Branch Urges New Media Focus

Journalists must stop focusing on entertainment and return to serious political investigation, said journalist and historian Taylor Branch at an Institute of Politics Forum last night.

Branch, who won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1988 for his series “America in the King Years,” spoke about “The Clinton Tapes,” his recently released book chronicling his time as the historian and confidant of President Bill Clinton.

Speaking as part of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center’s Theodore H. White Lecture, Branch used the media’s role in the scandals of the Clinton administration to demonstrate the need for journalistic reform. He said that he sees the Monica Lewinsky scandal as a symptom of the breakdown of the process.

The media’s failure was “made possible by the fact that over those five years the other scandals had eroded our understanding of what a proper investigation of a President should be to the point that a sitting President should be compelled to answer questions about his sex life,” Branch said.

He emphasized that journalists no longer focus on the real issues.

“Even in The New York Times, it’s just got a lot of silliness in it—like a page one story about whether Obama plays basketball with too many men,” Branch said.

The audience was partially composed of those drawn by the discussion of journalistic issues.

One such attendee with an interest in the media, Daniel S. Sullivan, a Harvard Extension School graduate, said, “I find that Taylor Branch really represents the mindset of a journalist who believes at getting at the heart of the piercing questions we have.”

Other audience members came to hear Branch’s unprecedented insight into Clinton’s policy process and home life.

According to Daniel Okrent, a friend of Branch’s who served as the first public editor of The New York Times and who is a currently a visiting professor with the Shorenstein Center, Branch’s personal history with the Clintons during their time working together on the McGovern campaign allowed him unparalleled access to the President.

“I came as a Clinton fan,” Hannah Masoud, who works at the Harvard-affiliated non-profit Partners In Health, said.

During the event, the Shorenstein Center also awarded the David Nyhan Prize for Political Journalism to Nat Hentoff, a historian and former syndicated columnist.