Spectrum

The concept of using foreign correspondents housed in other countries to help inform the American public of the news is a concept that goes back to Colonial days.

Yet today, news organizations have drastically cut back on full-time correspondents abroad opting instead for a smaller reporting corps and the use of free-lancers and citizen journalists.

So says long-time journalists and authors John Maxwell Hamilton and Peter Copeland as they discussed the history, present and future of using foreign correspondents to report news to America.

Hamilton claims that Colonists re-published the news from newspapers abroad that arrived in the Colonies on ships. He says that the interest in the American public, at that time, was high to learn of news from the homelands of immigrants.

Foreign correspondents also were used to convey news in the 19th Century and on through the 20th Century, according to Hamilton. He believes, however, that the pinnacle of the status of the foreign correspondent was between World War I and World War II.

Copeland states unfortunately that news organizations started cutting foreign correspondent staffs as a cost cutting measure at the end of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st Century. He notes that now news organizations are relying more and more on freelance correspondents or citizen reporting through smart phones.

He notes that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to check the accuracy of the some citizen reporting from world hotspots, thereby making accurate reporting difficult, at times.

Hamilton is the Hopkins P. Breazeale Professor in Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Journalism and a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, in Washington, D.C. He also was the founding dean of the Manship School and served as executive vice chancellor and provost at LSU.

His most recent book is “Journalism’s Roving Eye” that won the Goldsmith Prize.

Copeland has been a reporter for four decades and has covered everything from local crime stories to foreign news as a correspondent. He most recently was the editor and general manager of the Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C.

His latest book has just been released. It is “Finding the News: Adventures of a Young Reporter.” It is a recount of part of Copeland’s career but it also offers advice for aspiring young journalists.

Freelance journalist Tania Rashid says covering human tragedies can take a psychological toll on reporters who face human misery day-after-day.

She says it is immensely distressing to see people suffering, through no fault of their own, simply because of their race or ethnicity.

Rashid has spent a great amount of time covering the Rohingya refugee crisis as the Rohingya people flee Myanmar into Bangladesh to form the world’s largest refugee camp.

Her reporting of the trials, tribulations and turmoils of the refugees has led to stories about terrible living conditions, lack of food, rape, abuse and sex trafficking. She even went undercover to report how Rohingya young girls are recruited to work in brothels.

Rashid also reported on how 12 and 13 year old girls are being forced into marriages with strangers they don’t even know.

Rashid says that witnessing such immense human tragedy forces her, as a reporter, to sometimes reach out with help for the subjects of her stories. She cannot just remain a passive observer.

She also says that covering these types of stories of human carnage and degradation forces her constantly to examine her journalistic ethics. She is acutely aware sometimes of protecting the identity of her sources to prevent them from suffering further abuse because of talking with a reporter.

Rashid becomes infuriated with journalism colleagues who do not protect victims that they report about and sometimes cavalierly disclose names and faces of those who may suffer more abuse for telling their stories.

Rashid’s work has been seen on the PBS News Hour, CNN International, Vice News and on Al Jazeera. She has an undergraduate degree in history and global studies from UCLA and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

You can review Rashid’s work at her website: http://taniarashid.com/

Author and election analyst Kyle Kondik, from the University of Virginia Center for Politics, says the latest poll results are tipping toward favoring impeachment because voters can more easily grasp the issues comprising the Ukrainian controversy.

The elements surrounding President Trump asking Ukrainian officials to provide political dirt on his potential Democratic opponent Joe Biden are much easier for voters to understand than the muddled and legalistic report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Kondik says.

Therefore, recent polls are showing over 50 percent of Americans favoring both impeachment of the President and removal from office by the U.S. Senate. However, Kondik cautions that these early polls are volatile and can easily change.

At this point, Kondik does not think there will be sufficient cross-over Republican voting in the Senate to remove Trump from office. Instead, he believes that Trump will be impeached by the Democratic House but not removed from office by the Republican Senate.

Two other Presidents have had similar fates…Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson. Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency before being officially impeached.

Kondik also says that voter reaction to the impeachment process is especially important in key states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio – where the Trump campaign has been focusing a great amount of time and resources.

Although Ohio has turned more and more Republican in recent elections, Kondik still predicts that Ohio will be a bellwether state for 2020. He believes it is volatile depending on the public’s reaction to President Trump as the election nears.

In 2016, Kondik authored “The Bellwether: Why Ohio Picks the President” – published by the Ohio University Press.

President Donald Trump’s newly announced withdrawal of American troops from Northeastern Syria opens the door for Turkey to attack America’s Kurdish allies in the region, says Dr. Nukhet Sandal, Chair of the Political Science Department at Ohio University.

The potential of Turkey attacking an unprotected U.S. ally is dangerous at many levels, according to Dr. Sandal.

Primarily it sends a message to other U.S. allies that we will not stand behind them during times of international upheaval. We will not protect them, she says. It makes America untrustworthy in her view.

Dr. Sandal also believes that this abandonment of the Kurds invites further meddling in this region by Turkey, Iran, and Russia.

Most importantly, she notes that currently, the Kurds have about 10,000 ISIS prisoners in their custody and about 70,000 ISIS family members. The Kurds have said that if they are fighting the Turks that they will not be able to appropriately guard these prisoners and their release or escape could be imminent.

Trump has said that the U.S. and its allies have totally defeated ISIS and destroyed the caliphate.

However, Dr. Sandal says that ISIS can easily become reconstituted perhaps even under a different name and become a huge threat to the United States very quickly, given Trump’s decision to abandon the Kurds and this region of the Middle East.

Dr. Sandal has both Turkish and Kurdish heritage. She is an award-winning teacher and researcher. She received her doctorate degree from the University of Southern California and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University.

She is the author of numerous academic articles for prestige journals and has written two books about religion, conflict and international relations. She also has been featured by media outlets such as the BBC, the Washington Post and the Huffington Post.

Chris Thile is an acclaimed musician and songwriter, as well as the host of American Public Media’s nationally syndicated live, weekly variety show “Live From Here.”

WOUB’s Emily Votaw speaks with Thile about the creative process behind his work for “Live From Here”, what it’s like to host a live radio show in 2019, and what he enjoys about performing on college campuses.

Besides being a solo artist, Thile was one of the co-founders of the Grammy-winning acoustic trio, Nickel Creek, and is a member of the bluegrass group “Punch Brothers.” In 2012, Thile was a McArthur Fellow.

Emily Votaw is the Culture Editor at WOUB Public Media and an occasional guest host on WOUB’s Spectrum Podcast.

College and university student enrollments are in a downward spiral because of multiple factors including parents and students questioning the value of a college education, according to Dr. Richard Vedder, author, historian, columnist, and emeritus professor of economics at Ohio University.

Ohio University researchers and students are fighting to prevent the dreaded Chagas disease in Ecuador and its spread to the United States.

Amy Nordrum, a veteran science journalist, feels that fact-based science reporting helps an audience navigate through new technologies and new discoveries that will impact people’s daily lives.

Most entertainment news is generated on the east or west coasts and not in the heartland. Yet, John Kiesewetter spent 40 professional years at the “Cincinnati Enquirer” and three decades as its “Television Critic” writing everything from local criticism to major features.

Science reporting and writing has become the mainstay of award-winning journalist Maria Gallucci.