Two national reporters will visit the Manship School on Thursday as the first speakers in a series aimed at addressing public distrust of the media.
Ashley Parker, senior national political correspondent for the Washington Post, and Michael Bender, White House correspondent for The New York Times, will speak in the Holliday Forum of the Journalism Building at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 9.
Parker and Bender, both of whom covered Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency and his administration, are married.
Funding for their visit will come from a $100,000 grant gifted to the Manship School by Charles Moore, a retired Baton Rouge trial lawyer. Parker and Bender will kick off the series and will discuss their work as journalists in a world of fake news claims.
Moore said the Manship School already has a good reputation and that he hopes to improve that reputation by bringing in storied reporters to speak with students.
“I wanted to get people excited about investigative journalism and bring in people who are investigative journalists who are well known in their profession, who are well-respected, and get them to come to LSU and talk to the students,” Moore said.
Moore is troubled by the rising distrust in the media. This donation is his contribution toward reversing what he sees as a troubling trend in the United States.
“I mean, I’ve been around for a good while. And I’ve just – I haven’t seen anything like this,” he said.
Visitors from the Austin-American Statesman will come to the Journalism Building at 4 p.m. on March 6 for the second event in the series.
Tony Plohetski, the reporter who obtained the 77-minute video of police outside classrooms at Uvalde Elementary School, and Manny Garcia, editor of the publication, will discuss their reporting on the mass shooting that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers.
Besides bringing in speakers, the Manship School can use the gift money for training students in investigative reporting and hiring them to work on investigative projects in the summer.
