Former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley discussed the U.S. government's relationship with the media at the Joukowsky Forum yesterday. The event, "Presidents vs. The Press: How Messages are Managed Inside the White House and State Department," drew a small, excitedly murmuring crowd to the Watson Institute for International Studies.
"Any administration successful at communicating is more likely to be supported and to be re-elected," Crowley said. Though the government must withhold certain information from the public, the media is vital "to have a responsible government that is truly held accountable by its citizens," Crowley said.
But a bias still exists for the media outlets that civilians choose as their source of information. "All of a sudden, we as a society choose our politics, then we choose our media," Crowley said, referring to the differing viewpoints of channels like MSNBC and FOX News. "You can have different points of view on what to do once you establish an identifiable set of facts," he said.
Ted Widmer, assistant for special projects to President Christina Paxson and senior advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, took the stage to describe the honor of being granted a seat on the Air Force One during his time as a speechwriter for former president Bill Clinton - only to have that seat promptly given to the first lady's hairdresser. "We were in a very strange world of status," he said. "Around the time of a speech coming up, our status would magically rise."
It is difficult to incorporate recorded history into a current president's speech, Widmer said. "You get into this dance between idealism and realism," he said. Though realism usually prevails, "you want some idealism to stay in the speech - you want to say that we are still trying," he said.
"I do think (my) history background worked, because our values are embedded in our history," Widmer said. The intensive research, multiple drafts and group discussions the speeches pass through made being a speechwriter "a bit like being an academic and a bit like being a journalist."
Widmer stressed that his role in the speeches was only one part of a larger picture.
"I always want to be careful to remind people that they are speeches by Bill Clinton," he said. "There were a lot of cooks preparing this broth, but it was the president of the U.S. that gave the final approval."
Following the presentations, audience members posed questions, including how the media makes the government more transparent to the public, whether to release information on weapons such as drones and the government's position on WikiLeaks.
Despite the fine balance that the government must maintain between information leaks and transparency, media "is the one institution we have that is necessary to hold government to account," Crowley said.
