Front & Center with John Callaway: Covering the U.S. Military: The Journalist's Challenge

A journalist on the U.S. military beat has unique challenges: evaluating military briefings, developing one's own sources, and dealing with classified information. How can readers, viewers, and listeners get a good sense of what's going on in war zones when security concerns are so great that reporters often cannot get into the field to report in any meaningful way? John Callaway and his panel explore how one identifies the right story, verifies the details, and writes a compelling article on Front and Center with John Callaway.

Stephen J. Hedges is a Chicago Tribune national correspondent in Washington, D.C. He has held that post since June 1998. At the Tribune, Hedges covers national security issues, including the military affairs, intelligence community and terrorism. He has also written investigative stories on the trade in human body parts, nuclear proliferation and chemical and biological weapons. Prior to working for the Tribune, Hedges was a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report, where he was a member of the magazine's investigative team. He also has worked at the Miami Herald and Greenville, S.C., Piedmont. Hedges was a member of the Tribune team that was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism. He has also been awarded the Overseas Press Club Award, the Sigma Delta Chi Award and the Lincoln Award. Hedges graduated from the University of Iowa in 1982 with a bachelor of science degree in Journalism.

Cheryl L. Reed is an investigative reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. Her recent "Wounded Warriors" series revealed that Illinois veterans have received among the lowest disability payments in the country for the past seven decades and sparked an investigation by the Inspector General. Reed is the author of Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns published in hardcover last year and issued in March in paperback. Before she joined the Sun-Times, Reed co-wrote a series of stories that revealed how the military paid its convicted criminals—including murderers, rapists and child molesters—their salaries while serving prison sentences in military prisons. Congress immediately stopped the practice. For that work, she was awarded Harvard University's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, the Investigative Reporters & Editors Award for Investigative Reporting and the Edgar A. Poe Award from the White House Correspondent Association.

Rob Warden, Executive Director of The Center on Wrongful Convictions, is an award-winning legal affairs journalist who, as editor and publisher of Chicago Lawyer magazine during the 1980's, exposed more than a score of wrongful convictions in Illinois, including cases in which six innocent men had been sentenced to death. Before founding Chicago Lawyer in 1978, Warden was an investigative reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor at the Chicago Daily News. Since the Chicago Lawyer changed ownership in 1989, Warden has worked as a political issues consultant, executive officer of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, and consultant to various law firms and the litigation department of General Electric Medical Systems. Warden is the author or co-author of hundreds of articles and five books, including two books about wrongful convictions written in collaboration with Northwestern University Journalism Professor David Protess, A Promise of Justice (Hyperion, 1998) and Gone in the Night (Delacorte, 1993). Warden has won more than 50 journalism awards. In 2004, he was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame.

Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Yantis was the Director, U.S. Army Public Affairs€“ Midwest for the Department of the Army, where he interacted daily with the public as an Army spokesman on Army policies, practices, issues, events, and crisis situations. Yantis was commissioned through the Reserve Officers Training Corps at the University of Missouri-Columbia with a Bachelor of Arts in History. He served in command and staff positions of increasing responsibility in Army organizations for over 20 years. His first Public Affairs assignment was as a Plans Officer, Headquarters, U.S. Army Europe. While there he helped plan and later execute the media effort for the 50th Anniversary of the Normandy Invasion. He became the Public Affairs Officer for the 7th Army Training Command and 100th Area Support Group and served as the principal spokesman for over 18 months, in support of the largest U.S. training area and the military community in Germany. In July 1998, he reported to Fleishman-Hillard International Communications, New York City and later ran the Army Public Affairs Office - New York, where he served until June 2000. He was the Personnel and Human Resource Team Leader, Media Relations Division, U.S. Army Public Affairs in the Pentagon, and interacted daily with the Pentagon Press Corps, national, international, regional and specialty media on a wide range of personnel-related issues, crisis, topics and events. He was present in the Pentagon during the 9-11 Attack, was decorated for his actions in the hours following the attack, and helped facilitate hundreds of interviews with Army survivors, family members and leaders leading up to the anniversary of the attack.