USC Annenberg holds discussion of ‘The Post’

Former White House Counsel to Richard Nixon John Dean and former Vice President of Legal at the Los Angeles Times Karlene Goller came to Wallis Annenberg Hall Monday evening for a panel discussion following a screening of Oscar-nominated film The Post.

The discussion was hosted by Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism professor Geoffrey Cowan and associate professor Mary Murphy. The event took place as part of Murphy’s class, JOUR 381: Entertainment, Business and Media in Today’s Society.

The screening was presented by Annenberg and Amblin Entertainment, the company that produced The Post. According to Cowan, Amblin Entertainment presented screening of the movie at other college campuses as well.

Dean and Goller were joined at the panel discussion by Susan Seager, a media defense lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine and a lecturer at the Gould School of Law.

Cowan helped organize the event, and invited the speakers to be on the panel.

“Whenever we do something like this, we think about who would be wonderful people for students to be exposed to afterwards,” Cowan said. “John Dean has been nice enough to be involved with a lot of things at this school, so I reached out to him, and then I thought it would be wonderful to hear the legal perspective of how we handle cases, so we have two great lawyers here.”

Dean served as Nixon’s counsel during both the Pentagon Papers scandal, the subject of The Post and the Watergate scandal that eventually led to Nixon’s resignation.

Dean said he participated in the panel because of his existing relationship with faculty at Annenberg.

“I come over here and teach in [professor] Bob Scheer’s class, and I’ve been doing that for about 15 years  – we’ve lost count, it’s been going on so long,” Dean said to the Daily Trojan. “So I was happy to come over and participate.”

By featuring legal counsel from both government and media organizations, the panel discussion was able to delve deeper into the issues at the center of The Post, which deal largely with the media’s relationship to the government and media law.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, The Post focuses on Washington Post publisher Kay Graham’s (Meryl Streep) decision to print stories about the Pentagon Papers, which revealed that America was losing the Vietnam war despite government narratives claiming America was close to winning. The paper faced legal implications after publishing the story, which could have landed Graham and executive editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) in jail after being held in contempt of court.

Following the film screening, the panelists discussed a number of issues brought up in the movie, including the relationship between journalism and the government, how women are treated in the workplace and the ethics of journalism.

One of the major topics of discussion was how the press’ relationship to the government changed after the publication of the Pentagon Papers and the ensuing Watergate scandal.

“The Pentagon Papers caused newspapers to start working together to define media law,” Goller said in the discussion. “That’s when media lawyers began to be a part of law school, and that’s when journalism schools started teaching media law to journalists.”

Dean added that the Watergate scandal marked a shift in how the presidency was covered by the press.

“[Before] Watergate, presidents were given the benefit of the doubt,” Dean said. “That changed dramatically — a lasting effect of Watergate is that the press now places the burden of proof on the presidency.”

Furthermore, Dean said after the Pentagon Papers were published, Nixon’s demeanor in the White House changed.

“The atmosphere at the Nixon White House just went from light to dark,” Dean said. “Nixon [became] embittered and angry. It’s really quite striking.”

The panelists also discussed how women are treated in the workplace. In The Post, Graham is the only woman in a position of power, and faces with sexism throughout the film.

“I remember going to media law conferences in the early 2000s, and there were barely ever any other women there,” Seager said. “The men who were there wouldn’t talk to me, until I mentioned that I went to Yale and caught their attention.”

“No one paid any attention to Graham in the male-dominated bank scene [in The Post],” Goller said. “That’s still happening today.”

After taking questions from the audience, Murphy and Cowan ended the discussion at 8 p.m.

Cierra Barker, a junior majoring in public relations, attended the screening and panel discussion as a student in Murphy’s class.

“I thought it was super interesting to hear from both lawyers and a man who was in the White House at the time,” Barker said. “My biggest takeaway was how much women have progressed in the workforce, especially seeing [Graham’s] journey throughout the film and then having two female lawyers speak at the panel.”