Indiana University School of Journalism

Photo by Jonathan Hiskes

Panelists were (from left) Julie Fox of telecommunications; Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation; and Stephen Cohen, contributing editor of the magazine.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of America’s oldest weekly magazine, The Nation, used to warn of the growing danger of “infotainment.” She no longer bothers with that warning, she told an overflowing audience at Ernie Pyle Hall Auditorium Thursday evening.

“The line between news and entertainment is no longer blurred,” she said. “It’s been forever obliterated.”

Vanden Heuvel joined The Nation contributing editor Stephen Cohen and IU Department of Telecommunications assistant professor Julie Fox to address “What’s Right and Wrong with the Media,” a panel discussion cosponsored by the School of Journalism and The Nation.

The three panelists argued that the issue should concern every American because the health of a democracy and the health of its news media are necessarily linked.
 
“These are perilous times for our democracy,” vanden Heuvel said. “We’re getting US Weekly fed to us like bad heroin. We need watchdogs, not lapdogs.”

Fox, in her own diagnosis, drew from her recent study comparing 2004 presidential campaign coverage on network television and on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. After measuring their reporting on policy issues, she concluded that the networks were no more informative than the Comedy Central “fake news” show.

“I found them to be equally substantive, which is to say not very substantive at all,” she said.

She said the need for visuals becomes a crutch for TV news. She told the story of a Chicago network crew that spent an entire day laying a paper list of names along a football field, all for a brief shot illustrating the students cheated by student loan scandals.

Cohen, vanden Heuvel’s husband and a Russian Studies professor at New York University, attacked journalism that was not just vapid but flat-out wrong.

“We’ve created elites that aren’t accountable,” he said. “Who said, ‘I’m sorry about our [writing] on those weapons of mass destruction?’ Who has apologized for those editorials? I can count them on two hands…There is no sense of institutional responsibility.”

Photo by Jonathan Hiskes

The Nation contributing editor Stephen Cohen, a Russian Studies professor at New York University, compared U.S. media with Russia’s.

In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where he is a frequent traveler, Cohen said press freedom and human rights have not been in such danger since the fall of communism. He said relations between the U.S. and Russia, through a series of broken promises, have soured to a point he calls “a new cold war.” But most Americans don’t know this story because the few remaining foreign correspondents rely on a small number of official sources who aren’t telling the full story, he said.
 
“None of this is reported in the press,” he said. “None of this is considered on editorial pages.”

Vanden Heuvel noted a similar erosion of press freedoms in the U.S. She catalogued the unprecedented attack she sees on the First Amendment from the Bush Administration, including the ban on TV crews from filming American caskets returning from Iraq.

The panelists also noted some bright spots they saw in both the mainstream and alternative media: The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh, independent radio host Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, and Chicago Tribune investigations into the death penalty and lead-tainted toys.

“Clearly there’s not enough of that,” Fox said of successful investigative journalism.

Vanden Heuvel said that while blogs have had some success in holding mainstream media outlets to higher standards, few have the financial muscle to mount significant investigations.

She also said citizens should not expect it to be easy to find good journalism amid the bad. During the question-and-answer session, a freshman asked where she could find “accurate, reliable news sources.”

“C-SPAN,” vanden Heuvel told her.

Photo by Jonathan Hiskes

The panel discussion,which drew a capacity crowd, included a question and answer session afterward.

School of Journalism assistant professor Mike Conway moderated the panel, which was part of an occasional traveling series by The Nation.

“One of our goals as a school of journalism is to provide our students with as many viewpoints as possible from within the media,” Conway said.

Junior Cole Wehrle said an additional viewpoint might have strengthened the panel.

“I always have high expectations for panels put on by the School of Journalism,” the English and journalism major said. “They do a really good job. The only thing I thought it lacked was a counterpoint from a differing opinion.”

The panelists rarely disagreed, instead building one another’s critiques and providing several answers to audience questions. Wehrle said Cohen’s focus on Russian media added a useful dimension to the discussion.

“In Russia, you have a worse situation,” Wehrle said of media rights. “But you still have an amazingly diverse media. I thought that was helpful to hear.”

Cohen and Vanden Heuvel discussed Russian affairs on a panel in the IMU earlier Thursday. While in Bloomington, vanden Heuvel also planned to speak to radio stations WFIU, WFHB, the Indiana Daily Student editorial staff and the local Democratic Women’s Caucus.

e-mail this page News Notices News archives