The Wartime Press

Civil Liberties During War
New America Foundation
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
10:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

In some ways, the media of the Civil War and media of today's wars couldn't seem more different: the age where the latest technology, the telegraph, meant reporters could disseminate battlefield reports from across the country within days versus the age of Twitter, where reporters can disseminate news from across the globe within seconds.

Yet many of the questions that plagued the press during the Civil War are again fueling public debate in our own polarized era: What is the proper role of the media in wartime? How do reporters decide what the public has a right to know versus what the state should be able to keep secret? How should government balance individual liberty with the needs of national security?

So what can we learn from the age of the telegraph about wartime news in the age of Twitter? And how can debates about civil liberties from the war that divided the nation apply to the war that seems to be dividing the world?

Join the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Dickinson College, and New America as they co-host a conversation on the evolving role of the wartime press and whether or not the latest technology is making Americans more - or less - free.

Featured Speakers:
Kimberly Dozier
Contributing Writer, The Daily Beast
Author, Breathing the Fire: Fighting to Report and Get Back to the Fight

Linda Mason
Former Senior Vice President, CBS News

Matthew Pinsker
Pohanka Chair in American Civil War History, Dickinson College
Author, Lincoln's Sanctuary (2003)
Fellow, New America

Thom Shanker
Pentagon correspondent, The New York Times
Co-author, Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al-Qaeda

Moderator:
Dr. Jeffrey McCausland
Distinguished Visiting Professor of Research and Minerva Chair, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College

Join the conversation online using #lincoln150 and following @NewAmerica.

To RSVP for the event:
http://www.newamerica.net/events/2014/the_wartime_press

For questions, contact Liana Simonds at New America at (202) 735-2829 or simonds@newamerica.org