The Siegenthaler Center at Vanderbilt University
John Siegenthaler Sr., founder of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, has hosted a symposium on the Presidential debates. Siegenthaler is the chairman emeritus of Nashville’s Tennesean newspaper, and he was joined by Harold Ford Jr., a former Congressman who is a visiting professor in political science at Vanderbilt, as the forum’s hosts.
Vanderbilt Visiting Prof. Harold Ford Jr.
Included on the forum panel were Politico’s Mike Allen, Distinguished Prof. John Greer of Vanderbilt, Newsweek’s Howard Fineman, Mark Halperin and Joe Klein of Time, Chris Matthews of MSNBC’s Hardball, Anne Kornblut of the Washigton Post, and John Harwood of NBC.
The discussion was centered around the direction of the 2008 Presidential campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama, from the perspective of the journalists and political analysts who have been following the candidates, some prior even to the actual announcements of their run for the office. Vanderbilt University gave its students the opportunity to hear the views of these experts and personalities firsthand, and to discuss with them the role of the media in the political process. Of course, this is an area that the media needs to be reminded of given the nature of how they have perceived their role in THIS ELECTION.
Representing Collegiate News Services, Larry Sinclair attended the forum. Sinclair, whose claims of using drugs and having sex with Barack Obama in 1999 have not been denied by the Obama campaign, sought to address concerns of how the media has portrayed a bias in this election, choosing to ignore stories such as Ayers, Rev. Wright or even his claims.
It should be noted that the panel included many of the left-leaning liberal NBC. Mr. Siegenthaler’s son, Jogn Siegenthaler Jr. was a former anchor for NBC and MSNBC until July 2008 when he joined the family’s Siegenthaler Public Relations.
