Rocky Mountain News reporter Lynn Bartels, left, makes a point with an audience member after the CU sports panel. (Photo/Kent Conklin) Another panelist, Denver Post reporter Jim Hughes, answers questions. (Photo/Kent Conklin) Dean Paul Voakes, left, moderates the war-coverage panel that included, from left, Jim Moscou, Editor & Publisher contributing editor; Hearst Professional-In-Residence Tad Bartimus, a syndicated columnist and former AP correspondent in Vietnam who also covered the IRA in Northern Ireland and guerrilla movements in Central and South America; Gwen Florio, Rocky Mountain News political reporter and former Denver Post reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan; and Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News reporter embedded in Iraq. (Photo/Beth Gaeddert)

School-sponsored panels of seasoned journalists met on campus in recent months to explore the issues and dangers of war reporting and coverage of the embattled CU football program.

Jim Moscou (MA ’95), Editor & Publisher contributing editor, told an audience at a panel on Oct. 11 on covering war that new military battle techniques and inadequate training for journalists make covering war and conflict more dangerous. He said unembedded journalists “are being ostracized and are in danger.”

Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News reporter embedded with the U.S. Army in Iraq, told students and faculty that it was difficult to write without bias because he could only see what the soldiers saw. In addition, he said he didn’t feel too safe: “I felt that to an Iraqi I was the same as (the soldiers) because I was dressed like them.”

Gwen Florio, Rocky Mountain News political reporter and former Denver Post reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan, found that some reporting opportunities opened to her because she is a woman. Media coverage of a totally different topic drew a crowd in June: the CU football scandal. Two Denver dailies and the Boulder Daily Camera, plus five TV stations fighting for new information every day, cranked up the story and kept it going.

“This story was a reporter’s dream. It was so out of control,” said Evan Dreyer, media relations director for the Independent Investigative Commission, appointed by CU Regents. When Gov. Bill Owens made a statement criticizing CU’s handling of the scandal to CNN and MSNBC, the game was on, the panelists said.

“I have never seen a story that has hit this many portions of society,” said Boulder Daily Camera sports writer Neill Woelk (’82).

Lynn Bartels, Rocky Mountain News reporter, compared the story to Columbine.

“People ask why are we still writing about Columbine. It’s because they lied overwhelmingly at the beginning,” she said.

“The university responded miserably at first, and six months later are they any better off? I think not,” Bartels said.