Ex-Vanguard Staffers Tape Discussion Show for Airing on CUNY-TV

From left: moderator Paul Moses, Mitchel R. Levitas, Myron Kandel, Herbert Dorfman, and Rhoda Hendrick Karpatkin

Four Brooklyn College alumni who went on to successful careers in journalism recently taped a public affairs program, "Fighting for the First Amendment: Today’s Challenges for Journalists," that will air on CUNY-TV sometime early next year.

The panelists brought a special knowledge of their subject to the on-campus taping. During their college years they were staffers of the banned Vanguard student newspaper from the 1950s.

The Frederic Ewen Lecture in Civil Liberties was sponsored through the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities, in cooperation with the Journalism Program of the English Department and the Television and Radio Department.

The taping lasted more than an hour and bore all the earmarks of an episode of the long-running no-holds-barred TV political series "The McLaughlin Group," a perennial favorite in Sunday morning’s regular public affairs TV broadcast block.

The student-produced version featured in the moderator’s chair Brooklyn College English Professor Paul Moses, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and an editor, with four expert panelists: Mitchel R. Levitas, Myron Kandel, Herbert Dorfman, and Rhoda Hendrick Karpatkin.

Levitas, Dorfman and Karpatkin graduated with the Brooklyn College Class of ’51, Kandel the following year. The four wrote for and edited Vanguard, the student paper that was published between February 1936 and October 1950, when it was ordered shut down by College officials during the era’s "Red Scare."

Despite the short-circuiting of their College news careers, all four panelists, and many of their fellow Vanguard staffers, went on to achieve success in journalism:

• Levitas, who works for the New York Times, has served the paper as metropolitan editor, editor of the Week in Review, the Op-Ed section and the Sunday Book Review.
• Dorfman was a television news producer for ABC, NBC and CBS and headed up the broadcast journalism department at Brooklyn College.
• Karpatkin became president of Consumers Union and publisher of the influential magazine Consumer Reports for twenty-five years.
• Kandel served as financial editor of the Washington Star, the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Post. He helped found Cable New Network (CNN) and appeared on air as its financial editor and commentator. Several years ago, a major financial publication named him one of the ten most influential business journalists of the 20th century.

During the taping the four panelists discussed and dissected a wide range of issues. Their impassioned talk ranged from restraints of press freedom to so-called press shield laws, from the emergence of the blogosphere to its relations with the mainstream media, from bias in the news industry to the Valerie Plame affair, and from the overwhelming popularity of right-wing opinion radio to the value of local television news shows.

The panelists routinely interrupted each other and disparaged one another’s comments, their words often laden with dry wit.

"Local news on television is unbelievably comic," observed Dorfman, noting that what frequently passes for "live news is somebody standing in front of a scene where something happened twelve hours ago."

When Levitas was asked why he ignored an audience member’s question, the Timesman responded, "That had nothing to do with the First Amendment."

Like his companions on the panel, Kandel vigorously defended the journalistic integrity of the Vanguard and its student newspapermen and women. "We had G-U-T-S," he said. "You have to stand up for your principles."

The panelists also sought to reassure the students in their audience of the value of journalism as a career choice.

"Journalism is a very very big deal," said Karpatkin. "I believe it’s a blessed profession, and that journalists are not only important to the country, but also important to the survival of the country."

The ex-Vanguard staffers have backed up their voices with dollars. Since 2004, they have presented promising Brooklyn College journalism students with a $500 annual prize. "We put up our own money," said Dorfman.

Afterwards Moses said the rough-and-tumble banter among the panelists during the taping was unscripted. "That was spontaneous, although not unexpected," he said. "I think it’s one of the reasons they enjoy each other’s company. We did a conference call beforehand, so I had a sense of it through that, too."

He added, "I knew it wouldn’t take much effort from me to get the conversation going."

The program was taped Thursday, October 16, in Whitehead Hall’s Studio B, in front of a live audience. Among those in attendance were other alumni, invited faculty members and administrators and a score or more of Moses’ print journalism students who were invited to question the panel.

According to Professor Stuart MacLelland, who directed the taping, the raw tape will likely be edited into two half-hour programs that will appear back-to-back on the CUNY-TV cable channel (Channel 75).

"There is a rather long waiting period before we can fit them in," he said. "It will likely be early in January before the shows will appear."