james cameron memorial lecture “the new news” oliver thompson詹姆斯·卡梅隆纪念堂“新消息”汤普森奥利弗.pdfVIP

JAMES CAMERON MEMORIAL LECTURE “The New News” 22 September, 2010 Oliver Thompson Lecture Theater City University, London Leonard Downie Jr. Vice President at large and former executive editor, The Washington Post Weil Family Professor of Journalism, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University, Phoenix 1 Thank you for inviting me to give this lecture in honor of James Cameron. Two years ago, Max Hastings said he “must be among the last people alive who will deliver this lecture who knew (James Cameron) as a colleague.” Hastings recalled that he was a young reporter on the Evening Standard 40 years ago, when Cameron was a top correspondent and covered stories like the Six-Day War in 1967 and the tumultuous Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. At that time, I was still a local investigative reporter for The Washington Post. And I never had the opportunity to meet James Cameron when I was based here as the London correspondent for The Post, from 1979 through 1982. I do not recall meeting Max Hastings then either. But I followed closely his vivid and authoritative coverage of the Falklands War. Hastings was what we would now call an embed with the British expeditionary forces as they sailed to the Falklands and invaded the islands. Only British print reporters were allowed to go with them. We in the foreign press were prevented by geography – and by the British and Argentine governments – from covering the war in person. So I had the surreal experience of doing it from here in London. I was free, however, of the British government’s war propaganda machine, in which Whitehall systematic