Judy Woodruff - ARCO Forum

The media has successfully risen to the challenge of covering global affairs since the terrorist attacks on the United States, CNN broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff told about three hundred attendees last night in the annual Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics at the ARCO Forum.

Woodruff, 54, is prime anchor and senior correspondent at CNN, where she has worked since 1993.

Her speech, “The Worst of Times and the Best of Times: Television News from O.J. to Osama,” addressed the state of the media over the past few years and described the transformation of television journalism since Sept. 11.

“If the last 50 days have marked some of our finest hours, the period before [Sept. 11]...was under withering criticism,” Woodruff said, citing the coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the O.J. Simpson trial.

“In a total hard news environment, [like the current one], we’ve been aggressive and creative,” she said. “We made mistakes...in the first few days.... We re-ran that video of the airplane slamming into the Trade Center more than we should have.”

Modern journalism is “primarily crisis-driven,” because of the 24-hour news cycle of cable networks, she said.

However, she said that many national networks were under equipped to cover events of this magnitude in Arab nations.

“The major networks...are almost invisible in the Islamic world,” she said.

Woodruff said she was concerned at the U.S. government’s desire to limit access to information concerning the current military actions.

She referred to the war in Vietnam, where “the government was too selective with the facts, [and] ultimately the formulators of that policy paid an enormous price.”

“This is not about the convenience of journalists or ‘scoops,’ it is about trust and credibility,” she said.

Woodruff blamed the overall state of political journalism in part on the blurring of the line between pundits and journalists as well as attention to the “bottom line” by network executives.

In the past decade, national networks have cut two thirds of their stories with an international focus, she said.

Woodruff expressed optimism, however, that the media could learn lasting lessons from their coverage post-Sept. 11.

“For all that our country suffered...perhaps one of the good things that will come out of the dark days will be a renewal” in broadcast journalism, she said.