Pollner lecture:
Americans can handle the truth,
and reporters must find it in wartime

By Chelsi Moy
J-School Web Reporter

A reporter’s job is to seek out truth and report it, even amidst the death and destruction of war, says Tom Cheatham, a former war correspondent and the School of Journalism’s Pollner professor.

"If our democracy is to endure, someone has to be out there trying to find out what’s really going on," Cheatham said during the annual Pollner Lecture on Oct. 21. "The first casualty of war is always the truth."

Cheatham spoke to about 150 people in the University Center theater, addressing why the military and press do not agree on how wars should be reported.

Cheatham is an on-call producer for NBC and has spent the majority of his career reporting on foreign affairs. He was a war correspondent during Vietnam, where he received shrapnel wounds to the head, chest and leg. He won two Emmy Awards for his coverage of the 1988 Olympic sprinter, Ben Johnson, who lost his gold medal after testing positive for steroids. He has covered G7 summit meetings in Tokyo and Geneva, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, and the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
Over the years, Cheatham said, he has seen drastic change in the nature of war reporting.

During Vietnam, the media acted as a system of checks and balances for the military, he said. And while the war reporters’ job wasn’t easy, it had to be done.

"Why did we take those kind of chances for so little?" Cheatham said. "It was the story. To find out what was happening and tell the stories of American kids at war, the realities of what they were going through."

But since then the military has increased press censorship and severely restricted the media’s access to war zones, making it difficult for reporters to uncover the truth, Cheatham said.

By dictating the news that’s reported, the U.S. government degrades the American people, he said. And while he understands that covering a story under strict military supervision is difficult, he emphasized that journalists must overcome all obstacles.During the Civil War, people relied solely on newspapers to convey the news. This created intense competition among journalists, said Cheatham. Reporters put their lives in danger so their newspapers could be the first to publish the story.

Cheatham said that, like these first war correspondents, he had access to the frontlines and was forced to deal with the dangers that accompanied that privilege.

"Reporters today are as willing to take risks as reporters during the Civil War," he said. "The difference is that reporters and photographers today have gone to training courses to minimize risk and stay safe, while back then they flew by the seat of their pants."

A Civil War memorial stands near the Antietam battleground in Maryland, dedicated to war correspondents who died on the battle field. It reads, "To the Army Correspondents and Artists, 1861-65,

Whose toils cheered the fireside, Educated provinces of rustics into a bright nation of readers and gave incentive to narrate distant wars and explore dark lands."

These words, Cheatham said, spell out the call of adventure to war reporters. They inspire him, he said, and should motivate journalists to prevail past obstacles and find the truth.

Cheatham also made reference to the movie "A Few Good Men," and actor Jack Nicholson’s famous line: "You can’t handle the truth."

While the U.S. government and the military might believe the American public can’t handle the truth, Cheatham said, he believes otherwise.

Cheatham, who lives in Durango, Colo., is the second Pollner Fellow at the J-school. During the fall

by Josh Parker

Alice and Ben Pollner came to Missoula in October for the second Pollner Lecture, part of a fellowship they created in honor of their son, T. Anthony Pollner, a 1999 J-school graduate who died in 2000. The fellowship brings a distinguished journalist to campus during the fall semester.

semester, he is teaching a class that traces war correspondents through history, and also advises the Montana Kaimin.

The T. Anthony Pollner fellowship was established in memory of a 1999 journalism graduate and

Kaimin reporter who died in a motorcycle accident in 2001. His family created an endowment in his name, allowing a distinguished journalist to visit the J-school one semester each year to teach a seminar and work with Kaimin reporters.

Return to School of Journalism home page