A year ago last May, Nieman Foundation curator Bob Giles stood before an alumni judge and jury.
When I arrived at an otherwise friendly Sunday brunch to close a
three-day Nieman Fellows reunion that day, several of my 2004 Nieman classmates
began to fill me in on the morning’s fracas.
In a “Conversation with the Curator” session, fellows had asked Giles to confirm
rumors that Nieman had been organizing a seminar in China about press coverage
during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The original plan was to work with
Chinese Olympic officials.
Giles confirmed it was true.
Soon, it seemed all discussion points focused on “Chinese officials.”
The resounding concerns from Nieman alumni to emerge in following days
became: Why was Giles associating the Nieman Foundation with Chinese
officials? And why work with a repressive government which does not
allow a free press and which imprisons journalists?
It seemed to be just the sort of discussion a journalism organization
might seek.
But within about four days, an embattled
Giles withdrew the Nieman name from the Chinese seminar. It had been a
planned partnership with Harvard’s Fairbank Center for East Asian
Research.
The discussion that swirled around this issue raises questions about how
we share our free-press values. What happens if we share them in ways
that seem troublesome to us? And what happens if we don’t share them at
all? I recently asked Giles, via e-mail, about how he perceived the incident.
“The Nieman alumni objection was based on a misperception of what we had planned to do,” he said.
“We had agreed to meet with 40 Chinese Olympic officials and provide an
educational experience to help them understand First Amendment press
values, how the U.S. press works, what journalists would want to know
and where they would want to go in China.
“The idea was to help prepare them for the demands of the visiting
journalists. The perception that emerged was that the foundation was
going to train the Chinese officials on how to ‘manipulate’ the press
and the coverage.”
But manipulating the press was not what Giles, nor his professional peers, had intended.
“Some Niemans who had political correctness, but little knowledge,
forced the cancellation of what would have been a wonderful opportunity
to introduce Beijing media leaders to the open press of America,” said
Ezra Vogel, emeritus professor of social sciences at Harvard. “It is a
missed opportunity with mistakes on part of some of the Niemans, as
foolish as some things going on in Washington D.C.”
The Nieman fracas revealed how easily one can get caught up in the
external forces, unrelated to Nieman’s original mission in China, such
as concerns, however legitimate, about human rights violations and a
lack of press freedoms.
Vogel, also former director of the Fairbank Center, laments the trumped
cause. Still, he has been trying — so far unsuccessfully — to revive the seminar with Alex Jones,
director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and
Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Jones, a Nieman Foundation advisor, had also supported the Chinese seminar. So far, no plans exist to reschedule it.
But with the Olympics in Beijing a short two years away, thousands of
reporters will have the opportunity to feast on a cornucopia of world
cultures, including stories lying behind the walls of Communist China.
A great exploration awaits.
Foreign reporters should test the storytelling boundaries in China,
where national leaders have disavowed the values associated with a free
press and democracy. How do people of different cultures get to know
each other under those conditions? How do those differences shape who
we are? And how can we move past these perceived barriers, real or not?
As a journalist who reports on Native American issues in the United
States, I’m consistently exploring the value of First Amendment rights
and free-press issues. It could be argued these hallmarks of journalism
don’t exist in Indian Country.
But the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 supports a free press in Indian
Country. And free-press issues have long been a concern among tribal
journalists. The problem is with financing. Most tribal newspapers receive
their funds from the tribe. This tends to control the news that appears
in print.
Still, it would be a travesty to dismiss the hundreds of tribal
journalists who defy the odds, challenge tribal leaders and strive to
be government watchdogs.
A seminar setting would prove a useful forum to sit down with tribal
officials and Native media leaders to discuss, in Giles’ words, “First
Amendment press values, how the U.S. press works, what journalists
would want to know and where they would want to go.”
I know tribal leaders, such as Red Lake Tribal Chairman Floyd Jourdain Jr., who are open to discussing free-press issues,
while others might balk at the idea. I wouldn’t, however, let the
holdbacks thwart the discussion.
Why close the door to dialogue before anyone has a chance to walk in?
Jodi Rave was a 2004 Nieman Fellow.
