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July 10, 2008
The Newseum
I had a private tour on Monday night of the Newseum, the shrine to news, which opened four months ago in Washington DC six blocks from the Capitol. As I moved around the impressive facility, I was reminded again of the centrality of the media in provoking change and safeguarding democracy. Consider the following quote from former Attorney General John Mitchell, recorded by the secret White House taping system, about the Washington Post’s pending publication of a story on the Watergate break-in. “Katie Graham’s going to have her tit in a ringer if she goes with this story.” This threat to the paper’s owner is hung just above the Woodward and Bernstein article that did run in the Post, with the actual door to the Democratic National Committee office in the Watergate complex.
The Newseum, built by the Freedom Forum, makes an important distinction between democracy and Communism by displaying eight sections of the Berlin Wall and a guard tower that stood in Potsdamer Platz. On the Western side of the wall are colorful hand drawings condemning tyranny and hoping for reunification. On the Eastern side is blank concrete, a stark reminder of the totalitarian state. Just above the Berlin display is a full broadcast studio that is home to ABC’s Sunday morning program, This Week with George Stephanopoulos and a control room with two hundred broadcast news feeds, that punctuates the difference in governmental systems.
There is a powerful memorial to 9/11 in the display of the broadcasting antenna that stood atop the World Trade Center and somehow survived the 110 story plunge on that awful day. The twisted structure once provided the TV signals for New York City’s stations. It is set in front of headlines from newspapers from September 12 (my personal favorite: BASTARDS). One is similarly affected by the tribute to fallen journalists, murdered in pursuit of the truth. My host, Fred Kempe, former editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe, paused at length in front of the exhibition case that contained former colleague Daniel Pearl’s laptop, passport and guide to Arabic language (he was killed by Al-Qaeda operatives in 2002 while researching a story on future plane hijackings by terrorists).
The symbiotic relationship between news and government is reflected in the current exhibition on the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its director, J. Edgar Hoover. The “Ten Most Wanted” list of criminals came from an innocent question from a Washington based reporter, leading to a front page article with ten photos. The FBI’s PR department, recognizing a good idea when they saw it, institutionalized the list. The moniker “G-men” for FBI agents came from a cornered criminal, “Baby Face Kelly,” who used the phrase as short for Government men while asking for clemency (they shot him dead in a gun fight). A photo of Walter Cronkite, anchor man for CBS News, during a visit to the battlefields in Viet Nam is posted next to a comment from President Lyndon Johnson, who said, “If I have lost Walter Cronkite, then I have lost the American people.”
There is a full floor of newspapers that report on important events, from the sinking of the Titanic to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The masterpiece of understatement goes to the Wall Street Journal, reporting on the stock market crash in October, 1929, with a headline, “Record Drop in Stock Market; Trading Remains Orderly.” The New York Post immortal headline, “Headless Man Found in Topless Bar,” actually exists! The museum has a special area for children, who are asked to play reporter and editor, filming original content, creating short form video or print content that can be posted on their MySpace or Facebook pages. Kids have a conference room to decide whether or not to use content for the paper, including a picture from the Civil War that has clearly been staged by the photographer, and letters from the Unabomber who sought coverage in the Washington Post and NY Times.
Neither business news nor social media is given any space at the Newseum. It seems a very odd omission that will need to be fixed in future plans for the facility. The Newseum is a must for all of us in journalism, public relations or other communications disciplines.
The Newseum in Washington, DC
Posted by Edelman at July 10, 2008 11:04 AM
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Comments
Mr. Edelman,
The Newseum has a whole section dedicated to Internet/online news and blogs. I think even Twitter gets a mention.
Please read/view my report on my tour of the Newseum in March, before it opened. (My father-in-law is CEO of the Freedom Forum, which built it, and I worked with him to arrange a special advance preview tour for bloggers.)
Posted by: Bill Hobbs at July 10, 2008 5:47 PM
The Newseum was built by the Freedom Forum, not the Freedom Foundation.
Freedom Forum website:
Posted by: Bill Hobbs at July 11, 2008 12:40 AM
The Newseum is a great addition to the myriad of educational stops in D.C.
I was at the Rosslyn, Va., opening back in 1997 as a young military journalist. Protesters choked the entrance, Gannett interviewed Mr. Clinton and hours sped past as me and my friends became saturated in the heritage of our profession.
The will be a must-see on my next trip to D.C.
Posted by: Jon Wilke at July 13, 2008 2:56 PM
I read your post with great interest and look forward to a visit to the Newseum the next time I'm in Washington. It should come soon as my daughter starts college there in the fall - a result of those school visits you discussed in an earlier post.
Posted by: Leo Bottary at July 13, 2008 7:02 PM
Richard, I was in Washington over the weekend for a meeting and found myself with four free hours on Sunday, so I headed straight to the Newseum and stayed until it closed.
As a lifelong news junkie, I found it to be one of the most powerful, relevant museums I've ever seen. I began and ended my tour the same way: reading the first amendment printed on the front of the building. It literally gave me chills to think about how fortunate we are to live in a country with a free press. Thank you for bringing attention to this wonderful museum. It will become a regular stop for me when I'm in the nation's capitol.
Posted by: Marilynn Mobley at July 15, 2008 10:51 PM
Good post, Richard. I went to the Newseum this past weekend and was absolutely blown away by it! The real proof of what a great job they've done is that both my wife and our weekend hosts, none of whom are in journalism, PR or communications, were fascinated by it.
Posted by: Peter Engel at August 7, 2008 10:19 AM