Editor’s Note: Tanner Kroeger is a reporter for the Technician
With a soldier who fought in Iraq, an Iraqi native, the executive editor of the News and Observer and a reporter who has covered the war, the Society of Collegiate Journalists is hosting a panel discussion on the media coverage of the war in Iraq.
The forum, titled ‘Permission to speak freely?’ will take place in Stewart Theatre on Sunday at 6 p.m.
“This event is important for the University — it needs something like this,” Tanner Kroeger, the president of SCJ, said. “Look at the Virginia Tech shooting and how everyone is questioning if it was right for NBC to show the video of the killer. People need to think about these things.”
The panel features Mohamed Ali, the Iraqi native who came to Raleigh after high school. Jay Price, a reporter for the News and Observer, has been embedded in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Major Jeff Robertson served in Afghanistan in 2002 and in Iraq from August 2003 to May 2004. Melanie Sill is the N&O’s executive editor after serving as the Deputy Metro Editor.
“We wanted to do our best to find people who represented different perspectives on the war,” Kroeger said.
Moderating the panel will be Anna Bigelow, a professor of religion and philosophy at N.C. State.
Robertson, an assistant professor of military science, said he is looking forward to the discussion.
“They’ll provide their experience, so it should be a pretty interesting dialogue,” Robertson said of the panelists. “Hopefully it will enlighten me too, because it shows me what decisions the editors make and why they come to those decisions.”
Robertson said he has had a lot of experience working with the media in the Middle East. When Robertson first got to Iraq, reporters were able to move around relatively free of restrictions. But as time went on, the policies became more strict.
“I’ve had on-ground interaction with both western and Arabic reporters and I’ve seen the methods for how reporters gather information,” Robertson said.
The program will begin with the panelists having time to talk about each of their perspectives, followed by a designed question session and ending with questions from the audience.
