Top journalists and Politics Prof. Larry J. Sabato discussed the media's new role after Sept. 11 and its mixed success in accurate and in-depth reporting at a panel held in Gilmer Hall yesterday.
The panel, moderated by Politics Prof. Paul Freedman, was part of a National Symposium on Wartime Politics sponsored by the Center for Governmental Studies.
"There was a real sense of emergency, which heightened the responsibility of the media beyond what anyone had ever seen before," said Ed Foster-Simeon, the deputy managing editor for USA Today.
The journalists spoke about their frustration in trying to pry information from the Bush administration.
"We have to trust our government to tell us the truth at the exact moment of crisis," said Ann Klenk, the producer of the National Journal Group. "That has been especially hard given the current administration."
The Group is a publisher of information about politics, policy and government.
"The American public saw more of Dan Rather than any of the government officials after the attacks," Klenk said. "Bush was who knows where, and Cheney was in his bunker."
Foster-Simeon agreed with Klenk.
"Now, journalists are working 10 times as hard to get the little information that the administration will let out," Foster-Simeon said.
Web site technology has been a useful way to combat the White House's reluctance to communicate, said Steve Fox, the national and political editor of washingtonpost.com.
The panel agreed that the public has warmed up to the media since Sept. 11.
"Finally, we're getting foreign news again," Sabato said. "We went from worshipping idiot music stars to realizing that ordinary people like fire-fighters are the real heroes."
Sabato also commented on the public's greater trust in the president.
"Before Sept. 11, the democrats and journalists were wrong to call him Bozo the Clown," Sabato said. "After Sept. 11, the press has treated him as Winston Churchill, and that's wrong too."
The panelists concurred that American journalists at home and abroad are working much harder than the American public think.
"Reporters are pushing government officials for information," Fox said. "And this notion that our corporate parents are telling us what to report is a fallacy."
Klenk added that concerns about money and ratings are not as prevalent in the news business as some people assume.
"No one is thinking about ratings in covering Israel," she said.
However, Klenk said, the news media could improve on the amount of foreign press covered on television.
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