KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 26, 2021 \u2013 In a time of \u201cfake news\u201d claims, when some with political power deny truth or science, the gold standard of journalism is the \u201cshow them\u201d standard.<\/p>\n
It was a standard underscored nearly two decades ago by WJAR-TV investigative reporter Jim Taricani, said John King \u201885, CNN\u2019s chief national correspondent, Wednesday evening as he delivered the inaugural Taricani Lecture on First Amendment Rights. The 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Harrington School of Communication and Media hosted the talk.<\/p>\n
Taricani H \u201918, who died in 2019, was a nationally respected journalist who championed federal shield laws for reporters. In 2004, he was sentenced to six months of home confinement when he refused to divulge a confidential source who had provided him with a video tape detailing a Providence city official taking a bribe. The tape was part of the FBI investigation Operation Plunder Dome into Mayor Vincent A. Cianci.<\/p>\n
Taricani\u2019s choice to show the tape on the nightly news \u2013 instead of providing source accounts of what was on the tape \u2013 was a watershed moment that still has an impact today, King said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFake news, you hear that a lot now. It was not a common refrain back then, but [attacks] \u2026 on the media and credibility of sources are as old as the printing press,\u201d he said. \u201cJim understood the power \u2026 of moving from \u2018sources say\u2019 to \u2018take a look, trust your eyes.\u2019 And he was willing to risk his freedom to deliver the news in a way that could not be denied.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cToday the top story in America is that Derek Chauvin is behind bars. Why? Because the jury believed its eyes, because a young woman in Minneapolis knew to hold her cell phone steady, knew she needed to show people what was happening to George Floyd,\u201d he added. \u201cDarnella Frazier was a bystander, not a journalist, but her video made it impossible to deny the knee on the neck, made it impossible to rewrite the context of that moment. The \u2018show them\u2019 standard brought accountability to a police officer in Minneapolis, just as it did 17 years ago to a city official in Providence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Talking with Laurie White-Taricani, Taricani\u2019s wife, who moderated Wednesday\u2019s virtual lecture, King discussed his \u201cjournalism journey,\u201d which has taken him from Kingston, to Washington, D.C., and beyond. It\u2019s included covering nine presidential elections with the Associated Press and CNN, reporting from all 50 states and nearly 80 countries, serving as White House correspondent, and covering wars, disasters, a pandemic, and the 9\/11 terrorist attacks. Early on, his career intersected with and was inspired by Jim Taricani.<\/p>\n
King grew up in a blue-collar home in Dorchester, Mass., his father a jail guard, his mother a \u201cmiracle worker\u201d who kept order in a house of seven unruly children. After graduating from 溏心vlog免费B站 in 1985, he went straight to the Associated Press bureau in Providence, where, he said, if you were covering Rhode Island politics \u201cit was like getting paid every day to go to Disney World.\u201d<\/p>\n
On his beat, he developed a nodding friendship with Taricani as the two worked for competing news outlets. \u201cJim was a reporter\u2019s reporter,\u201d King said, and the two would occasionally talk during late nights at the mobile diner Haven Brothers on a side street outside Providence City Hall.<\/p>\n
His fondest memories include working a story and finding Taricani\u2019s \u201cfoosteps\u201d on the same story. When he did, he knew he was onto something. \u201c[I knew] I better work faster and I better work harder,\u201d he said. \u201cJim won most of those competitions in those days. But if you did get a bead on a story where you knew you had come across Taricani footsteps, the beer tasted better those nights.\u201d<\/p>\n
In spite of Taricani\u2019s reputation as a hard-nosed journalist, King said, he was willing to help a 21-year-old reporter straight out of college. Taricani always said hello and took time to offer compliments, and praise King to others. \u201cYou have no idea how much that means and how much that could impact the early days of your career,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo the students with us today,\u201d he added, \u201cthe best advice I can give you is to find an example like Jim Taricani \u2013 watch, listen, learn, listen some more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following his prepared remarks, King, a vital member of CNN election nights including the \u201c2020 Election Night in America\u201d coverage, talked about the effects of technology on journalism, the First Amendment, and the divisive presidential election, taking questions from White-Taricani, members of the audience, and student journalists Theresa Brown \u201821, Zach Austin \u201924, Leila Cox \u201822, and Andy Main \u201921.<\/p>\n
Asked about how the divisive presidential election differed from others, King said that journalists are trained to be objective and neutral, and allow candidates leeway to spar and stretch the truth during presidential elections. But former President Donald Trump changed the formula, especially with this dispute of the election results.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump forced us to come back at this,\u201d he said. \u201cSo how do you do that? Number one, with me [it\u2019s] the \u2018Magic Wall,\u2019 it\u2019s math, it\u2019s the truth. People live in these states. \u2026 So, you can just show them and they see it.\u201d<\/p>\n
King brought up the Magic Wall, CNN\u2019s state-of-art results board, again when asked about the evolution of technology for journalists.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Magic Wall does things that we never use on television,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes I use (data points) to game out demographics and trends or to look at data analytics. Some of them translate well into television. Some of them are just helpful for me in research. \u2026 I do subscribe to the school that most often less is more — use the two or three data points that make your point, do not try to overwhelm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about the proliferation of media outlets that mask opinion as news, King stressed that he trusts viewers and readers to sort out the truth. But added, \u201cThe First Amendment belongs to us all. There are people who will use their First Amendment rights to do things that we find abhorrent. We have to remember for me to have the First Amendment rights \u2026 so does everybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n
The annual Taricani Lecture, endowed by Laurie White-Taricani and the Taricani family, started last summer with a three-part preview series and will be held each spring. The lecture was sponsored by Harrington School of Communication and Media and the College of Arts and Sciences.<\/p>\n
The King lecture has received 3,100 views. If you missed the lecture, you may view it at the Taricani Lecture website<\/a>.<\/p>\n Gifts to the Taricani Lecture position the 溏心vlog免费B站 as a destination for robust discussion regarding journalism and the First Amendment by providing the resources needed to bring distinguished local, national and international journalists to lend their expertise and perspective to this critically important topic. Please, help\u00a0<\/em>support<\/em><\/a>\u00a0the Taricani Lecture.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 April 26, 2021 \u2013 In a time of \u201cfake news\u201d claims, when some with political power deny truth or science, the gold standard of journalism is the \u201cshow them\u201d standard. It was a standard underscored nearly two decades ago by WJAR-TV investigative reporter Jim Taricani, said John King \u201885, CNN\u2019s chief national […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}