Issue date: 4/28/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Andrea Pendergast Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Dana Priest speaks to a crowd in Schofield Auditorium Thursday night. Priest, who covers national defense and broke the Walter Reed Medical Center scandal story, spoke about secrecy and the media.

Before attending Thursday night's Ann Devroy Memorial Forum, senior Laura Ave'Lallemant said she had never heard of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal, where hospital and medical conditions were sub-par for the injured veterans staying at the center.

However, she said the forum taught her that both journalists as well as the general public need to take a more active role in exposing the truth.

"We need to make sure government tells us everything we need to know," she said. "Journalists need to be in everywhere to make sure we are getting talked to."

Featured speaker Dana Priest of The Washington Post has reported extensively on CIA interrogation techniques, the 9/11 attacks and the failure of the pre-war intelligence in Iraq. In 2006, she won a Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting on CIA secret prisons and counterterrorism operations overseas. Earlier this year she received her second Pulitzer for the Walter Reed story.

Priest discussed multiple topics from the Walter Reed scandal to the delicate balance between media and government. She said the framers of the U.S. Constitution trusted neither the press nor government. Therefore, she said the Constitution was intended to establish a contest between the two.

"It is the media's responsibility to play our role in the contest," Priest said, "for it is the contest itself that serves the public interest."

She said after September 11, the United States government increased the amount of information it deemed "classified." She said increased intelligence gathering has led to deeper relationships around the world with foreign intelligence agencies with the goal of capturing terrorists. However, she said it has also led to missing people and violations of both international and domestic law.

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