A former governor and a local television journalist debated yesterday whether the media's intrusion into politicians' private lives is a legitimate deterrent to running for public office, as part of the fourth-annual Edward R. Murrow Forum on Issues in Journalism.
News anchor Chris Matthews of MSNBC moderated the Barnum Hall discussion, which featured former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis and WCVB-TV reporter Janet Wu.
The talk became very interactive at times, with audience members and panelists exchanging thoughts on whether journalists should go as far as they do in examining those in the public eye.
"Someone said to me a few months ago … ‘What would you rather be: the one having the show thrown at him or the guy throwing the shoe?" Matthews, the host of the political talk show "Hardball," asked.
Matthews explained that those seeking public office face scrutiny from a litany of sources, including bloggers, professional reporters, Senate staffers and an increasingly rigorous Department of Justice.
But Dukakis, who served three terms as governor and unsuccessfully ran as the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988, downplayed Matthews' concerns and praised the media for holding politicians to their words.
"I don't want any of you to think that you cannot set high standards of integrity for yourselves and people that work for you," he told the audience. "It's a hell of a lot of fun to be in public life, to be in a position where you can make a difference."
At the start of the talk, Matthews asked those in the audience who were considering eventual bids for public office to stand up. Dukakis expressed disappointment that more students did not get up from their seats, but he went on to explain that he is an optimist with regard to the future of political involvement.
The former governor said that excitement surrounding the ascent of Barack Obama to the presidency has led to an increased interest among young people in public service; that interest, he said, should not be tempered by worries about the media exposing online postings and e-mails.
"Set high standards for yourself, for people around you, understand how important the work is, how much personal enjoyment you get out of it, and have a good, conventional sex life," he said. "If you're into the other stuff, good luck to you, but don't run for public office."
But Wu starkly disagreed with Dukakis.
"I, quite frankly, would never encourage my children to run for office," Wu said. "Public service, yes … but not elected office … I know how brutal we can be," she added, referring to journalists.
Wu has been WCVB-TV's NewsCenter 5 State House reporter since 1983 and is a member of the Boston station's investigative team.
The attention that politicians receive can be invasive but is often appropriate, Wu argued.
Still, she said that profit motives, cutthroat competition and a dangerous need to rush stories have accompanied increased prying into the lives of public officials. Every day, she explained, she asks herself whether it is fair to cover certain stories; now, maybe only 60 percent of the time does she feel satisfied with her choices.
Wu told the audience about how her station recently ran a story on a firefighter who was driving a fire truck that crashed into a building in January; the fireman was cleared in the crash, but the WCVB-TV team discovered that he had been charged early last year with the purchase and use of cocaine.
She then posed the question of whether public servants should be subject to the same prying eye of the media as are politicians. She said that in this instance, her station tied the case to a wider issue of Boston firefighters persistently fighting against periodic drug tests.
Dukakis called the story "legitimate."
"The guy's a public servant. He was discovered to engage in these practices," he said. "I don't care whether … he's an appointed civil servant or he's an elected official … When you're in public life, folks … you've got to accept it."
And Dukakis said that a certain level of scrutiny has existed in this country for a long time.
"We've always had this, and politicians have had to deal with this," he said. "This is not new."
Matthews later posed a trickier question to participants and audience members: Should whether a politician has had an abortion be public information?
Dukakis suggested that information like that generally should not be in the public sphere, retelling an instance during the 1988 presidential primaries when he was asked whether any relatives of his had ever had an abortion.
During the question-and-answer period, senior Dan Hartman, who formerly served as the president of the Tufts Republicans, brought the discussion back to that issue.
Given many Americans' views on abortion, Hartman asked why a history of abortion should not be as relevant as if a candidate had murdered somebody in the past.
While Hartman's question prompted a back-and-forth exchange between him and Matthews, he was ultimately unhappy with the answers that he got.
"I felt that … the panelists sort of shook [the question] off," Hartman told the Daily afterward.
In response to another question from an audience member, Matthews praised print journalists. "Their ability to get a story and get it right on deadline is amazing," he said.
The panelists also touched on Jeremiah Wright, Sarah Palin, the role of citizens in a democracy and the journalistic value of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert during the question-and-answer session.
Throughout yesterday's programming, panelists consistently returned to the intrusion of new media into traditional journalism models.
Matthews, for example, lamented in his introductory remarks the lax editing standards that many increasingly popular blogs employ.
"We have the ability now to blog relentlessly under any name," he said. "We have 24-hour cable that is looking for those stories."
Meanwhile, he praised the "old-money families" who still back newspapers even as the publications are bleeding dry.
The Murrow Forum is named after radio and broadcast reporter Edward R. Murrow, who became internationally known as a result of his coverage of World War II and his criticism of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's campaign against communism. He died in 1965.
Dukakis said yesterday that listening during World War II to journalists like Murrow helped push him into public service.
"The fact that everything stopped during World War II during my boyhood to listen to the [radio]," he said, "the fact that we had to stop and listen at six o'clock at night … with those crackling voices coming in from around the globe had a profound effect on me."
Tufts houses the Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and has a number of documents that belonged to the late journalist. They are available at Tisch Library and the Fletcher School.
The Murrow Forum has previously brought Ted Koppel, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw to campus to speak about changes in the field of journalism.
