Retrospective of Associated Press stops at journalism school during national tour

For 160 years, the Associated Press has covered the world’s history as it happened. Now, the stories behind some of those great stories – and the daring and dedication of the reporters who told them – will be on display at the Reynolds School of Journalism, Oct. 1 - 5, in the retrospective ‘Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else.’

“Through this amazing walk through history, the community will experience an emotional spectrum – excitement, pain, struggle, exuberance, desolation, and even victory – that attracts students to the practice of journalism,” said Rosemary McCarthy, interim dean.

Ellen Hale, AP vice president for corporate communications, Martha Mendoza and other journalists will talk about the exhibit and events that have shaped modern history. Hale was a Knight Fellow at Stanford University in 1993. She received the Overseas Press Club’s Hal Boyle Award for Outstanding Reporting from Abroad for her coverage of the global spread of AIDS. She is a former medical reporter, environmental reporter, and medical foreign correspondent. Hale anchored European coverage of the war on terrorism as a London correspondent for USA Today.

Mendoza, an award-winning national writer for the AP, won a 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting as part of a team that revealed, with extensive documentation, how American soldiers early in the Korean War killed hundreds of civilians at the No Gun Ri bridge. Most recently she has been an integral part of AP’s team reporting on the “friendly-fire” death in Afghanistan of former NFL player Pat Tillman.

The presentation will be held from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Oct. 3, in the journalism school’s Room 101. The exhibit will be held in conjunction with the release of the AP book of the same title, “Breaking News.” The ASUN Bookstore will sell copies of the book following Hale’s presentation.

“The exhibit and presentation will be of interest to faculty, staff, and students from disciplines as diverse as political science, sports, art and photography, international affairs, and justice studies,” said Saundra Keyes, journalism professor.

The exhibit and program will include photography and narrative about stories including:

• On the road to Burma in 1944, AP correspondent Frank Martin, observing a tribe of Naga headhunters singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” as the skeletons of 30,000 refugees lay nearby, reported that the tribe had learned the song from a missionary they had later beheaded.
• On the road to Burma in 1944, AP correspondent Frank Martin, observing a tribe of Naga headhunters singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” as the skeletons of 30,000 refugees lay nearby, reported that the tribe had learned the song from a missionary they had later beheaded.
• After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, AP reporter Kathryn Johnson was welcomed into the King household in Atlanta, sometimes cooking bacon and eggs for mourners and hungry children, but also filing stories from the Kings’ home.

The exhibit will be open to the public each day from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

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