Your mom called. She asked if you have a Professor Maguire; she saw him on CNN today. While you might remind your mom that there are hundreds of professors at Georgetown, her question is not completely unfounded. With the high number of media appearances Georgetown professors make each week, chances are at some point during your time at Georgetown you will find one your professors quoted in a newspaper or appearing on TV.
A number of factors lead to Georgetown professors’ frequent appearances in the national media. The University’s location in Washington, D.C. leads many local and national media organizations to Georgetown professors for comments and information. Georgetown’s strong academic reputation in a number of specialized fields and University resources such as the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies attract many reporters to campus. Furthermore, its status as the first Catholic and Jesuit university in the nation leads many reporters to Georgetown for commentary in regards to the Catholic Church or theology in general.
“A day does not go by that there isn’t a Georgetown faculty member on TV or in the print or on the radio,” said Anthony Arend, a professor in the government department who teaches international law. Arend said that an important part of Georgetown’s mission is promoting public intellectualism and engaging in the broader community. “Research isn’t for an ivory tower,” he said. Interacting with the media can enhance teaching, he added. “My job is to be a teacher and a scholar. But being in the media is not neglecting that; it can supplement and complement it.”
Arend, whose expertise covers the legal aspects of war, has noted changes in what he is asked to comment on since Sept. 11. “People are contacting me for things that we didn’t have to talk a lot about before,” he said, pointing out that the Office of Communications has successfully organized discussions between press and the University during the last year. “Since Sept. 11, it has been a tremendous media challenge. All the people in the communications office understand the academic mission of the University.”
According to Assistant Vice President for Communications Julie Green Bataille, the Office of Communications receives hundreds of calls for faculty experts each week. Throughout the last year in particular, the international affairs, political science, theology, ethics and law departments have received the most attention due to Sept. 11 and the crisis in the Catholic Church.
Bataille has been with the University for two years and has worked extensively in communications for over a decade. Prior to her arrival at Georgetown, Bataille served in various positions including Assistant Press Secretary at the White House from 1995-97, Press Secretary for the U.S. Department of Education from 1997-99 and Director of Communications for the 2000 Democratic National Convention. At the Office of Communications, Bataille is constantly in contact with media organizations ranging from CNN, CBS, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the L.A. Times to the Diane Rehm show on local radio and the student publications on campus.
The Office of Communications is Georgetown’s link to the media. It accepts requests from reporters and proactively promotes Georgetown’s professors, students and events to the media. “It’s a never-ending task,” Bataille said. “We’re constantly trying to learn about professors’ research and keep in touch with center directors and department chairs.” When contacted by the press, the Office connects reporters with diverse professors based on research and expertise, not professors’ opinions on an issue. “We try to give a range of experts and their biographical information and details about their research,” Bataille said. However, sometimes members of the media contact the office looking for a specific opinion rather than an expert. This can be very frustrating, Bataille said, both for professors who are unable to share the depth of their knowledge and for the office, which is not responsible for shaping a journalist’s argument. The office is aware of reporter’s motives and deadlines?the staff can tell when a reporter simply wants a 30-second sound byte. These reporters often call around 4 p.m. for a 5 p.m. deadline, Bataille said. At the same time, many reporters have specialized beat areas and extensive knowledge about their topics, such as education or law. These reporters are not interested in background information; they are searching for different perspectives.
FROM HOMEWORK TO HARDBALL
Most of the Office of Communications’ work is connected to reporters working on a specific story to a faculty expert in that area.
Yvonne Haddad, a professor of history in the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, teaches 20th century Islam. Haddad explained that most reporters who contact her are looking for background information or a comment on their topic. Haddad received so many calls asking for general information on Islam immediately after Sept. 11 that she began to call her responses “Islam 101.” In the following months, reporters’ questions eventually turned from Islam to terrorism in general and then to the status of women in Islam. Haddad said that writers often lack even the most basic information and expect her to provide it for them. “Most of these reporters just don’t do their homework,” she said.
Repeating “Islam 101” or “Terrorism 101” to hundreds of reporters for several weeks following Sept. 11 proved tiring. “I needed a break. It was endless, and I realized I couldn’t do it all by myself,” Haddad said. However, she said that she felt it was her “civic duty as an American citizen to make sure that [Americans] don’t go crazy over stereotypes. I felt that there was the possibility of backlash. I realized there were a lot of innocent people. I wanted to explain that there are a lot of loyal Muslim citizens and make sure Americans were rational in their reactions.”
While Haddad publishes her research in academic journals, she does not seek national media publicity, though she has appeared on CNN, NPR, Hardball, Nightline, PBS, C-SPAN, ABC and a variety of other radio and talk shows. Haddad said that she prefers to work with smaller media organizations because she feels that she is used as a “punching ball” on larger national shows such as Hardball. Instead of making national appearances, she likes to work with writers from smaller publications who do not have access to the same information services that larger news organizations do. “I’m not out looking to publicize [in the national media],” she said, “This topic [Sept. 11] is actually very sad.”
GETTING THE WORD OUT
Yet Georgetown’s faculty and staff do not have to wait for the media to contact them; instead, the relationship is strong in both directions.
The Office of Communications manages a website which helps to further expose Georgetown professors and events to the media. The website contains a list of press releases, media advisories, media contact information and a faculty experts guide, along with links to the University calendar and University publications.
According to Bataille, nine out of 10 reporters have looked through the website before contacting the office. Because of this interest, Robert Murray, the associate director of Communications in the Office of Public Affairs, is upgrading the system to a more advanced database which may mean that reporters no longer need to contact the office directly every time. “It will allow members of the media to have quick access to up-to-date information about Georgetown University and its community,” Murray said. Faculty can even monitor their own information on the site by entering their NetID.
The functions of the website are not the only way the office is proactive in promoting Georgetown to the community. Bataille sends out an e-mail every Friday that she calls “the week ahead”to inform members of the media about Georgetown events. She also speaks at New Faculty Orientation each year to familiarize new professors with her office and the possibilities it offers to the University.
Close interaction between professors and the Office is demonstrated through the process of publishing opinion-editorials. Professors who wish to express an opinion to the public often write an op-ed for a national paper. Arend said that op-eds are a perfect way to express an opinion in the media because they allow professors to fully explain their argument, as opposed to being cut to a brief quote in a news article. Op-eds not only educate the public, but also help professors to connect with their students. A professor collaborates with the Office of Communications to maximize his or her chance of getting an op-ed published. The office is familiar with the topics each media organization tends to focus on; for example, according to Bataille, West Coast papers run many pieces on Asian issues while papers with a more national audience, like USA Today, run stories on general trends. While the office actively aids professors in placing op-eds, many professors are in direct contact with academic journals and regularly publish research in them without the office’s intervention.
THE 30-SECOND SOUND BYTE
Professor Angela Stent of the government department said that she has developed many relationships with individual reporters during her career. Stent, who is the director of the Center of Eurasian, Russian and East European studies, said that although she is often contacted through the Office of Communications, she also knows specific reporters who repeatedly contact her directly for comment. Her knowledge of Russian and German has led to multiple foreign interviews as well as dealings with the U.S. press.
When speaking with the media, Stent said she is “prepared to deal with a wide variety of knowledge. You have to explain things very simply because you’re not speaking to graduates or undergraduates but to the American public.” Stent said that the depth of a professor’s knowledge is often missed by the reporter and the audience when 20 minutes of an interview are cut to two minutes on air.
Government Professor Jeremy Mayer studies American politics and recently wrote a book called Running on Race: Racial Politics in Presidential Campaigns 1960-2000, as well as a supplemental textbook on Sept. 11. Mayer also teaches a class on the media called “Television Politics.” Mayer said that he understands why professors’ opinions are so often condensed. “Academics have a tough time giving short answers, and often feel that what makes it into the media are gross simplifications,” he said. “My own feeling is that the simplifying is the nature of the media beast?you have to accept that as one of the rules of the game.”
Chester Gillis, an associate professor of theology who specializes in Roman Catholicism in the United States, has become a veteran in media appearances, especially in the last six months. Since the crisis in the Catholic Church erupted last spring, Gillis estimates that he has appeared on CNN 15 to 20 times and has made countless other media appearances ranging from the Washington Post to NPR’s All Things Considered to the CBS Evening News to smaller publications such as the Kentucky Courier-Journal. Gillis is aware that a reporter will have to condense the bulk of an interview down to a single sound byte for a short article or 30-second clip. Many reporters work on tight deadlines and need a comment right away, making it impossible for the professor to convey the depth of his or her knowledge. “It is very hard to convey nuance in the time constraints of a brief quote or 30 seconds on air,” Gillis said. Furthermore, he said that he is always aware of his audience, tailoring the amount of background information to the particular audience being addressed.
THE MEDIA AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM
Additionally, Gillis said that he always is conscious of the fact that he represents Georgetown University. “People may hold a variety of views [on a particular topic]. When I’m contacted, I give my own opinion, but I never think I’m the definitive voice in any matter,” he said. Gillis believes that he is contacted not with the understanding that he will give a certain pre-ordered opinion but rather because he holds a certain level of expertise in his field. He said that he has never felt any pressure from the administration to express a certain opinion to the media.
However, the University’s administration appears to have an interest in its professors’ appearances in the press, as evidenced by an unsolicited e-mail that Gillis received from University President John J. DeGioia, thanking him for the time, effort and way in which he represented the school. “I do it largely because I have some knowledge in the area and it is important to me to do a service to Georgetown by representing the community well on important issues,” he said.
Administrative pressure has no role in academic community, and no such pressure exists at Georgetown, according to Mayer. “I don’t think the College would even take action if a professor were highly critical of the Jesuits or the Catholic Church,” he said. “The Jesuits as a group believe in the free exchange of ideas. It is one of the best things about Georgetown.” As for administrative pressure, Stent said that she feels none. Compared to her recent work for the State Department, she said that she has never found things she could not say at Georgetown.
Neither does Arend feel any pressure from the University to express a certain opinion in the media. Instead he said that Georgetown allows complete academic freedom. “I would never be concerned about anything I say. It’s not like working for a company or the government. We encourage people to say different things. There’s a wide diversity of views on any issue,” he said. Arend pointed to an op-ed that he wrote for the Post in April which questioned the legality of a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Two of his colleagues, Professor Robert Lieber and Professor Ehud Sprinzak, wrote an op-ed with an opposing view in the L.A. Times.
INTERVIEW STRATEGY: ‘FROM PROFESSORS TO THE PRESIDENT’
Arend interacts with the media so frequently that he has developed theories on reporters’ methods for interviewing professors. Arend said that there are two approches reporters take. One, he calls the “information gathering” approach, the other is the “advancing a thesis” approach. Professors must be aware of the mode a reporter is in when he or she is interviewing them, Arend said. “There’s no evil in either approach, they’re just different perspectives.”
“In the first approach, [the reporter] knows nothing. They want to learn. It’s like a student in class,” Arend said. In this type of interview, Arend said that he speaks freely. In the second approach, “reporters may be trying to put words in your mouth. They have a conclusion or a theory or a view and they’re looking for evidence.” Arend listed some of the ways reporters have tried to coach him into supporting a view. “They say things like ‘Could you say that ? ? Or ‘Do you think that some might conclude there’s evidence that ? ?’” Arend has developed a strategy to deal with these types of questions, to avoid being blocked into saying something he does not believe. In a taped interview for TV or an interview for print, he said that “If you think that you’ve nailed it, if it’s accurate and you’re happy with it, say the same thing over and over. Professors have a tendency to try and say it differently.” In live TV, Arend cautioned that saying the same thing repeatedly may give a bad impression. If someone asks similar questions, he suggested saying “As I said before” or “As I already noted?” or simply “You’re asking me the same question.” Most importantly, Arend said to “say what you want to say.” He said that this strategy could work for anyone dealing with the press, from professors to the president.
Stent agreed that occasionally reporters try to steer her in a certain direction in accordance with a set argument. Stent said she hesitates to commit to an extreme view because “as academics, we’re trained to see different points of view.” She said that there are diverse opinions within the department, and she does not believe that a reporter would contact the University knowing that a certain argument would be universal. “Twenty years ago, Georgetown was known as a more conservative school. That just isn’t true anymore,” she said.
Mayer said that the media does expect professors to present multiple views on a topic without committing to one. “Reporters look to academics to be relatively neutral,” he said. “An academic is neither an automaton nor a party activist. We are people trained to be unbiased in our research, but we come to the table with vivid opinions.”
NEVER A ROUTINE
While Gillis said that he has achieved “a certain comfort level” with media appearances, he nonetheless experiences some difficulties in communicating his ideas to the audience through a reporter or news publication. For example, Gillis occasionally will have an interview with a reporter or news anchor who tries to get him to commit to a certain argument instead of asking for Gillis’ own interpretation. However, he maintains that this does not happen “as much as you might expect,” and credits CNN in particular for being “very fair” in its treatment of him.
Although Gillis has done a large number of media appearances throughout his career, he maintains that “it’s interesting. It’s never routine.” Due to time and space constraints, Gillis said he can never be sure that a media appearance will happen as scheduled. For example, one Sunday morning this summer Gillis was scheduled to appear on an early news show. As he was walking out his front door around 6 a.m., the news show called and cancelled the interview to devote coverage to the trapped Pennsylvania miners. “You always work on [the press’] schedule,” he said.
Whatever a professor’s level of involvement in the media is, press coverage is an aspect of teaching at Georgetown that can not be avoided. If professors seek media exposure, the resources are available in the staff of the Office of Communications or in the direct relationships many professors develop with certain writers. Many of the contacts with national media are made through the office which fields calls and e-mails daily with requests for experts on terrorism to bioethics. And although Georgetown professors have always been prominently displayed as experts in their respective fields, professors as a whole do not claim to be the definitive voice on any issue. Instead they understand that press interaction is essential to the University and to the public as a way of sharing pertinent information.
Over the past year, global events have created a higher demand for experts on terrorism, war and international law. “That’s the way it works?you often don’t know if what you are working on will be of any interest to the media, and then something happens,” Mayer said.
