http://www.filsonhistorical.org/institute.html9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
$20 Members
$25 Nonmembers
$7 optional lunch
“Shaping the Message” Clarence Wyatt
Centre College history professor Clarence Wyatt looks at the forces that shaped coverage of the war in Vietnam and compares them with those faced by journalists covering the wars in Iraq. How did government and military information policies evolve over that time? What characteristics of journalism itself shaped reporting of these conflicts? How did – and do – these factors affect journalists’ freedom in reporting from Vietnam and from Iraq? What effect did televised coverage of Vietnam have in creating these controls?
“Molly Bingham: The Nuts & Bolts of Covering The Iraq War”
Molly Bingham
Photojournalist Molly Bingham discusses some of the details of how a journalist goes about covering war in the digital age, the decisions of ‘getting there’, access, working with magazines and newspapers, how much input the journalist is given for the final product and issues of security working in Iraq. While Bingham spent a good part of phase one of the Iraq war locked in a jail cell at Abu Ghraib, she returned to Iraq spending ten months researching the Iraqi resistance and phase two of the war with colleague Steve Connors.
“The Challenges of the Printed Word”
Steve Sidlo
Managing Editor of the Dayton Daily News, Steve Sidlo will discuss the decision-making process of what is covered in print by a newspaper, including military issues in Iraq and on the home front. Should graphic photos of war casualties appear on the front page? Is it news when a local soldier just returned from Iraq commits suicide on the 4th of July? What’s the proper balance between local news and war coverage when you have a tight news hole? Sidlo discusses how a mid-sized daily newspaper in a town with a large Air Force base grapples with war-related coverage issues.