Journalists Wright and Brooks to lecture

Montgomery Endowment series continues on theme of ethics in journalism

Published December 1, 2003; Category: EVENTS

The Montgomery Endowment 25th anniversary series, "Truth and Ethics in Journalism," will resume on Monday, Jan. 12, and Tuesday, Jan. 13, with presentations by Washington Post diplomatic correspondent Robin Wright and New York Times columnist David Brooks. Both speeches will be at 4:30 p.m. in Moore Hall's Filene Auditorium.

Robin Wright

Wright's talk on Monday, Jan. 12, is titled "The Middle East and Islamic World: Challenges in 2004." A global affairs correspondent for more than three decades, Wright has reported from more than 130 countries on six continents, working for the Los Angeles Times, The Sunday Times of London, CBS News, The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor, among others. She also has been a commentator for news programs on the major U.S. television networks and published widely in American magazines like The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy. In 2003, she became a regular panelist on the NBC program Meet the Press.

Her reporting has earned many awards, including the United Nations Gold Medal for international reporting in 2003 and the 2001 Wintal Prize for most distinguished diplomatic reporting. Her books include The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran; Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam; In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade; and, with Doyle McManus, Flashpoints: Promise and Peril in a New World.

David Brooks

Brooks will speak about "The Presidency Wars: Politics and Culture in a Polarized Age" on Tuesday, Jan. 13. An op-ed columnist for the New York Times, Brooks serves as a news analyst for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, senior editor at The Weekly Standard and a columnist for The Atlantic Monthly. He also spent nine years at the The Wall Street Journal as op-ed editor, foreign correspondent and book review editor. He is also author of the New York Times bestselling book BoBos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (Simon and Schuster, 2000). Brooks's work has also appeared in the Washington Post, The New Yorker, Smart Money, The New Republic, U.S. News and World Report and the National Review, among others, and on National Public Radio.

Other Montgomery Endowment speakers in the winter term will include Clarence Page, an editorial columnist for the Chicago Tribune, speaking on "Journalism Ethics is not an Oxymoron," on Wednesday, Jan. 21; and Harper's editor Lewis Lapham talking about "The American Rome" on Tuesday, Feb. 3.

Speakers in the series during the fall included David Shipler, who completes his residency as a Montgomery fellow this month, Roger Wilkins, Tom Rosenstiel, Christopher Wren and Anne Garrels.

BY TAMARA STEINERT