Daniel Schorr
Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal (COMM/ENT) proudly announces the publication of Forgive Us Our Press Passes: Selected Works by Daniel Schorr in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of COMM/ENT.
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FORGIVE US OUR PRESS PASSES
Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal (COMM/ENT) proudly announces the publication of Forgive Us Our Press Passes: Selected Works by Daniel Schorr in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of COMM/ENT.
EDITORS' PREFACE by Matthew Passmore and Chip Robertson
BIOGRAPHY
PROLEGOMENON by William Safire
INTRODUCTION by William Schneider by Geoffrey Cowan
Forgive Us Our Press Passes
What Are the Limitations on Freedom of the Press?
The FBI and Me
Manipulation and the Media
A New Look at Journalistic Responsibility
The Press and National Security
Remarks on Receiving the First Amendment Award of the Ford Hall Forum
Commencement Address, Case Western Reserve University
The Constitution and the White House: Freedom Versus Secrecy
"Psst! Pass it On!" Why Are Journalists Spreading Rumors?
The Real World—And Where Did It Go?
Confessions of a Journalist at 75
The Source of Evil and the Evil of Sources
Spirit of 76
The Trouble with Television: Biting the Hand That Fed Me
Theodore H. White Memorial Lecture
The Nixon Legacy
Imagining a Global Community
Ten Days That Shook the White House
A Jew in Journalism
The First Amendment Under Pressure
"Forgive Us Our Press Passes"
Editors' Preface
When the editors of the Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal were searching for ways to properly commemorate our twentieth anniversary of publication, we hit upon the idea of asking various luminaries to submit brief tracts on legal issues they believed to be of current import. Toward this end, we faxed a request to Daniel Schorr to see if he would be willing to make a submission. To our surprise and gratification, Mr. Schorr faxed back a short piece entitled "Forgive Us Our Press Passes" the day after our initial request.
From this auspicious beginning grew the idea of publishing a collection of Mr. Schorr's papers, articles, and speeches to share with future generations of law and journalism students. These pieces span the past quarter-century of his illustrious career in both written and broadcast journalism: from the FBI investigation that would become part of the Articles of Impeachment of President Nixon, through the end of the Cold War and the prosecution of the Gulf War, to the progressive devolution of "the news" into sensationalistic entertainment. This collection also contains Mr. Schorr's reflections on the role of the media in society, the effects of television on the development of the journalistic craft, privacy and secrecy, the First Amendment, and government suppression of information. As such, we consider it a excellent and fitting celebration of our twentieth year.
Mr. Schorr is no stranger to Comm/Ent. In 1977, he participated in a roundtable discussion at the University of California, Berkeley entitled "What Are the Limitations on Freedom of the Press?" with Dean Sanford H. Kadish and Professor Jesse H. Choper, both of Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. That discussion was published in the inaugural issue of Comm/Ent, and Mr. Schorr's comments are reprinted in this issue as well. In 1996 Mr. Schorr again traveled to the University of California, this time to Hastings College of the Law to deliver the Mathew O. Tobriner Memorial Lecture in honor of the late Justice Tobriner of California Supreme Court, who was also a Professor of Law at Hastings. This lecture, entitled "The First Amendment Under Pressure," was first published in Volume 18 of Comm/Ent and is also reprinted in this edition.
To preserve Mr. Schorr's unique voice, we minimized our editing of the pieces in this issue. However, wherever possible, we provided source references for quoted language and references to books and other publications, to increase the value of this collection as a research and teaching tool, as well as a chronicle of history.
We wish to thank William Safire, William Schneider, and Geoffrey Cowan for their warm and thoughtful introductions, Guy Raz at National Public Radio, Sandy Gilmelis at CBS, Ann Rubin at the New York Times, Hope Warschaw, Jean Campbell at the University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication, Albert Kaba at Hastings College of the Law, O'Brien Center for Scholarly Publications, the editorial board and staff of Comm/Ent (without whom this edition would never have come to fruition); and especially Daniel Schorr, for allowing us to pay this small tribute to his extraordinary career.
Matthew Passmore
Editor in Chief
Chip Robertson
Senior Articles Editor
University of California
Hastings College of the Law
San Francisco, California
May 1998
Biography of Daniel Schorr
For more than half a century, Daniel Schorr has entered American homes to teach, challenge and enlighten us to the meaning of world events.
In 1946, Mr. Schorr began his career as a foreign correspondent, writing from postwar Europe for the Christian Science Monitor and later the New York Times. During this time he documented the effects of the Marshall Plan and the creation of the NATO alliance. In 1953, Mr. Schorr's vivid coverage of a disastrous flood that broke the dikes of the Netherlands caught the ear of Edward R. Murrow, the guiding spirit of CBS News, and Mr. Schorr joined CBS News as the diplomatic correspondent in Washington.
In 1955, Mr. Schorr opened the first post-Stalin CBS bureau in the Soviet Union. His two-and-a-half-year stay included the first-ever exclusive television interview with a Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, which was filmed in Krushchev's Kremlin office in 1957 for CBS's Face the Nation. However, Mr. Schorr's repeated defiance of Soviet censorship eventually landed him in trouble with the KGB. After a brief arrest on trumped-up charges, he was barred from the Soviet Union at the end of 1957.
Returning to Washington in 1966, Mr. Schorr hung up his foreign correspondent's trenchcoat and settled down to "become re-Americanized," as he puts it, by plunging into coverage of civil rights, urban crisis and environmental problems.
In 1972, the Watergate break-in brought Mr. Schorr a full-time assignment as CBS's chief Watergate correspondent. His exclusive reports and on-the-scene coverage at the Senate Watergate hearings earned him three Emmy awards. Mr. Schorr unexpectedly found himself a part of his own story when the hearings turned up President Nixon's "enemies list" with his name on it and evidence that the president had ordered him investigated by the FBI. This "abuse of a federal agency" figured as one count in the Bill of Impeachment on which Nixon would have been tried had he not resigned in August, 1974. That fall, Mr. Schorr moved to cover investigations of CIA and FBI scandals—what he called "the son of Watergate." Once again, he became a part of his own story. In February 1976, when the House of Representatives voted to suppress the final report of its Intelligence Investigating Committee, Mr. Schorr arranged for publication of an advance copy he had exclusively obtained. This led to his suspension by CBS and an investigation by the House Ethics Committee in which Mr. Schorr was threatened with jail for contempt of Congress if he did not disclose his source. At a public hearing, he refused on First Amendment grounds, saying that "to betray a source would mean to dry up many future sources for many future reporters . . . It would mean betraying myself, my career and my life."
Mr. Schorr's half-century career has earned him many awards for journalistic excellence, including three television Emmys and decorations from the Queen of the Netherlands and the President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Germany. He also has been honored by civil liberties groups and professional organizations for his unwavering defense of the First Amendment. In 1995 he received a Gold Baton from the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University organization to honor his "exceptional contributions to radio and television reporting and commentary." The most prestigious award in the field of broadcasting, the duPont-Columbia Gold Baton is considered the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize in the field. Mr. Schorr also won the coveted Peabody Award in 1993 "for a lifetime of uncompromising reporting of the highest integrity" and the George Polk Radio Commentary Award for his interpretations of national and international events. He has also been inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Mr. Schorr currently interprets the news as Senior News Analyst for National Public Radio.
This biography is adapted from the Biography of Daniel Schorr, available at: www.npr.org.