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Posing Questions
I ve began writing for the Neiman Watchdog Project at Harvard at the suggestion of Barry Sussman, an old friend and colleague from The Washington Post, who is now Editor of the project.
I was delighted to see on Niemans online list of contributors quite a few well-known former National reporters and Foreign correspondents with whom I worked at The Post from late 1968 to Sept. 6, 2001, including Morton Mintz, Walter Pincus, George Lardner Jr., George Wilson, Myra McPherson, John Hanrahan, John W.Anderson, Ken Ringle, Bill McAllister, Larry Meyer, Eugene Meyer, Thomas Ricks, Gene Weingarten and Geneva Overholser. Some of these old colleagues are icons from The Posts Golden Era. All are damned good journalists. Some other non-Post contributors include: investigative reporters Donald Barlett and James Steele; John Carroll, former editor of the Los Angeles Times; Bill Moyers, journalist and former White House advisor; New York Times Pulitizer Prize foreign correspondent Sydney Schanberg; Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution; and Anthony Lewis, former New York Times columnist, just to pick a few at random.
I decided that was pretty good company, so I started to work on some Nieman Watchdog Ask This pieces, which basically are policy watchdog essays that pose questions that reporters should pose to policymakers and other government officials as they attempt to shed light on the kind of subjects that governments everywhere like to keep in the dark. Sometimes my contributions are for the Commentary section when I have something I want to sound off about. The Ask This pieces are more reportage than opinion and are designed to inspire young journalists to ask the more penetrating questions when interviewing public officials.
Great questions are a key to great journalism, declares the statement of purposes of the Neiman Watchdog Journalism Project. The statement goes on to say that everything the project does grows from this premise and this goal: to help the press ask penetrating questions, critical questions, questions that matter, questions not yet asked about today's news.
The Nieman Foundation
for Journalism at Harvard University was founded in 1938 to promote and
elevate the standards of journalism in the United States. For many years now
the program has included international reporters and editors as well. Nieman
Fellowships enrich outstanding practitioners by bringing 24 of them to Harvard University for a year of study in fields of journalistic specialty.
NiemanWatchdog.org carries this process a step further. It seeks to bring the richness of Harvard and other centers of learning to journalists around the world and to other interested groups and individuals as well.
Following are some links to my essays:
Last updated: July 18, 2011
As Aussies move toward a carbon tax,
what are the lessons for the U.S.?
ASK THIS | July 15,
2011
In Australia, despite strong industry and partisan opposition, the Labor
prime minister is putting her coalition on the line on behalf of a clean energy
initiative. Here writer William Claiborne examines the environmental issues,
the politics (both Australian and American), and the steps toward remediation.
His piece is a primer for
reporters and editors
who want to deal with global warming more seriously.
The debate over a proposal for a carbon emissions tax and a cap-and-trade program is heating up in Australia. So I wrote this essay explaining how it would work and what kind of obstacles it would be likely to encounter in the United States if it was being introduced there. CLICK HERE FOR THE STORY
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Want to avoid gun massacres? Australia shows how.
ASK THIS | January
31, 2011
Firearms in Australia, as in the U.S., have been a basic part of the culture. But in 1996, after a gunman killed 35 people
and injured 21 more, a conservative prime minister took the lead and the
country rapidly enacted powerful restrictions. For example: You say you need a
gun for self-
protection? Forget about it.
(The gun carnage at a Tucson, Arizona, shopping center inspired me to write this comparative analysis of gun control laws in the United States and Australia. Im not optimistic about real firearms reform occurring in America. The gun culture there seems too deeply imbedded to expect that). CLICK HERE FOR THE STORY
Martin Bryant
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Tourism in Havana, May 2010 (AP photo) |
Americans go to Vietnam (and love it), so why not Cuba?
COMMENTARY |
December 03, 2010
Bill Claiborne and his wife recently spent some time in Vietnam; he even put together a travelogue. The trip evoked memories of Cuba -- and the sense that the American press should do a better job on why restrictions still exist, and what to expect when Castro is no longer on the scene.
(This piece was an outgrowth of a trip last month to Vietnam, where I couldnt get out of my mind the absurdity of U.S. policy that imposes a trade embargo and travel restrictions against communist Cuba but encourages trade and tourism in Vietnam and China, which are no less communist than Cuba and which also have poor human rights records. The answer, of course, lies in the dynamics of electoral politics in South Florida. But that doesnt mitigate the hypocrisy of the policy). CLICK FOR THE STORY
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After all this time, can facts on
the ground be overcome?
COMMENTARY | September 30, 2010
In 1980 Ariel Sharon took two Washington Post reporters on a
day-long tour in his Land Rover and, map in hand, hilltop by hilltop, told them
they were looking at what would be irreversible facts on the ground. Now,
with West Bank settlements at the crux of Israel-Palestinian negotiations, Bill
Claiborne, the Washington Posts Jerusalem bureau chief at the time, looks back
on that prophetic interview.
(This piece recollects one of the strangest interviews with a top government official that I ever didand how it has come true. Sharons amazingly candid declarations that day about irreversible facts on the ground articulated what we came to know was long-range strategy of using a network of Jewish settlements as a political device for precluding any possibility of returning occupied territory in the West Bank. No Israeli government could ever dismantle the outposts and survive the inevitable political backlash, the strategy suggested and it has held true ever since.)
Sharon (1995) AP photo
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The press and unintended
consequences in Afghanistan
COMMENTARY |
September 23, 2010
A veteran correspondent looks back on the Afghanistan-USSR war and glorified press coverage of the mujahedeen, the forerunners of the Taliban.
Some were extremely anti-Western even then. Would history be different had
there been more balanced reporting?
(This piece recalls the years that I used to visit the Afghan mujahedeen leaders and rank-and-file fighters in their staging camps along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border which were receiving what would become $3 billion in arms and money from the CIA to battle the occupying Soviet forces in Afghanistan. In hindsight, we American journalists tended to spin the story in a way that could only have swung public opinionand, consequently, ever more U.S. aidin favor of even the most radical fundamentalist Muslim guerrilla groups, some of whose leaders later resurfaced as Taliban commanders). CLICK HERE FOR THE STORY
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Afghanistan and the U.S. from afar: Doubts on the rise
ASK THIS | September 11, 2010
On this 9/11 anniversary, writer Bill Claiborne surveys Australias and other small countries changing views of the Afghanistan war. One difference: the Vietnam-era word word 'quagmire' is being heard more and more.
(This piece examines the correlation between the withdrawal rates of Afghanistan deployments of small contingents like Australias and their combinations of casualty rates and lengths of participation in the war. It asks the question: at what cost will these smaller countries stay the course in the so-called graveyard of empires?) CLICK HERE FOR THE STORY
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What a broken Senate looks like from far away...and why
it matters
COMMENTARY | August 30, 2010
Our
correspondent in Australia has ideas on how to improve things a little. But
hes not optimistic that anyone on Capitol Hill will be interested.
(This was a commentary on how dysfunctional the U.S.
Senate has become and how the parliamentary system might have a few
constructive ideas that the United 
States might consider if
it ever gets around to tweaking the arcane rules that delay or block so many
useful bills).
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ASK THIS | August 24, 2010
For a model health care system, how
about Australia's?
'Medicare for all' isnt just an expression in Australia,
its a reality, and there arent any death panels or government intervention in
the choice of doctors or treatment. Bill Claiborne, a longtime Washington Post
reporter now living in Australia, describes the system
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(In this piece I make some comparisons between the health
care system that 22 million other Australians and I use and the American health
system that I used for most of my life and which is now being
reformed--reluctantly, it seems from here).
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In Australia, after bin Laden
COMMENTARY | May 03, 2011
A generally low-key reaction to the jihadist's death.
And, as in the U.S., a push in some quarters for more dialogue on pulling out
of Afghanistan -- but not among the nation's top leaders. Aussies make up the
largest non-NATO contingent in Afghanistan, about 1,500 troops. 
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