|
Introduction and questions - Davyne Verstandig
Welcome to the 5th year of the LCWP series. I hope this semester presents everyone with topics that will allow for deep, earnest and transformative conversations and create the will within us to ask more questions and to try to resolve some of our problems. It may be that we recognize that there is more injustice in the world than justice and in doing so commit ourselves to the important task of being open to new ways of looking at old problems and looking at them with educated minds and then respond with a call to action.
This semester we are fortunate to have some of Litchfield County - and the world’s - most informed journalists, filmmakers, playwrights, and writers who will inspire us to continue to become better informed, more compassionate and dedicated in our resolve to help change what may seem like despair into hope.
Some of the questions I asked myself:
- What is Justice?
What is freedom?
Is Justice blind?
Is it possible for ALL human beings to have equal rights, live without domination by the powerful, corrupt and greedy?
How do we create a system of government in which the innocent are not wrongly convicted?
Are we being told “the truth?” Is there “a truth?”
Questions for this evening's guests:
- Amy: Women’s Rights are Human Rights but not everywhere. You have interviewed young girls who are the victims of war rape and prostitution and in turn, slavery. Would you speak to this subject ?
- Michael : Your book, The Road to Hell: the Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity, critiques the aid industry not merely on the merits of specific projects, but on the principles on which aid agencies so their business. Do you think there is more control now of money/donations to aid charities? Has improved since your book was published in 1997?
- George: You and a few others founded ICFJ 25 years ago – the International Center for Journalists. Why did you feel it necessary to do this at the time?
- Are you familiar with the book The Wealth of Networks –How Social Production Transforms markets and Freedom, by Yocha Benkler? He states, “Information, knowledge and culture are central to human freedom and human development. How they are produced and exchanged in our society critically affects the way we see the state of the world as it is and might be; who decides these questions; and how we, as societies and politicians, come to understand what can and ought to be done.”
- I think, among other people, that this may be the task of journalists. Do you agree?
- Amy – I know you taught at Columbia School of Journalism recently. How are journalism students different from when you were in school? Are they still idealists?
- Spiro Agnew once said, “Is the media the merchant of chaos?” How would each of you respond to his question?
- George -Is it your responsibility to sell the news, especially since you write for a newspaper?
- What are the checks and balances in journalism today?
- Michael – you use the term “hunger porn” in reference to the photos misused in Save the Children and other TV ads. I thought it was an excellent phrase - and then you go on to discuss the exploitation of children for funding. How do we stop this?
- What is the future of journalism? What do you imagine it will be like in 5 years? 25 years - What do you think of “citizen reporting” – blogging? twittering? the democratization of reporting news, the internet? What is the place of documentary films as journalism?
- It seems that our language is being prostituted everywhere today. As journalists do you feel that language seems to be for sale, that language is being manipulated more than ever for the purpose of “selling” or “entertainment.” How do journalists and writers take back the written word?
- One of the most significant human rights which isn’t discussed enough today is “the right to die.” How do you think journalists might better cover this issue?
- Have any of you ever felt as though you were” political pawns ?” Michael used that term in an article in Might Magazine, 1997 when referring to himself in the Peace Corps in Kenya.
- Is starvation always political and if it is how do journalists report on it?
- Michael -Which charities (if any) can the public trust? How does one research them and not be fooled by photographs and fraudulent claims? One such charity is CHARITAS for CHILDREN.
- As journalists are you aware when writing a story that your word choice can either incite or appease a situation? Do you censor yourselves? Does someone else censor your stories?
- George – when there were accusations that you worked for the CIA in Soviet Union, and you were expelled – how did you, or did you, disprove the accusations? How do journalists dispel accusations from a foreign country they are in?
- How do you stay impartial when reporting?
- What does the corruption of the aid charities and the accusations and violations by UN peacekeepers who solicit young girls for prostitution have in common?
- Amy – when the UN peacekeeper you interviewed said it was hard being away from home so long…..I would have said there are women peacekeepers who don’t solicit for young boys for sexual gratification. How did you resist?
- Do we know too little too fast?
- Are journalists “reporting” what is happening or “selling“ it?
- Do you think the government limits the reporting of news? If so, how? Who?
- Because Disney owns ABC is its news content lighter than years ago? It seems that the media isn’t reporting on wars as it did during Viet Nam or even the first Iraq war. Is it because the corporations that own the media don’t want the news on war reported fully because they feel the public doesn’t want to hear “bad news” or “real news?” It seems to me that denial cannot lead to transformation.
- The news of the Viet Nam war was in our living rooms every night. What happened to that kind of reporting and why did it end? Why don’t we have a list of deaths on the news each night?
- When did you know you wanted to be a journalist? Why did you want to be a journalist? What did you think it would be like? Is it the way you thought it would be?
- David Brooks in the NYT 9/15/09 in an article “High-Five Nations” stated, “Everything that starts out as a cultural revolution ends up as capitalistic routine.” How does a journalist navigate that line between the strictly political and political gossip which the public finds entertaining? How do or did you each of you make these choices?
- How do you balance the universal values of human rights with respect to the culture you are covering?
- Do you think “numbers are usually baseless fabrications?”
- Are journalists reporting about the corrupt charities today? Is the public aware of where their money isn’t going?
- Recently I read an article that said that women Marines in Afghanistan were wearing scarves under their helmets and were attempting to talk with the women there. How convincing is that when they’re also toting guns?
- To whom do you owe the truth?
- What do you see as your role as journalists?
- What is peace without justice? Is it even possible?
Who/what do we trust?
- Michael - you’ve gone from being a reporter to writing screen plays. Were you disillusioned after writing The Road to Hell, or did you simply move to another kind of writing?
- George – Were you covering human rights issues in the 70’s in the Soviet Union? What exactly was your beat as a journalist?
- Michael - in your chapter” Selling the Children” you say that less than 50% of total sponsors’ dollars went to grants to field programs.
- Michael - Do you see the current UN World Food Program to be as “corrupt” as Save the Children and some of the other charities when you wrote about them in 1997?
- Dambisa Moyo, (in Ms. Magazine) an economist born and raised in Zambia, stated “Systemic aid to Africa (aid from such institutions such as governments or the World Bank) breeds corruption and dependence – it must stop.” She refers to this as Dead Aid. Should our conversations be about seeing other countries break down their dependence on aid?
|
