Former U.S. ambassador leads symposium Friday

By Jackie Womack
The Collegian

A former U.S. ambassador who’s made headlines this past year will speak at the 2006 Roger Tatarian Symposium Friday.

Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador to Iraq, is the husband of Valerie Plame. Plame’s CIA agent status was revealed in the press after what the couple alleges was a leak from the Bush administration. The couple claims the leak was in retaliation for Wilson’s criticism of the Iraq invasion.

The couple is currently suing members of the Bush administration for the leak.

The title of the symposium is “War, Politics and the CIA.”

Professor Tommy Miller, the Roger Tatarian Endowed Chair for Professional Journalism at Fresno State, is the coordinator for the event.

“I think this [symposium] is going to be really interesting and lively,” he said. “We’ve been really fortunate with this one — every three weeks or so something comes out in the newspapers.”

This is the fourth symposium that Miller has organized; the first was in 2004.

In addition to Wilson, two reporters — Jonathon Landay and Warren Strobel — from the McClatchy Newspapers Washington bureau will also speak. The two reporters worked together on an award-winning newspaper series called “How the Bush Administration Went to War in Iraq.”

“They’re very knowledgeable about the war,” Miller said. “It will be a good warm up for the Joseph Wilson speech.”

Event co-coordinator and mass communication and journalism professor Betsy Hays said the event would be good for students to attend.

“I think it’s going to be thought-provoking, educational and interesting,” she said. “It just continues to be a great event for the campus.”

The moderator for the reporters’ panel will be another mass communication and journalism professor, Gary Rice.

Rice said he helped get the two reporters for the event. The reporters have been covering the Iraq war from the beginning, Rice said.

“Their stories were raising questions about whether there were weapons in Iraq when many of the bigger newspaper chains were swallowing it hook, line and sinker,” Rice said.

Previous symposium speakers have included Pulitzer Prize winners Seymour Hersh and Chris Hedges, former White House reporter Helen Thomas and McClatchy Newspapers Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt.

Miller said symposium guests sometimes make news soon after appearing: after the 2004 symposium, Hersh wrote an expose of Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison for The New Yorker and, after the 2005 symposium, McClatchy Newspapers made the news by buying Knight-Ridder Newspapers.

“It’s exciting to have these people come here,” Rice said. “We’re bringing some pretty heavy-duty hitters from the political journalism area right here on campus.”

Roger Tatarian, for whom the symposium and chair are named, was a United Press International vice president and editor-in-chief who taught at Fresno State after retiring from UPI. He also wrote a column for The Fresno Bee and was a member of McClatchy Newspapers board of directors until his death in 1995. The chair and symposium were established through a gift by the McClatchy family.

The symposium will be held in the Satellite Student Union from 9 a.m. to noon. The event is free and open to the public.

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