DC’s Newseum: The Free Press and a Global Community
by KIKI WALLICK | September 11, 2019
Washington DC’s Newseum educates visitors on the importance of free press, promoting a global community through many interactive, visually stunning exhibits.
What’s the importance of a global community? National Geographic editor and journalist, Brian Howard, explains the significance of a global focus as an essential part of journalism today. With the politicization of news stories all across the world, a united community allows for the strength necessary to maintain a free press. Especially with “fake news” on the rise, a collective effort to protect and support the free press is critical.
The Newseum uses the Time Warner World News Gallery to show how a free press is threatened and restricted across the planet. Additionally, the Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery shows the importance of a global focus on the news to inform all people of events happening all around.
Credit: studiogood
There is strength in a global community to protect both the freedom of the press and the journalists capturing the human element and struggles across the world.
The mission of the Newseum is to increase public understanding of the importance of free press and the First Amendment. Throughout the seven-floor museum, the exhibits engage with visitors by questioning ethics in journalism, highlighting key figures and events in the past and present news world, and providing information on the state of the press globally. Two of the museums’ major exhibits are the Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery and the Time Warner World News Gallery.
The Time Warner World News Gallery presents a global overview of the state of the global news environment. Updated annually, a world map provides a general press freedom rating for each country denoted with the colors green, yellow, or red. This map presents the real danger journalists face today, and have in the past, in getting stories out with limited government protections in unstable, vulnerable environments
Additionally, the gallery introduces the significance of the free press in creating a global community. While freedoms are not perfect in the global West, journalists in non-Western countries must work together to overcome the many dangers and challenges present in nations where its people have lost their voice. The global journalist works to highlight crises, injustices, and happenings in places throughout the world.
One such journalist was Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post reporter based in Saudi Arabia. On October 2, 2018, Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. UN investigator, Agnes Callamard, reported that Khashoggi’s death had been a “deliberate, premeditated execution” carried out by the state of Saudi Arabia (Callamard 2019).
Khashoggi had been a fierce opponent of the Saudi royal family and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman; his opinion column in The Washington Post included critiques of the Saudi government and insights into the stifling of the free press in the Middle East (Momtaz 2018). His last column was titled, “What the Arab world needs most is free expression. Khashoggi knew the importance of a free press.
The Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery contains photography that has won the Pulitzer Prize since 1942. The photos within the gallery capture some of the greatest human emotions: joy, dread, fear, and love. Some of the featured photographs include Starvation in Sudan (1994), Olympics in Barcelona (1993), and Hurricane Katrina (2006). Each of the featured photographs provides more information on the context of the photograph as well as the photographer who captured the moment. The photographs highlight humanity in the late 21st-century by capturing major natural disasters, events, and figures.
Frequent Newseum visitor, Jordan Fischetti (2019), describes the Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery as a, “visceral way to view history.” Fischetti (2019) describes the photographs as “moving;” commenting on how one featured photograph, Starvation in Sudan (1994), distinctly impacted her as it “really put a human face on that crisis [Sudan famine].”
The Newseum, with its hotspot location in Washington DC, attracts visitors from all over the globe. Museum staff, Jeysen H. (2019), explains that his favorite part of working at the museum is socializing with visitors: “People come from all over. I like to talk to people from all over.” The Newseum supports a global community within their space quite physically and also through their emphasis on the significance of a free press.
This story was updated on Friday, September 27th, 2019. The primary changes include: paragraph reorganization, image insertion, and image resizing.
Sources
Callamard, A. 2019. Agnes Callamard decries murder trial in Saudi Arabia. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49657908
Fischetti, J. September 7 2019. In person interview by Kiki Wallick.
H., Jeysen. September 4 2019. In person interview by Kiki Wallick.
Momtaz, R. 2018. Khashoggi died when he was put in a chokehold to prevent him from calling for help. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/International/khashoggi-died-put-chokehold-prevent-calling/story?id=58649736
Images
Icon-Community by studiogood licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/01_Icon-Community%402x.png
Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia: A Deeper Look by POMED licensed under CC BY 2.0 https://flic.kr/p/FKfnUa
Newseum Washington DC (2013) by Another Believer licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Newseum,Washington,_D.C.(2013)_-_03.JPG
