinkley, Professor of History and Provost, Columbia University
Moderator
3:30pm Session 3: The News Business and the Business of News
Neil Brown, Executive Editor, St. Petersburg Times
David Carr, New York Times columnist on the media, business, and culture
Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic Monthly blogger; former editor, The New Republic
Ellen Hume, Director, Center on Media and Society, UMass/Boston; former White House and political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal
Moderator
5:00pm Book Signing
10:30am - 12:00pm Special Session for High School Journalists
Location: (The Heights Room, Corcoran Commons)
Edmund Sullivan, Director, Columbia Scholastic Press Association
Harry Proudfoot, Faculty Adviser, The Villager, Westport High School daily newspaper
Helen Smith, Executive Director, New England Scholastic Press Association; Faculty Adviser, The Newtonite, Newton North High School newspaper
Student Editors of prominent high school newspapers
12:30pm Session 1: War Reporting
10:30am Pre-session for High School Journalists
Previous Symposiums
In our inaugural 2004 fall symposium, we examined the U.S. Presidency, focusing on how and why presidential reputations change over time. In 2005, our focus was on the legacy of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a Legislative enactment of historic significance. Last year, we looked at the third branch of our federal government, the Judiciary—dubbed, by Alexander Hamilton (in The Federalist, No. 78), “the least dangerous” branch.
