Dressed in a pink shirt and suede jacket, Scott SiMonday, host of National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition,” seems like he’d be out of place on a battlefield.
After eyewitnessing the Gulf War and the conflict in Kosovo, Simon said he was sometimes closer to the war than the soldiers.
About 200 people attended a lecture Monday at the McCormick Tribune Center where Simon discussed his experiences as a reporter covering armed conflicts all over the world.
“When I covered (the conflict) in Guatemala, you could take a cab to the front,” he said.
Simon told the audience he was able to cover a wide variety of conflicts in other countries through a Department of Defense program that allows journalists to travel on the battleground with the U.S. military.
Simon’s next stop might again be Iraq, said journalism Prof. Ken Bode, who led the lecture as part of the Medill School of Journalism’s Crain lecture series.
“I’m still not convinced there’s going to be a war (in Iraq),” Simon said. “This is a (war) that can only go on for a few weeks. … The government knows that the American people will only support a war for a few weeks.”
Addressing an issue that might concern Northwestern students, Simon said he doubted a military draft would be reinstated.
“Now, it takes a lot fewer soldiers to accomplish the same objective,” Simon said.
At the end of the interview, Simon fielded questions from the audience. One audience member asked if Simon believed censorship of the news media will occur during a possible war in Iraq.
“Censorship is not going to be possible,” Simon said. “Those stories will get out — they will be reported.”
Simon also said one of his greatest dilemmas in reporting on war happened while he was traveling with the U.S. Army in Kuwait in 1991. He was told off the record that there was a malfunction in one of the defense systems. Despite the story’s newsworthiness, Simon said he didn’t report it.
“The impact of that story could have cost lives,” he said.
Even with the many challenges he often faces, Simon said he loved reporting on war.
“I didn’t want to be the reporter covering the Super Bowl when the ground offensive began,” Simon said.
“Weekend Edition” averages 3.6 million listeners including Bode, a former Medill dean, who said he listens to the program when it airs each Saturday. Simon joked that the number of listeners “passed the size of the city of Chicago.”
Simon’s work goes beyond “Weekend Edition,” said Katherine Sloan, Medill’s special events coordinator.
“Not only does he have a lot to say on journalism, but he also has a lot to say about politics — especially with the current events in Iraq,” Sloan said.
Tanvi Chheda, a Medill graduate student, came to the program without ever listening to “Weekend Edition.”
“I need to listen to NPR more,” Chheda said.
