K-School Opens Center to Study Press and Politics

Prominent journalists and academicians gathered at the Kennedy School Saturday to formally inaugurate a new center dedicated to studying interactions between the press, the public, and the government.

Kennedy School Dean Graham T. Allison Jr. '62 told a gathering of several hundred that the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy will tackle previously neglected questions about the collision of these important forces in society.

Washington Post Executive Editor Benjamin C. Bradlee '43 delivered the keynote address, a speech about the press's responsibility in dealing with stories that involve national security (see accompanying story).

David Broder, a syndicated columnist and national political correspondent for The Post, shared his memories of Joan Shorenstein Barone, a Harvard Divinity School graduate who went on the work for The Post and CBS News.

Barone died of cancer in March 1985 at age 39. Her parents, Walter H. and Phyllis Shorenstein, provided a $5 million endowment to make the new center possible.

Mr. Shorenstein, a San Francisco real estate developer, said he intended to do little more than endow an academic chair, but the press center struck him as a perfectly fitting "living memorial" to his daughter.

Broder met Barone in an Institute of Politics study group and later brought her to The Post. He said that she "never became cynical about politics. She never doubted that news and television had more duty than just to entertain."

The opening of the $10 million center comes after nearly a decade of planning and fundraising. It is still in its incipient stages.

Nelson W. Polsby, an expert on Congress and the electoral process, was recruited from the University of California last April to fill the newlycreated Frank Stanton Chair for Press Scholarship, Harvard's only full-time teaching position dealing with the media.

Clark Hoyt, Washington Bureau Chief for the Knight-Ridder newspapers, has been named the Center's first fellow.

"What we hope the center will do is take on the hard issues," said Allison. Striking the proper balance between freedom of the press and matters of national security is one such issue, he said.

In an interview after his speech, Bradlee said that the center could contribute to society by studying the way the press deals with race in America and by looking for ways press...especially, the press must continue itsmission of publishing information that it, and italone, determines to be in the public interest, ina useful, timely, responsible manner, servingsociety and not government," he said.

The Post consults with government officialsabout sensitive cases, and national securityconcerns have caused the paper to withholdinformation for more than a dozen stories so farthis year, Bradlee said.

Bradlee cited one story The Post held for ninemonths, however, as an illustration of thetensions and disinformation news organizationsconfront.

In September 1985, two months before convictedspy Ronald Pelton was arrested for espionage andeight months before he went on trial, The Postlearned about the top secret intelligencecapability that Pelton had sold to the Soviets.

The story did not appear in print until May1986, and even then, Bradlee said, many of thedetails were omitted.

Post editors, unaware of Pelton's leaks to theSoviets, believed that they "had the highestnational security secret any of us had everheard," Bradlee said.

During the intervening months, Post editors metwith the CIA director, the national securityadviser, and the head of the National SecurityAgency in an effort to determine how damaging thestory would be.

At times, The Post shared draft versions of itsreport with the officials, Bradlee said.

Government officials argued that the story, iftold, would strike a blow to the nation'ssecurity, and they threatened to prosecute thenewspaper.

But during Pelton's trial, the governmentpublicly disclosed more information about its mostsecret intelligence gathering capabilities than atany time since World War II, including informationthat was news to The Post, Bradlee said.

Critical of Casey

Bradlee, who attained celebrity status as aresult of his paper's Watergate coverage,criticized CIA Director William Casey'sparticularly outspoken efforts to silence thepress on sensitive stories.

In an interview after his speech, Bradlee saidthat although the current administration has beentrying "slightly more desperately to plug leaks,"the amount of leaking has not decreased. "Whatthey've been extremely successful at is whippingan anti-press attitude in the public, reallypress-bashing," Bradlee said.

In December 1984, it took a Post reporter onlythree telephone calls to learn about the secretmilitary cargo aboard a space shuttle mission,Bradlee told the Kennedy School audience.

Although that information was no longer secret,Bradlee said, The Post's story on the subjectelicited a stern denunciation from the secretaryof defense--followed by 4000 letters to theeditor, some of which contained death threats