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| Ken Paulson |
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USA Today editor Ken Paulson delivered the 2007 Florida FOI Summit keynote address to a crowd of more than 200 reporters, students, attorneys, professors, and citizens.
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Paulson said that since age 7 he knew he wanted to be a journalist. He recalled a time when superheroes, namely Superman and Spiderman, had journalist alter egos. “I think I was the only kid in America whose heart beat faster when Clark Kent came out,” Paulson said. |
Marion Brechner (second left) listens to the keynote address by Ken Paulson. She is joined by Dean Emeritus Ralph Lowenstein (left), her grandson, Josh Brechner (third left), and her son, Berl Brechner (fourth left).
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Ken Paulson recalled a time when the U.S. courts supported the idea of a free press, bu t said a new dynamic has entered where the press has lost the courts. "We are losing the courts because we have lost in the court of public opinion."
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USA Today editor Ken Paulson said he fears for the future of the free press as it now exists when a recent poll showed that two-thirds of Americans feel the news media are biased in their news reporting.
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"I think we need to market the First Amendment back to the American people," Ken Paulson said.
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Ken Paulson shared with the crowd survey results that demonstrated a downturn in public opinion of the press and the public's desire to limit a free press.
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Ken Paulson partially blamed the downturn in public opinion of the press on the media's tendency to drive a story into the ground if it involves something scandalous. "As a family of journalists, we seem unable to control ourselves when those stories go."
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