NIEMAN REPORTS THE NIEMAN FOUNDATION FOR JOURNALISM AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY VOL. 58 NO. 2 SUMMER 2004 Five Dollars The Energy Beat Complex and Compelling Words & Reflections: War and Terror “… to promote and elevate the standards of journalism” —Agnes Wahl Nieman, the benefactor of the Nieman Foundation. Vol. 58 No. 2 NIEMAN REPORTS Summer 2004 THE NIEMAN FOUNDATION FOR JOURNALISM AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY Publisher Bob Giles Editor Melissa Ludtke Assistant Editor Lois Fiore Editorial Assistant Elizabeth Son Design Editor Deborah Smiley Nieman Reports (USPS #430-650) is published Editorial in March, June, September and December Telephone: 617-496-6308 by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, E-Mail Address: One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-2098. [email protected] Subscriptions/Business Internet Address: Telephone: 617-496-2968 www.nieman.harvard.edu E-Mail Address: [email protected] Copyright 2004 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Subscription $20 a year, $35 for two years; add $10 per year for foreign airmail. Single copies $5. Second-class postage paid at Boston, Back copies are available from the Nieman office. Massachusetts and additional entries. Please address all subscription correspondence to POSTMASTER: One Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 Send address changes to and change of address information to Nieman Reports, P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108. P.O. Box 4951, ISSN Number 0028-9817 Manchester, NH 03108. Vol. 58 No. 2 NIEMAN REPORTS Summer 2004 THE NIEMAN FOUNDATION FOR JOURNALISM AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY Journalist’s Trade 4 The Energy Beat 6 Moving From a Backwater Story to a Front-Page Beat BY EDWARD FLATTAU 8 Energy Stories Shouldn’t Be Just the Big Ones BY GERALD KAREY 10 Energy and Politics: The Stories Never End BY MARGARET KRIZ WATCHDOG 12 Using Documents to Report on Mountaintop Mining BY KEN WARD, JR. 14 Unraveling the Great Hydrogen Hoax BY VIJAY V. VAITHEESWARAN WATCHDOG 18 Terrorism Fears Thwart Journalists’ Reporting BY JOSEPH A. DAVIS WATCHDOG 20 Government Studies Vanish From Reporters’ View BY BILL FINCH WATCHDOG 22 Keeping Reporters and the Public in the Dark BY ELIZABETH MCCARTHY WATCHDOG 25 Why Did California’s Lights Go Out? BY RICK JURGENS WATCHDOG 27 Being a Watchdog of FirstEnergy Corp. BY DEBBIE VAN TASSEL 31 Using Narrative to Tell the Blackout Story BY MARK CLAYTON 34 Green Buildings Need Sharp-Eyed Architecture Critics BY RANDY GRAGG 36 A Local Newspaper Invests in a Foreign Reporting Trip BY DOREEN LEGGETT Words & Reflections 38 War and Terror WATCHDOG 40 Revealing a Reporter’s Relationship With Secrecy and Sources BY BARTON GELLMAN WATCHDOG 45 Telling Stories the Military Doesn’t Want Told BY DAN OLMSTED 48 Portraits of the Wounded BY NINA BERMAN 52 Developing Word Pictures to Inform a Complex Story BY JEFFREY FLEISHMAN 54 The Iraq Experience Poses Critical Questions for Journalists SPEECH BY ANTHONY SHADID 60 The Responsibilities of a Free Press SPEECH BY ANTHONY LEWIS 62 The Unseen Is Made Visible PHOTO ESSAY OF FLAG-DRAPED COFFINS One of the offshore windmills set up in the North Sea, about nine miles west of the small village of Blavandshuk near Esbjerg, Denmark in October 2002. Standing 363 feet tall, the electricity windmills cover eight square miles of water. Photo by Heribert Proepper/The Associated Press. 64 The Press and Public Misperceptions About the Iraq War BY STEVEN KULL 66 The President, Press and Weapons of Mass Destruction BY SUSAN MOELLER 68 A Matter of Faith: The White House and the Press BY DAVID DOMKE 71 Images of Horror From Fallujah BY DAVID D. PERLMUTTER AND LESA HATLEY MAJOR 75 The Psychological Hazards of War Journalism BY ANTHONY FEINSTEIN 77 Journalism and Trauma: A Long Overdue Conjunction BY ROGER SIMPSON 79 Equipping Journalists With Tools for Emotional Balance BY WILLIAM J. DRUMMOND 82 “Welcome to Hell” DIARY AND PHOTO ESSAY BY STANLEY GREENE 86 Acting as a Witness to a Forgotten War BY ANNE NIVAT 88 When a Story Inhabits the Mind BY THOMAS DE WAAL 89 The Risks of Independent Reporting in Chechnya BY TIMUR ALIEV 92 Books 92 A Scholarly Look at War Reporting BY BARBIE ZELIZER 93 Securing the Right to Be Heard BY KAY MILLS WATCHDOG 96 Digging Beneath Quotes to Tell the Story BY DAVID CAY JOHNSTON 98 Measuring the News Media’s Effectiveness BY DANTE CHINNI 100 International Journalism 100 Government Pressure and Thailand’s Press BY PHILIP J. CUNNINGHAM 103 The Rising Tide of Internet Opinion in China BY XIAO QIANG 105 China and Internet Filters BY JONATHAN ZITTRAIN 3 Curator’s Corner: Dedicating the Knight Center at Lippmann House BY BOB GILES 108 Nieman Notes COMPILED BY LOIS FIORE 108 Newsroom Training at Urban High Schools BY LYNDA MCDONNELL 109 Class Notes 117 End Note: “Fields of Despair” BY NURI VALLBONA 2 Nieman Reports / Summer 2004 Curator’s Corner Dedicating the Knight Center at Lippmann House The Nieman Foundation works to broaden its reach. By Bob Giles This Curator’s Corner is excerpted from remarks made at the Foundation, and I were Nieman classmates, but also because dedication of the Knight Center at Walter Lippmann House, the first 17 years of my newspaper life were spent in the May 24, 2004. newsroom of the Akron Beacon Journal where Jack Knight was the editor. JSK was a plainspoken Ohioan who had he Knight Center is the physical expression of an idea become a national figure as chairman of Knight Newspapers. that was more eloquent and visionary than anyone at He found his voice in The Editor’s Notebook, a Sunday THarvard could have imagined in the late 1930’s. “Pro- column he had started in 1930 at the Beacon Journal that, by mote and elevate the standards of journalism and educate the 1960’s, was reaching a national audience. The notebook persons deemed specially qualified for journalism.” That was was where JSK spoke his mind with blunt honesty, often to the mandate that accompanied an unexpected gift of one the discomfort of his social peers at the country club and million dollars from the estate of Agnes Wahl Nieman. business peers in the boardroom. In deciding that the income from the Nieman gift would be In 1967, public sentiment was building against the war in used to fund a sabbatical for experienced journalists, Harvard Vietnam. But by then, Jack Knight had been warning against President James Conant created a fellowship program that U.S. involvement in Indochina since 1954. Increasingly, he was a success from the start and gave virtue to the concept of saw the war as a quagmire and wrote with passionate indig- continuing education for working journalists. For many nation, “Either our government has no well-defined policy or years, the Nieman idea has been limited to a small group of stands guilty of lying to the people … or both.” That year a carefully selected journalists who came to Harvard for a year reporting trip to Vietnam merely deepened his skepticism. of study—10 at first, then 12, and now, with the inclusion of “The American people,” he wrote, “can’t understand why the international journalists, an annual class of 24. lives of our young men are being sacrificed to keep unscru- The larger number of fellows and affiliates, and the addi- pulous South Vietnamese politicians in power. … We are tion of new initiatives, such as the Nieman Program on paying a tragic price for what may prove to be an unobtain- Narrative Journalism and the operations of the Nieman Web able goal.” site, began to push the limits of Lippmann House and created Back home, he denounced the rise of anti-intellectualism an imperative for improving the educational environment for as a corrosive side effect of the war. “Although the right of the fellows. And the opportunity to add more space inspired dissent is clearly set forth in our Bill of Rights,” he wrote, us to think expansively about the role of the Nieman Founda- “there are those who would deny this right to others who tion and address a fundamental question: Should the Nieman view U.S. involvement in Vietnam as a grim and unending Foundation be just for the 24 fortunate journalists who are tragedy.” awarded fellowships, or should Mrs. Nieman’s mandate be The following May, when the Pulitzer Prize for editorial expanded to serve the larger world of journalism through writing was awarded to Jack Knight, then 74 years old, the seminars and workshops where journalists can engage with Pulitzer Board noted his clearness of style, moral purpose, leading practitioners, with Nieman Fellows, and with mem- sound reasoning, and power to influence public opinion. JSK bers of the Harvard faculty who are scholars on many subjects set a high standard for the stewardship of newspapers as a in the news? public trust. He was a smart and successful businessman who The answer, of course, was to explore an expansion. As we never allowed the imperatives of the bottom line to diminish set out to find a partner in this venture, we turned to the John the editorial strength or integrity of his newspapers. S. and James L. Knight Foundation, with whom the Nieman In honoring Jack and Jim Knight today, we can recognize Foundation shares a common purpose in our dedication to how Agnes Wahl Nieman’s eloquent vision has been nur- provide training and education for journalists. The Knight tured over the years by wise curators and accomplished Foundation responded with the lead gift for the construction fellows who strengthened the core program and expanded of the new wing on Lippmann House that is being dedicated the reach of the Nieman idea to the larger world of journal- this afternoon as the Knight Center.