"I had to fight to keep reality on television," longtime print, TV, and radio correspondent Daniel Schorr said Tuesday afternoon. "Most of the time I lost."
Schorr spoke as part of the Charles Francis Adams Lecture Series at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He spoke about his background as a journalist and the state of the press.
Now an analyst for National Public Radio, Schorr began his career in print. He covered the 1953 flood in The Netherlands for The New York Times. It was on this assignment that Schorr met CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow, the namesake of the Fletcher School's Center for the Study and Advancement of Public Diplomacy.
The speech was the first in a series of speeches at the Fletcher School this year in honor of Murrow.
Murrow hired Schorr to join the CBS news team. There Schorr discovered how easily television could misrepresent the truth.
Schorr said the most important aspect of diplomacy to Murrow was truth. "If there was anything that inspired reporters from Murrow on down, it's that we must keep before the people what the reality is," Schorr said.
Schorr spoke to about 200 students, faculty, and reporters in the ASEAN Auditorium in the Fletcher School in a speech titled "Forgive Us Our Press Passes."
He said today's media struggles with and often fails to accurately represent reality. "If it is exactly true or not, it seems not to matter much," he said.
The television journalism business has changed considerably since Schorr joined 50 years ago. New technology and economic models, he said, often lead to distorting the truth. He gave an example of a reporter speaking in front of a blue screen but claiming to be in front of the White House.
Murrow left CBS in 1961 to run the United States Information Agency. Schorr said the public diplomacy encouraged by Murrow could help cut through today's "age of virtual reality" in press coverage of U.S. foreign policy.
Before yielding his remaining time to questions from the audience, Schorr reminded Fletcher School students to practice public diplomacy, they must always use the truth. The goal of public diplomacy, Schorr said, is "to equate America with reality and truth, and get people overseas to accept that."
One audience member asked Schorr of his attitude toward anonymous sources. The issue has been prominent press criticism thanks to the unmasking of W. Mark Felt as the legendary "Deep Throat" source and the jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing a special prosecutor's requests to testify before a grand jury in the probe of the leak of CIA agent Valeria Plame Wilson's name.
"I think it's fair to say that the promise of confidentiality is based on the confidence that what you're being told is true," Schorr said. "You lose right to any confidentiality if you lie. Sources are whistleblowers - they're people who'll tell you the truth to change something."
Schorr said he supports Miller's decision to keep her source anonymous.
Despite his lengthy experience in the industry, Schorr said that television is better suited for entertainment than news.
"There is no way that I know of short of the Katrina flood," he said, "that will draw as large an audience as entertainment will."
