Distinguished panel discusses challenges to media consumers in new era

By Jennifer Reed
J-School Web Reporter

When it comes to understanding world affairs, Americans have all the necessary tools; they just need to read the manual.

At a public panel discussion in the University Center Theater Oct. 10, former CBS White House correspondent Robert Pierpoint, Great Falls Tribune Capitol Bureau Chief and foreign correspondent Gwen Florio and retired ambassador and Montana World Affairs Council Director Mark Johnson talked about national security, freedom of the press and Americans’ role as consumers of news.

Journalism Dean Jerry Brown served as the panel’s mediator. Brown said he contacted the GOP and the White House trying to get a representative to join the discussion, but no one accepted the invitation.

“Terrorism and Truth: Security and News in a New Era” was organized by the Missoula International School, the World Affairs Council and the School of Journalism.

“There is no such thing as too much information or too much access to information,” Florio said during the discussion.

The panel members agreed that reporters are doing their jobs by putting the news and information out there. But they pointed out that accuracy in reporting isn’t enough. The consumption of news is affected by shrinking resources, changes in government-media relationships and, possibly most importantly, the consumers themselves.

At a time when media are slashing their staffs, Florio said, access to important information may be disappearing.

It’s simple math, she said. Fewer reporters and smaller news holes equal less information for citizens equal less knowledge going into the voting booth.

Johnson discussed the importance of government-media interaction and talked about three major turning points in the relationship between foreign policy and the press.

During the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, Johnson said, the media transformed their relationship with the government from comfortable to aggressive.

Then came what Johnson referred to as “the first 9/11,” when the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, 1989 -- in European countries, the date would be written day, month, year: 9/11/1989. During that event, the media played an important role in the speed and compression of foreign-policy decisions.

Lastly, he mentioned “the second 9/11, the one we are living in now.”

The panel also discussed the role of readers and viewers in the news cycle.

“You can no longer say ‘I didn’t know about this,’” Johnson said. “No one can say that.”

Maybe so, but how and where people get their news is also important, Florio warned. “We need to urge people to be careful consumers of news.”

Florio said that with more news pouring out than anyone can possibly take in, the line between consuming news and getting the truth can get a bit blurry. If a viewer watched coverage of the Iraq war on CNN and the BBC, for example, they would see a different war than that presented by Aljazeera, the Arabic-language news network. But, she added, both are true.

“That illustrates how many truths there are.”

Pierpoint added that another consumer problem is that the public simply isn’t paying attention to the news. Even though the information is available, he said, people don’t have time to reach out and get it.

Johnson pointed out that 63 percent of 18-to-22-year-old Americans cannot find Iraq on a map and 90 percent cannot locate Afghanistan. Which brought him to an important question: “Are we really that interested? On Wednesday nights, we’re not. That’s ‘American Idol.’”

Many of the questions put before the members of the panel may have been largely unanswerable, but they did reach at least one conclusion: More information is key to understanding the issues, and the key to getting the information is to be a well-rounded —and well-versed— consumer.

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