Engineering Dean Paul Fleury was one of the featured speakers at the news conference announcing that Yale had received $7.1 million to support biomedical research at the University. It is the largest grant ever received by Yale for biomedical studies.

Managing editor decries 'outrageous lies' in the media

The death of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl at the hands of Muslim extremists taught the free world some grim lessons, said his friend and colleague Paul Steiger, the newspaper's managing editor, during his April 24 visit as a Poynter Fellow in Journalism. "First, those of us who choose the path of journalism are at higher risk of mortal harm than we were just a few years ago. It is now more likely that some twisted zealot will decide to murder one of us to get publicity for his cause. And we can't escape the danger by staying away from battlefields or out of poor countries. It can find us right here in America," said Steiger, a 1964 graduate of Yale College. "Second," he continued, "all kinds of ordinary people, not just us, face a greater risk of becoming targets simply because they happen to be on a particular airplane or in a particular building or of a particular religion or heritage. "Third, and more hopefully," he added, "we are starting to learn how to live with this frightening new reality." Steiger's talk, titled "Journalists and Terrorism," touched on events of the past year, particularly since the World Trade Center attack, which forced the Wall Street Journal out of its lower Manhattan offices. He compared the current situation to the rise of Nazism some 75 years ago, and told the audience gathered at the Law School for his lecture that he wonders how he would have wanted to cover that crisis in the news "knowing then what we know now about its effect on the world." Paraphrasing Charles Dickens, Steiger said: "It has been 'the best of times' because we have seen some extraordinarily courageous and effective journalism, in print, over video and online. It has been 'the worst of times' because we have seen journalists threatened and killed, and because we have seen a rising effort on many sides to pervert the techniques of mass communication in the service, not of truth, but of disinformation and propaganda and the Big Lie." Steiger faulted "some people in the leadership of our own country [who] don't want us to be quite as free ... as we would like." The main thrust of his anger, however, was directed at the "people who hate us and America and all they think we stand for" -- people who "really don't want anyone delivering the news from or to the areas they seek to control. They want to sow distrust, fear, xenophobia, terror." The leaders of these anti-American factions pursue that goal by controlling the media their people have access to, repeating "outrageous lies so frequently that they become believed," said Steiger, adding, "So it isn't really surprising that two-thirds or more of Arabs and Pakistanis believe Arabs weren't involved in the Sept. 11 atrocities or that Jews working in the World Trade Center stayed home that day. It isn't surprising, but it is dangerous and wrong." The source for much of the misinformation that passes for news comes "from Internet propagandists" who are able to "disseminate convincing lies," Steiger explained, noting that it's up to responsible, mainstream news organizations to counter those efforts. He urged the news media "to employ more globally diverse staffs, to publish and broadcast in more languages and to increase the flow across borders of talented and well-trained reporters knowledgeable about and sensitive to the local populations. "Danny Pearl was the paradigm of such a reporter," he added. "Thoughtful, curious, well-read, he was also driven to do what he could to increase understanding across geographic and cultural divides. He was the perfect antidote to those who want to wall off countries and peoples from each other." Despite the threat generated by Muslim extremists, Steiger argued that "the Journal's news pages shouldn't be cheerleaders for the war against terrorism. The paper shouldn't shrink from reporting the challenges we, as a nation, face and any setbacks American forces may encounter. We will aggressively seek to learn -- and, when newsworthy, publish -- more than U.S. officials want us to know. But our pages shouldn't give even inadvertent help to the sources of terror ..." Maintaining that balance means being prepared to delay or even withhold publication of information that might endanger American soldiers, he said. Sometimes it means sharing information that would be tightly guarded under other circumstances. Steiger cited an instance last winter when a Wall Street Journal reporter bought a used laptop computer in Kabul to replace one destroyed when his truck rolled over. The computer and a disk that came with it turned out to contain Al Qaeda files. Deciding how to handle the situation wasn't easy. The Wall Street Journal didn't want the story to leak to the competition, and they didn't want "to be seen as an agent of the government. We have a natural abhorrence of getting too close to any government," said Steiger. "There was no perfect solution." After some tense discussions, he recalled, "We showed the material to U.S. intelligence experts to help us confirm its authenticity, to help us more quickly break into the locked files, and on the chance that there was information in those files that could help save lives. We would never have forgiven ourselves if those files contained plans for a follow-up to the Sept. 11 attacks, and we had waited until we ourselves could crack them." As it turned out, the files contained information about the would-be shoe bomber, Richard Reid, but by the time The Wall Street Journal acquired the computer, Reid had already been arrested for his inept attempt to blow up an airplane, said Steiger. -- By Gila Reinstein T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S Yale creates Center for Genomics and Proteomics NIH grant to support research on treatment of epilepsy African American Studies Department examines its history and its future Alumnus Bryan Rigg reveals untold story of 'Hitler's Jewish Soldiers' Managing editor decries 'outrageous lies' in the media See possibilities when job searching, editor advises IN FOCUS: Resource Office on Disabilities New website offers information on wheelchair access to campus facilities Yale Engineering forum offers perspectives . . . 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