Gore flap the latest in a series of clashes between academic and press freedom

Long before Al Gore decided to lecture at the Columbia Journalism School, the fine balance between freedom of the press and academic freedom has been tested in a classroom setting. Three instances come to mind.

One involves an appearance of John F. Kennedy at a Harvard seminar, a second centers on what a New Yorker writer confessed at a seminar at Yale and the third instance occurred when Donna Rice, a good friend of Gary Hart during his aborted presidential campaign, spoke at a seminar at Washington and Lee University.

Troubling questions pitting academic inquiry against journalistic practices arose in the early 1950s. John F. Kennedy spoke at a seminar in 1950 on the legislative process given by Arthur Holcombe, one of his old professors. Kennedy spoke about his respect for Joseph McCarthy and the need to get rid of Communists in government.

Nearly two years later, in the thick of the Massachusetts senatorial campaign, one of the seminar participants wrote in the New Republic about what Kennedy had said. In a letter later published in the New Republic, Holcombe chastised the author, saying how important it was for the professor “to protect my guest speakers against such use of their remarks in order that they may feel safe to engage in the freest possible exchange of ideas and opinions with my students.”

In 1983, Alastair Reid, a long-time writer at the New Yorker, appeared as a guest at a seminar at Yale. He recalled how, nearly half a century earlier, he had invented characters and rearranged conversations. In a “Letter from Barcelona,” he described Spaniards sitting in “a small flyblown bar,” openly jeering a television speech by Francisco Franco. In fact, the bar had closed and Reid was watching Franco’s address in the home of the tavern’s onetime bartender. This rearranged scene, and several other instances, in which Reid acknowledged that he modified facts, were disclosed in June 1984 in a page-one story of The Wall Street Journal. The next day, The New York Times carried its own page-one story.

The author of the Journal story had been a student in the Yale seminar where Reid discussed his techniques. She later joined the Journal and wrote the story after having interviewed Reid. The ground rules of the seminar were ambiguous, but there would have been no 1984 story had Reid not volunteered reminiscences in 1983 of a long ago story he had written.

In 1988, Donna Rice was asked to participate in a panel on privacy at the 1988 convention of the Society of Professional Journalists. Journalists mobbed her, and she fled. A year later, Louis Hodges, one of the country’s most distinguished ethicists, invited her to a seminar at Washington and Lee where 12 professional journalists met for a weekend to discuss ethics among themselves and with students.

Her appearance was not publicized. On her arrival at the seminar, Rice read a written statement and said that she wished for the discussion to “remain within this classroom.” Her appearance, with direct quotes, was widely reported on, much to the dismay of Rice and Hodges.

If any lessons can be drawn from these three instances — and from Al Gore’s class at Columbia— I would emphasize:

• the need to establish explicit ground rules and to explain such phrases as “off the record” in plain English;
• no matter what the ground rules are, one must expect that sooner or later remarks by newsworthy figures will find themselves in the flow of public discussion.

— Tom Goldstein