"REPORTING FROM MOSCOW" PANEL GATHERS BUREAU CHIEFS SPANNING FIVE DECADES
Part of USC-Hosted Meeting of Nation's Oldest Slavic Studies Organization

Three highly acclaimed former Moscow correspondents will gather at USC in late March for a panel discussion focusing on their personal and professional experiences in Russia over the last half century. Titled "Reporting from Moscow: Khrushchev to Putin," the panel will feature Marvin Kalb, Charles Bierbauer, and Peter Baker, and it will be moderated by USC Russian politics expert Gordon Smith. The panel will range over many important issues in U.S.-Russian relations, including the collapse of Stalinism and censorship, the Cuban missile crisis, the end of the Cold War and the rise of Putinism, informed by the combined experiences and insights of these three prominent journalists appearing together for the first time.

USC President Andrew Sorensen will provide a welcome, as will Mary Anne Fitzpatrick and Charles Bierbauer, deans of the two USC colleges sponsoring the event, Arts and Sciences and Mass Communications and Information Studies.

Marvin Kalb reported from Moscow for CBS in the 1950s and '60s, at the beginning of a distinguished career as a journalist, Harvard professor, and author. He covered the historic kitchen debate between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev, a succession of Berlin crises, the Cuban missile crisis and the ouster of Khrushchev from power. In 30 years of award-winning reporting for CBS and NBC News, he was also chief Diplomatic Correspondent and host of Meet the Press. Kalb has authored or coauthored 12 books, including most recently The Media and the War on Terrorism (co-edited with Stephen Hess), which explores the interaction between the government and the media during times of war and national emergency. He founded the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and is currently Faculty Chair for the Kennedy School's Washington programs. He hosts the Kalb Report, a discussion of media ethics and responsibility at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. He is a regular contributor to Fox News and National Public Radio. Kalb received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree at USC's December 2003 commencement, at which he was speaker.

Charles Bierbauer was Moscow Bureau Chief for ABC News in the 1970s and a CNN correspondent for twenty years in Washington. He covered every US-Soviet summit from Ford-Brezhnev in Helsinki in 1975 through Clinton-Yeltsin in Vancouver in 1993. Stationed in Russia during a time of numerous dissident trials, he did the last interview with Andrei Sakharov prior to his arrest, an interview in which Sakharov criticized the Soviet Union for the invasion of Afghanistan and suggested the USSR ought to be denied the Olympic Games. A distinguished broadcast journalist, Bierbauer is also no stranger to print journalism, having written for the Chicago Daily News, the Associated Press, and his hometown newspaper, The (Allentown) Morning Call. From 1977-81, he was an overseas correspondent for ABC News, first as Moscow Bureau Chief and later as the Bonn Bureau chief. From 1981-2001, he covered the Supreme Court, the Bush and Reagan administrations and the presidential campaigns from 1984-2000 for CNN. He is currently Dean of USC's College of Mass Communications and Information Studies.

Peter Baker, Washington Post Moscow Bureau Chief from 2001 to 2004 is currently the Post's White House correspondent. With his wife and fellow bureau chief Susan Glasser he wrote the acclaimed Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution (2005). The book draws on their expertise covering Russia and the fourteen other nations that once belonged to the Soviet Union. During their overseas tour, they also covered the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mr. Baker has been a reporter at the Post for seventeen years, including two stints as White House correspondent, first during Bill Clinton’s presidency and now again covering George W. Bush. He is author of the New York Times bestseller, The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton (2000).

The panel, jointly sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies, will be moderated by Gordon Smith, director of the university's Walker Institute of International and Area Studies and a professor of Political Science. It is being presented as part of the 44th annual meeting of the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies (SCSS), the oldest, largest, and most active affiliate of the national Slavic Studies organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. Hosting the conference cements the growing reputation of Russian Studies at USC and provides an excellent opportunity to showcase USC's strengths in that field. The conference will attract academic and government registrants--including a significant international contingent--in areas including history, literature, political science, linguistics, anthropology, and art. A keynote address, open to conference registrants, will feature Nancy Condee of the University of Pittsburgh, a prolific author on Soviet and Russian culture. Her talk is entitled "Does the Empire Have No Close? Problems of 'National Identity.'"

The "Reporting from Moscow" panel, which will be free and open to the public, will take place 4:30-5:30 on Friday, March 24 in Gambrell auditorium, on the USC campus. The session will leave time for audience questions, and it will be followed by a public reception. For further information, contact USC Russian Program director Alexander Ogden (777-9573, ogden@sc.edu) or see the SCSS conference page on the web at :http://www.cas.sc.edu/dllc/russian/Events%20&%20Activities/SCSS06.html