A print journalism legend who spent 49 years with the Associated Press covering events across the globe will speak at West Virginia University on Monday (March 11) kicking off the Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalisms 2002 Journalism Week.
Hugh A. Mulligan, a retired Associated Press special correspondent, will speak at 7 p.m. in Room 458 of the Business&Economics Building. The event, and all events during the March 11-15 activities, is free and open to the public.
“Hugh Mulligan is truly a legend in print journalism. The breath and depth of his lifetime of news coverage is breathtaking. He is truly an eyewitness to the extraordinary history of the last half of the 20th century. We are privileged to have him here at the Journalism School,”said SOJ Dean Christine Martin.
Mulligans presentation is being sponsored by the Clark Family Emery”Pete”L. Sasser Lectureship in Journalism. His presentation,”The New, New Journalism: Covering Terrorism and the New Breed of War Correspondent,”will examine what it takes to cover the War on Terrorism.
Who better to assess the role of the journalist in war than Mulligan, who covered virtually every major news story in his 49 years with the Associated Press. He has been an eyewitness to terrorism in Vietnam, Cambodia, Ulster, the Middle East, Biafra, Eastern Europe, Angola, Northern Ireland and Iran.
On Monday, Mulligan will compare the Vietnam War with the war in Afghanistan and will look at several issues, including the new breed of war correspondent and whether sources can be trusted.
Mulligans lecture is also a part of Ogden Newspapers Visiting Professor George Espers”The Role of the Journalist in War”spring class, which was designed to respond to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the ensuing war in Afghanistan.
Mulligan, who worked as a correspondent, feature writer and columnist, is in the classic tradition of the globe trotting reporter. His assignments have taken him to 142 countries, and his byline has appeared over such exotic datelines as Tibet, Timbuktu, Transylvania, Tristan da Cunha and Tahiti.
Mulligan covered both the rise and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the death and election of three popes, the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana and Princess Dianas funeral. He accompanied President John F. Kennedy to Ireland and President Richard Nixon to China and Russia. He witnessed a number of space shots at Cape Canaveral, including John Glenns orbital flight and then his return to space as a senior citizen. He has covered Pope John Paul II in many countries on five continents, including his emotional return to his Polish homeland and his visits to Cuba and the Holy Land.
As a war correspondent, Mulligan spent 37 months in Vietnam and a year in Cambodia. He saw the fall of Angor Wat and was in Hanoi when the last U.S. pilot was released. He covered the Battle of the Golan Heights in the 1967 Arab-Israel war and was the first non-Israeli correspondent to cross the Suez Canal with Gen. Sharons armored units in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He was in Biafra when Owerri fell, in Derry when the Irish”Troubles”resumed in hate and violence in 1969, in Nicosia when the U.S. Ambassador was assassinated during the Cyprus War and in Angola when the U.S. mercenaries were executed.
His assignments often involve bizarre transportation. He went to the North Pole in a Navy blimp, on a camel patrol with the Trucial Oman Scouts, on a helicopter rescue mission to pick up a pilot downed over North Vietnam, on the back of an elephant with highland tribes patrolling the Ho Chi Minh in the jungles of Vietnam, with over-the-road truckers in an 18-wheel trailer from Cleveland to Anchorage, on a nationwide train tour with the Metropolitan Opera and down Idahos River of No Return aboard a speeding jet boat that hit a rock and capsized.
Off beat coverage, so to speak, included a World Nudist convention on the Riviera, where reporters complained of having no place to pin their credentials.
For nearly a decade, from 1977 to 1986, Mulligan turned his wit and lively prose to writing”Mulligans Stew,”a thrice-weekly column that appeared in 400 U.S. daily newspapers and a number around the world. Mulligan retired after 49 years with the Associated Press in November 2000.