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White House witness
Martha Joynt Kumar interprets the White House press
| PUBLICATION: |
Towson, the alumni magazine for Towson University |
| DATE: |
Summer 2004 |
Reprinted with permission from Towson University Relations. |
Nothing's off the record in Martha Kumar's class.
The Towson University professor has taken one of academia's most unique jobs — she is perhaps the world's leading expert on the relationship between American presidents and the White House press corps — and turned it into one of the university's most noteworthy courses.
It's PoliSci 475, aka "White House Communications Operations: Through the Lens of Officials and Reporters," where students don't just read about the West Wing's newsmakers they get to talk to them. And the newsmakers have plenty to say.
Once a week, Kumar interviews a different White House reporter or official. The interviews are broadcast live from Washington into Cook 13, where the class' 24 students have heard from such luminaries as:
- Veteran White House reporter Fran Lewine, formerly of the Associated Press and CNN, who credited Eleanor Roosevelt with helping break down the barriers that once existed for female reporters. "She would hold press conferences that were closed to men, so all the news organizations had to hire a woman reporter to cover Mrs. Roosevelt," Lewine told the students. "That was breakthrough for a lot of women."
- Dan Bartlett, communications director for President George W. Bush, who said White House employees like the chef and the gardener generate far more Web traffic during the administration's online chat sessions with the public than senior staff who discuss policy. "People are interested in the presidency, not just the president," he said.
- Mike McCurry, press secretary under President Bill Clinton, who battled members of the administration over his relationship with reporters. "You can be popular with the press, which I arguably was, but pay a price inside the White House from people who perceive you as being too close to the 'enemy,'" he said.
And thanks to high-tech video and Internet hookups, the students get to ask questions of their own and they don't go easy on their high-profile guests. Are reporters too soft on the Bush administration? Did McCurry's coziness with the press amount to a conflict of interest? The students want to know, and they aren't afraid to ask.
"They hear people who work at the White House talk about what they do, how they do it and why," said Kumar. "They get to listen to reporters discussing their work. And they get to ask questions, which has tremendous value."
AN 'A' LIST OF GUESTS
That's the kind of candid give-and-take Kumar hoped for when she developed the course in late 2003. With a $68,700 Wilson H. Elkins Professorship grant at her disposal, she set out to create a class that would offer students an inside look at how the press and White House officials interact and how the public is impacted by that relationship.
With the help of a colleague, that look went deep inside the beltway. Larry Berman, a presidency scholar and director of the University of California's Washington Center, offered Kumar the use of the Washington Center's broadcast facilities to conduct her interviews. He also agreed to "webcast" the interviews as they happen and archive them on the center's Web site.
The convenience of a D.C. location made it easy for Kumar to convince White House principals to speak to her students. Lewine and 83-year-old White House press legend Helen Thomas, formerly of United Press International and now a columnist for Hearst News Service, were the first reporters to appear, and word of the class quickly spread. Soon Kumar's students were listening to West Wing players like current Press Secretary Scott McClellan, White House Correspondents Association President Carl Cannon, and reporters from the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and the BBC.
As the semester neared an end, Kumar found herself with more guests than she knew what to do with.
"Not only has no one turned me down," she said, "but I've had people actually ask me to be interviewed."
NEXT PAGE: An 'invaluable' resource
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