RNC Media/Police Panel Discussion at U of M, Monday, Sept. 22

September 10, 2008

(This excerpted from an e-mail by Prof. Jane Kirtley at the U of M)

The Society of Professional Journalists board is planning for a Monday evening, Sept. 22 event, taking place in the Coffman Union theater on the University of Minnesota East Bank campus. In broad terms, it will focus primarily on the interaction between the cops and the media during the recent RNC in St. Paul. It is not intended to be an examination of civil liberties issues overall, nor is it intended to be a critique of media coverage (how media framed the story, did the press incite the protestors, etc.). These are important questions, but at least as of now, they are not going to be the focus of this initial forum.

As of now, Al Tompkins from the Poynter Institute will moderate. Bostrom is supposedly committed to attending, as is a representative from Chris Coleman’s office. Mark Anfinson has been asked by Rick Kupchella to be the “First Amendment lawyer.” We anticipate choosing 3-4 journalists to also appear on the formal panel — with a mix of media (print, broadcast, online), and most likely at least one journalist who covered the fracas but was not arrested. We hope many others will attend, and if they have special expertise or experiences to share, would plan to seat them in the front rows in order to call upon them as resource people.

The tricky part about this is going to be to make it more than just a series of “he said, she said” declarations. Some on the SPJ board want to use this as a vehicle to examine the question of “who is a journalist.” Others don’t. At this point, I can only tell you it is a work in progress, but I expect we’ll have the format and participants hammered down by the end of this week.

One thing we have been asked to do is to invite any journalists who have still photos or footage of confrontations between (specifically) the police and journalists — and this could include, for example, a photo depicting a cop reviewing the contents of a photographer’s camera; it isn’t limited just to arrests or reporters being wrestled to the ground, although we’d welcome that, too — to submit them to Jonathan Malat at KARE-11 jmalat@kare11.com Again, we have a fairly narrow focus — cops and journalists, not other protestors.

Malat will be compiling everything and providing it to Al Tompkins, who will pick and choose the images he wants to use for the panel discussion.

If you have other thoughts and suggestions, please let me know and I’ll pass them along. As I said, I am just one of several planners — I am not the final arbiter of the overall program or specific panelists.

Thanks so much for your interest in this program.

Jane E. Kirtley
Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law
Director, Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
University of Minnesota
111 Murphy Hall
206 Church Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612 625 9038 (voice)
612 626 8012 (fax)
kirtl001@umn.edu

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