A KWF - Year Worth of Travel
By Brad Schrade ’08
New York City: KWF ’08 meets with Matt Winkler (center) at Bloomberg’s new offices.
Photo by: Birgit Rieck
They are known in Argentina simply as “The Disappeared.” As many as 30,000 people, many politically active on the left, killed without trace during the country’s Dirty War and military dictatorship of the 1970s and early 1980s.
Some were snatched from city streets, placed in vans, tortured, drugged and tossed from planes into the sea—never to be found. Knight-Wallace Fellows ’08 caught the program’s closest glimpse yet into this shameful past during the annual trip to Buenos Aires in December.
Fellows for the first time toured a new museum on a former military base in the center of bustling Buenos Aires that served as a concentration camp. We saw its torture chambers, confronted allegations of our own CIA’s complicity and later sat with mothers of the victims—courageous women who founded the “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo” to protest the abductions and search for their children.
It was a powerful, emotional day for the Fellows, and a memorable moment in the busiest annual travel schedule in Knight-Wallace history.
“We take the trips abroad because the insularity of American news rooms terrifies me, along with the image of a superpower blundering along in the world blind,” said KWF Director Charles Eisendrath. “You can’t get journalists—Fellows included—to concentrate on something just because it’s important. But offer tickets to important places and you’ve got their attention. I think the visits change outlooks.”
Other highlights from the 2007–2008 travel year included: ■ A fall weekend in Northern Michigan to help the new class bond. ■ A week in Istanbul exploring the ancient city while Turkey made international news with its intense debate over lifting the ban on head scarves in universities. ■ A tour to New York for meetings with executives of top media organizations, now a permanent part of the Knight-Wallace annual itinerary.
Our travels together started with an early-October weekend at Walloon Lake, Michigan, near Charles and Julia Eisendrath’s apple farm. There, we shot clay pigeons, pressed cider, canoed (and saw Charles without a bow tie for the first time). It was a warm-up for our travels to come.
We arrived in Buenos Aires in early December, summer in South America. Our week would be filled with meetings with historians, economists, government officials, a legendary political cartoonist and journalists, including our media hosts at Clarín newspaper. In each, we’d confront the contradictions, complexity and elusiveness that makes Argentina interesting.
But before that, we had horses to ride. We spent the first full day, a Saturday, on an estancia ranch about an hour outside Buenos Aires. A gaucho led us on a riding tour through the fields of the Pampas region before a great lunchtime feast of steak — a dietary staple we would be eating for the next week.
That Sunday, after strolling through the historic San Telmo market, a group of Fellows took in a soccer game, Argentina’s national passion. We saw a game between cross town teams, Vélez Sársfield and Huracán, but the fans were as interesting as what happened on the field.
The more impassioned fans sat in the cheap seats behind opposing goals, areas cordoned off with fences 30 feet high, some sections topped with barbed wire. Waves of fans in the sections undulated to constant drum beats with abandon, like two opposing tribes. It was an amazing spectacle, one with no equivalent in U.S. sport.
The weekend of fun gave way to the more business-like seminars during the week.
Our visit coincided with the inauguration of the country’s first elected female head of state, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, wife of the outgoing President Néstor Kirchner. We saw husband and wife celebrate the transfer of power in a crowded ceremony outside the Casa Rosada, the country’s pink presidential building where Juan and Eva Perón famously addressed crowds from the balcony.
Six years after the country’s financial collapse, we saw great wealth in and around Buenos Aires, but also extreme poverty. Our visit to a small school on the impoverished outskirts of the city showed the poverty in stark terms. The facilities were bare, with a meager library and a handful of aged computers for students.
Buenos Aires Senator Daniel Filmus (center) invited KWF ’08 to the senate to discuss Argentine politics.
Photo by: Birgit Rieck
On our visit to the studio of Sabat, a famous political artoonist, he gave each of us a signed poster. The political figures depicted in the poster were dictators, generals and politicians, and Sabat provided us with an quick explanation of each. The work provided a road map through the country’s decades of political instability and coups.
The week ended with a crash course in Argentine wine at a tasting and dinner at the Four Seasons hotel. Some Fellows returned to the states, while several stayed behind for their own sightseeing in Buenos Aires, or traveled to other parts of the country, such as Bariloche near the Andes or the wine country of Mendoza.
New York was our next destination, which kicked off with a breakfast meeting with legendary editor (and KWF board member) Gene Roberts. His views on editing a newspaper and what goes into being a good editor were invaluable.
We toured Bloomberg’s state-of-the-art building and lunched with editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler, who gave us insight into how his growing world media operation functions. The afternoon included a tour at the offices of “60 Minutes,” where executive producer Jeff Fager answered our questions about the iconic news magazine and then gave us a special screening of the previous night’s episode, along with a behind-the-scenes look.
We spent Tuesday morning touring the offices of the Associated Press, where president and CEO Tom Curley painted a clear picture of how his 4,000 employee operation is adapting to the changing media landscape. We then visited the new New York Times building where we met with editors of different sections and lunched with managing editor (and KWF board Member) Jill Abramson. The conversation covered a range of topics, including diversity, investigative reporting and how the web has changed what they do, particularly this election season.
The New York trip grew out of a more informal version taken by members of the Fellowship class of 2006, but was such a success this year it’s going to be a regular part of the travel schedule. “Journalism and the news cycle both emanate from New York, the program has contacts at the very top, and I’ve wanted to take the Fellows there for a long time,” said Eisendrath.
Turkey was our final destination. The debate over legalizing head scarves for women attending universities was in full swing when we arrived in mid-February. That discussion would be a recurring theme throughout our seven days in the secular Muslim country as we met with journalists, politicians, activists and historians.
We arrived on a Friday, and after our overnight flight, lunch and a check-in at the hotel, we took the bus to a Turkish bath. It was a first for all the Fellows. You basically strip down, put on a thin cloth, enter a large, steamy room with members of the same sex and have a stranger wash you. While some Fellows, particularly the men, entered with a bit of hesitation, the verdict afterward was that it was a rejuvenating experience, like none we’d ever had before. That night we dined and saw a belly dancing show atop the 14th-century Galata Tower.
The Michigan weather followed us to Turkey, and snowflakes fell as we toured the sixth century domed grandeur of Hagia Sophia, first built as a church and later converted into a mosque after the city was conquered by the Turks. It was the largest church in the world for almost a thousand years. We also toured its neighbor the impressive 17th-century Blue Mosque—both holy places providing a glimpse into the religious and political history of the city. That afternoon we toured the city’s Grand Bazaar and in the evening Fellow Ipek Yezdani ’08, a native of Istanbul and a reporter for the Milliyet newspaper, took us to a wonderful kabob restaurant and local dance club.
Our hosts at CNN Türk provided us with a tour of their impressive media complex, which houses several newspapers, television studios and the news channel. The next day, we had a morning of meetings with various journalists and activists, in which topics ranged from the head scarf debate to policies toward the Kurdish militant group, the PKK, considered a terrorist organization. After lunch on a plaza overlooking the Bosphorus, we boarded a chartered boat to our next meeting. The boat took us along the famous ancient trade route that separates Turkey’s European and Asian sections, providing more picturesque views of the city.
Later in the week, we traveled by plane to Turkey’s capital, Atatürk, where we spent the day meeting with military and government officials, walking through the mausoleum and museum of the Republic’s founder, Ataturk, and touring the parliament building. We ended the memorable week at religious ceremony of the Alevis sect of Islam, a marginalized group within the faith that has been discriminated against within Turkey for generations. It was an eye-opening experience for many of us to learn the group even existed, not to mention to experience their hospitality and hear the tenets of their faith.
Afterward, back at our hotel, we toasted champagne to our host, CNN Türk editor in chief Ferhat Boratav, for the generous hospitality that helped open a window into his fascinating country. And then we went into the night for one final Turkish feast.
