2004 Pulitzer Prize winner Leonard Pitts Jr. said he wanted to give students something to think about in his speech entitled One Nation last night in Morton Hall.
He said students --and the rest of Americans --should think for themselves.
Too often
and for too long news media has gotten away with painting a picture of America that is not quite America. The people in the picture do not represent the overwhelming majority of people I meet while traveling the nation Pitts said.
His speech focused on how bumper-sticker simplification -news media labeling and defining such terms as liberal and conservative -is inflating a divided America that really is not all that divided.
We're not the middle of the road --we are the road
Pitts said. Yet
we are ignored in the rush to the right or the left.
Pitts said popular news media pundits are failing to draw a line of basic fairness in order to cater to entertainment rather than news.
You have to shout these days to be heard. One should be embarrassed to call it journalism
Pitts said.
He described many of the complaints he has received about his Miami Herald columns, directing a majority of his comments toward Rush Limbaugh, who wrote him an e-mail warning Pitts that the only thing in the middle of the road are dead armadillos.
Readers and journalists alike have tried to label Pitts but found difficulty, Pitts said. He took heat for criticizing Clinton during his administration and takes heat now for criticizing President Bush, he said. The Miami Herald once asked him if he was liberal or conservative. Pitts responded, Yes.
Whatever my opinion is
I keep it open. I advise (students) to find multiple sources of information that challenge your view. If you are not
you are not growing.
Pitts is fearful of the continuing trend of polarization. He said it would take a loss of complacency in this country in order for Americans to begin to understand things in this country are not promised. Society of Professional Journalists Adviser Bill Reader was happy with the turnout, estimating a crowd of around 350.
Reader introduced Pitts as a god among men
a tower among journalists.
Fia Curley, an Ohio University graduate student, took a class taught by Leonard Pitts on commentary last spring at Hampton University in Virginia.
Her favorite part of the speech was how Pitts made her appreciate and accept her indecision about the upcoming election.
Sophomore journalism major Katie Kussin said she enjoyed Pitts language, especially.
The way he spoke
you could picture it on paper
Kussin said. Kussin had never read Pitts' Monday or Friday columns in the Miami Herald but now plans to do so because of the speech.
