Watching communications grow

Watching communications grow

As a university professor who heads the Communications and Creative Arts department at Purdue University Calumet, Yahya R. Kamalipour has seen the field of communications change minute by minute.
   ”Every day is something new and exciting,” Kamalipour said. “It’s such an interesting field, because every time you think you have something new, something newer comes out.”

Professionals debate role of media in Iraq war

Professionals debate role of media in Iraq war

Pam Arnold/The Ithacan

From left, Yahya Kamalipour, James Smith, Asma Barlas and Robert Zelnick speak on the Iraq war panel.

By Jamie Saine / Staff Writer

September 29, 2005

Communication and Middle Eastern studies professionals spoke to the Ithaca College communitty about the media’s failure to cover the events leading up to the war in Iraq at the “Lessons from Iraq: Journalism and Professional Responsibility during Times of War” symposium last Friday.

The panel members included a commentator for ABC Television News and National Public Radio, the foreign editor of The Boston Globe, the director of Middle Eastern Programming for LinkTV and department heads and professors of communications, journalism and Middle Eastern studies from various colleges across the nation. Disscussion topics included the ability of the media to provide well-informed war reports and the role of embedded journalists in the war.

Fawaz Gerges, Christian A. Johnson chairholder in international affairs and Middle Eastern studies at Sarah Lawrence College and senior analyst and commentator for ABC Television News and NPR’s “Morning Edition,” raised the issue of whether the media questioned the government enough before supporting the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Yahya Kamalipour, professor of mass communications and head of the Department of Communications and Creative Arts at Purdue University, said the media followed the government too easily without question, criticism or analysis of what the public was being told.

“Have the watchdogs become lap dogs?” Kamalipour asked.

The panel members also discussed journalists embedded within military deployments. Some panelists said it’s a good idea and adds another angle to journalism, while others thought it is just another form of government-controlled spin.

Asma Barlas, politics professor at Ithaca College, said she doesn’t think it matters if journalists are embedded. What really matters, in her opinion, is if they are reporting objectively or simply feeding the public the administration’s platform.

However, James Smith, foreign editor for The Boston Globe, said that it is important for the media to have both embedded and non- embedded journalists present during the war in order to tell the whole story.

Smith said that The Boston Globe had 14 reporters present in Iraq, and three of those were embedded with the military. He said the embedded journalists were there to cover the war from a soldier’s point of view. The non-embedded journalists made sure the public got a full view of the war, not just the view from inside an armored car, he said.

“It wasn’t a conspiracy to tell only a patriotic administration story,” Smith said about embedding journalists.

An hour into the discussion, the floor opened up to audience members for questions. They contributed various opinions on the role of journalists in war.

Freshman Kim Nesta said she came to the discussion because she is interested in the topic. She said she was disappointed by the lack of answers and felt that the panel danced around key questions.

“I thought there was a lot of bouncing around answers with examples and examples and no straight yes or nos,” Nesta said.

When the two-hour discussion closed, people were still waiting to ask questions, and the audience had dwindled from around 80 people to 50.

Sophomore Caroline Keras said she attended the discussion because she was interested and because some friends were going. However, she said she was disappointed when she left.

“I thought that there was going to be more talk about how the media covered the war and there was really more talk about the war itself,” Keras said.

However, not all people said they were disappointed. Junior Juliana Quant said she heard about the symposium through the college’s Intercom e-mails. Even though she didn’t know much about the panel discussion, she decided to attend anyway.

“I was really impressed by the quality of people who were speaking,” Quant said. “I thought it was just going to be from the college and it was actual real journalists from the real world.”

The event was sponsered the Roy H. Park School of Communications and funded by the national Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.