Andrea Mitchell, a familiar face to viewers of NBC news, delivered the 14th annual James D. Ewing Lecture on ethics in communication at Duke Monday.
Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC, has covered and interviewed scores of world leaders, including five U.S. presidents and President of Cuba Fidel Castro.
Using examples from her lengthy career, Mitchell shared her personal experiences and thoughts to an intimate gathering of approximately 40 people in the Rhodes Conference Room of the Sanford Institute of Public Policy.
"I learned to have enough confidence to stand up to power at a very young age," said Mitchell, who started as a "copyboy" at a Philadelphia radio station. She was the first woman to work in that newsroom.
Introduced by fellow journalist Judy Woodruff-Trinity '68 and a visiting professor in public policy-Mitchell answered questions posed by William Raspberry, Knight professor of the practice of journalism and public policy and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post.
During the conversational lecture, Raspberry asked Mitchell about how she dealt with a possible major conflict of interest: her husband. Alan Greenspan was the chair of the Federal Reserve for 19 years until he retired earlier this year.
Mitchell said she would never cover economic issues as a rule and recused herself from any other stories with a possible interest conflict.
"In our eighteen and a half years together, we've managed to avoid each other professionally," she said. "Conspiracy theorists would say I knew things. I never knew things."
Raspberry also asked Mitchell if she viewed any of her work as having been a failure. She cited the coverage of the "weapons of mass destruction" story, on which she reported leading up to the Iraq invasion in 2003.
"We simply didn't have any independent sources, so we couldn't verify the CIA information," she said. "We were a captive to the process, and we didn't realize to what extent the intelligence was damaged. We were transmitting false information."
"There was a predisposition to rally around a national interest," she added. "There was a tendency not to criticize or analyze too severely."
Mitchell quickly answered "yes" when asked if a gender barrier still existed in journalism.
She also defended new CBS Evening News anchor and former colleague Katie Couric. As the first woman to solo anchor a nightly news broadcast, Couric has faced criticism and low ratings.
"She's very talented, very bright," Mitchell said. "There's certain people with natural talents, and she has plenty."
Mitchell spoke to several students personally after the lecture, offering advice to those who were considering a career in journalism.
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