Top Journalism Deans Defend Press in 'Secrets' Controversy

[DeepModem Mom]

Editor&Publisher: Top Journalism Deans Defend Press in 'Secrets' Controversy
By E&P Staff
Published: July 10, 2006



NEW YORK -- Four leading journalism school deans, along with Alex Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University, have penned a strong call for press freedom in the reporting of secrets that the government, and particularly the current administration, wants to keep from the public. "It is the business -- and the responsibility -- of the press to reveal secrets," they declare....It was published Sunday in The Washington Post...

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"....For many Americans...the possibility of damage to terrorist surveillance should have been sufficient justification for the Times to remain silent. Why, they ask, should the press take such a chance?

There are situations in which that chance should not be taken. For instance, there was no justification for columnist Robert D. Novak to have unmasked Valerie Plame as a covert CIA officer.

We believe that in the case of a close call, the press should publish when editors are convinced that more damage will be done to our democratic society by keeping information away from the American people than by leveling with them....

We believe that the extraordinary power of the presidency at this moment mandates more scrutiny rather than less. Yet Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has said he would consider prosecuting journalists for publishing classified information. Such an action would threaten to tilt the balance between disclosure and secrecy in a direction that would weaken watchdog reporting at a time when it is badly needed...."

Geoffrey Cowan, dean
Annenberg School for Communication
University of Southern California

Alex S. Jones, director
Shorenstein Center
Harvard University

John Lavine, dean
Medill School of Journalism
Northwestern University

Nicholas Lemann, dean
Graduate School of Journalism
Columbia University

Orville Schell, dean
Graduate School of Journalism
University of California at Berkeley

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002802088

[RagingInMiami]

1. Only four deans?

What happened to the others? Did their universities get bought out by the corporate conglomerate media companies?

[Berry Cool]

3. Yeah.

I'm a little disappointed that neither school from which I got my degrees has seen fit to speak up.

[xultar]

2. If the rethuglicans thought that shit was secret then they shouldda told *

not to metion it after 9/11.

Bush is the one who released the fuckin secret.