To me. In a number of my books for some reason i go back to the same characters of nonfiction so i think i may be one of the only nonfiction writers i know of who has a repertory cast. Peter jahrling for example the guy the swift ebola virus and the hot zone he said whiffing ebola virus from a flask was the second dumbest thing you did it. The dumbest thing hes ever done is to tell Richard Preston zubaydah. Peter is a good friend of mine and he has come back again and again. He has been a demon in the freezer or major character. He was a source for two of my books without being in the foreground and im now at work on another book and i think peter will be back in that one as well. In all this is a long way to answering your question. Its a matter of taking notes and getting to know my subjects. In this case i did not go to west africa. I did all of my reporting at m. I. T. And also at an nih laboratory in maryland that i never went to africa. I will be going to africa through the course of the research on this book. I never met humarr khan and i never saw the kenema hospital. But what i did do was i got to know members of his family. He had brothers and sisters who lived in the United States ended it with an extraordinary family. I got a real feel for this guy just by talking to the people who love him. So thats how i did this particular piece of research. I dont know bustamante or not. I love to talk about writing it. Thank you. I was wondering if you could comment on the affinity of the wealth we have had this outbreak and whether you think its failure was primarily a scientific one in underestimating the virus or maybe an anthropological one underestimating the conditions in which it was spread . Well there has been a lot of fingerpointing over this outbreak and a lot of discussion of the failure of the world health organization. The failure of all kinds of medical organizations and governments to really understand what was happening here. I see it a little bit differently. I would like to be able to get smug with you and say oh well i wrote the hot zone and i saw this coming a long time ago. Im sorry to tell you that im not really able to do that in any honest way. I think this outbreak really surprise people. Its always easy in retrospect and you know now we know. Do we park our brains at the door . You just think about these crowded urban environments and put ebola into a crowded slum in west africa or for that matter if ebola gets into daca in bangladesh or anywhere in south asia where hospitals are wellknown for not having adequate Infection Control, ebola could very easily leave west africa. But i see this is not so much a failure on the part of the Public Health community but as a Natural Disaster that simply overwhelmed us. I see it in the same terms as lets say a tsunami or an earthquake like the japanese tsunami. Take that for example, okay . The japanese have been praying preparing for for a long time for saddam is that they just didnt think of everything. They didnt think just how bad it was really going to be. A lot of people died in a the japanese tsunami. They could have done things better by then me end what we are seeing i think is essentially the and the powerlessness of the human species to really control its destiny in the ecosystems on the planet. In the end if it wasnt ebola its going to be Something Else and personally i think ebola is by no means the most dangerous virus on the planet. In a way whats happening with ebola right now is an Excellent Way to call for the very worst things that could happen. I see this outbreak regardless of where it goes. It could still go global. We have epidemiologists right here in this room. We have one guy that has just come back from liberia. I would love to hear your thoughts on this but he thinks they took a epidemic curve may be turning over in other words the number of cases may be flattening out. We dont know what the future holds for ebola. Its very unpredictable. I think what we can think about ebola is the kind of case study. Mother nature has given us an interesting case study in what can happen with emerging Infectious Disease when it comes out with some little host of nature that we didnt think about. I dont know if thats really an answer to your question. I. So let me ask a corollary of that question. Knowing what we know and then you say the ebola is not just in one area but in several, why do you think, its been there for months, why we think we are seeing such a low case number as we are . Im sorry, could you refresh us with your name . Ryan boykin. Ryan, thank you. Ryan you just got back from liberia, right . Yeah. Thank you for your work. Thanks. [applause] i heard one epidemiologist told me he sees in his Ebola Outbreak he sees what he calls the fireworks displays. He said we dont really understand what ebola is doing but it goes off like a burst of fireworks in some place like the capital of guinea. And then everything goes dark and all of a sudden there is nobody in the ebola ward. Weeks earlier there were 100 people another five. And he said what its like a fireworks display and things are dark and theres a bigger flash than before. He doesnt understand, this guy doesnt understand whats actually happening with Ebola Outbreak in why this is happening. Do you have an insight into this . He told me after things look like they were totally under control now all of a sudden there has been a bigger flash of the bullet and a not great and there are more cases than ever before in that city. Do you have any sense of whats happening . I have a few suggestions. Okay lets hear them. For one behavior change is a huge factor. Every single building in monrovia even outside in the slums they have handwashing stations where water with the water with a bit of detergent or bleach in it they have another measures like data nobody, theres no handshaking and none of that going on. Not that those behaviors in particular are responsible for human infections but i think its a testament to the fact that its always on everybodys minds. And at this point i dont think there are a lot of people there who dont believe its real its transmitted by bodily fluids for those kind of things. If you see people dying in front of you or your neighbor see people at dying in front of them its changes behaviors and i think there are a lot of behavior chance changes that have been. Even in america where you see. People being helped out of school because they came from her wand or whatever. And i think another reason is its a series of very small local outbreaks is what it really is. Any household or block their people who are most likely to be the caregivers and those are the people most likely to be infected. And after those people are infected and dying naturally in that area you are running out of people who have large numbers of contacts with sick individuals. So i think thats another part of that. I have a question. [inaudible] the question is what do they do with the bodys . This is another reason why i think the epidemic increase only in monrovia they got a lot better about responding to bodies. Even when i was there there were lots of people gathered around and a team coming to remove the bodies. Basically you have people dressed in ppe. Com so theres a phone number you can call to report the body. People come in an ambulance and spray fluorine all over the bo body, spray chlorine around it. Put it in a body bag, put in the ambulance, drive you outside of town to an incinerator outside of town a crematorium. Everybody that dies in monrovia with the exception possibly of children of members of parliament or something, essentially everybody who dies in monrovia now has that happened and they go and they are cremated at night. They threw all the bodies in there together. This itself caused a lot of tension. Family members, they dont get any ashes back. Theres nothing that they get back. So thats itself is a disincentive to telling somebody that your Family Member has di died. But anybody can call about a body or whatever. Its an example of how Infection Control versus control if you want to call it that. Thank you very much. Please join me in thanking richard for his presentation. [applause] and please join us for a reception straight back of the hall way right now. Good to see you there. [inaudible conversations] Ronald Reagan, he was he did not i have to say himself although this letter and his diary and documents are very wellwritten indeed. The books published by him his autobiography by an American Life he regarded as something being done by others. He went over it carefully. Or he had people go over it carefully. He was a pleasure to be around. My wife is a great horse woman and a lover of horses in so is he and they both shared this. At one time we had a number of pigs on our farm and it turned out that Ronald Reagan had been very interested in pigs and he never failed in going to state fairs like the iowa state fair to go and visit the pigs. He was a charming man. You tell an episode in another life where he came to the Simon Schuster offices when his autobiography was finished and he turned to the photographers and the cameras and waved and said i fear its a good book. I will have to read it sometime. Absolutely. Unfortunately it was true. He didnt actually read it and like it. Nixon was. Nixon started out writing every book himself. He was a lawyer. He would stack it up in front of him and he took some pride in his work. Ronald reagan i think was nonessential interested in math but i remember visiting his office in california after he had ended his presidency. He had this magnificent, a magnificent cabinet that stretched containing every single saddle that he had been presented with during his gubernatorial and president ial career. This wonderful row of western and english saddles. He was so proud of them. He took them down and show them and described what it was and who he presented it to. It was quite extraordinary. I describe i think in the book the fact that when he visited his office what you got was a photograph of yourself with the president which he signed. It was taken with a polaroid camera so he would sign it and put in a frame for you. When he did that i realize because i grew up in the business that there was a mark on the floor of his office. There were two pieces of duct tape crossed so that you and he would step to the right place together for the picture to be taken and i said thats extraordinary. The man is the governor of california. The man is twice the president of the United States and is still a movie actor. Jules simon executive director of the committee to protect journalist and author of the new censorship talks about the targeting of journalists by governments around the world including the u. S. Government. During this event hosted by Columbia Universitys graduate school of journalism and new york city mr. Simon is in conversation with Kathleen Carol executive editor of the associated press. Good evening everyone. Thank you for being you tonight. I am the dean of Academic Affairs at the Columbia Journalism School. We are pleased to have Kathleen Carroll and joel simon in a conversation on the new censorship. Its an increasingly dangerous profession. Joel simon is the head of the committee to protect journalists an organization founded in 1981 by a group of u. S. Correspondence to realize we were ignoring the dangers his colleagues around the world were facing. Where in the world journalists are attacked, imprisoned, killed, kidnapped, threatened, censored or harassed cpj takes action. When journalists cant speak for themselves cpj speaks out on their behalf. I know this because before coming to new york i was a journalist. Cpj was the group we would run for when whatever we are in trouble. Cpj played a key role in raising awareness of impunity about the killings in my country and elsewhere in the world. Journalists uniquely positioned to talk about how the landscape of threats have changed in the past few years. His new book, copies are available on the table at the back of the room. Its called the new censorship. It was published by columbia journalism review with the Columbia University press. It documents the changes that have taken place in the media landscape. Its a mustread for those of you who want to work as journalists overseas or for those of you who want to learn more about how despite technological changes in the information informational revolution journalism is a dangerous profession. The Columbia Journalism School is proud to be hosting this event tonight at our school has a long tradition of press freedom were. Many of us teach and do research and press freedom worldwide. Several of our faculty including myself and Victor Lebowski who just walked in and sit on board of trustees. More importantly 40 of her students come from overseas paid many of them from the places that joel talked about his book. Joe will be joined by Kathleen Carroll who is also member of the cpj board as executive editor and Senior Vice President of the associated press. Cap wing is a top news executive of the Worlds Largest independent news agency. She oversees some 2300 journalists working in more than 100 countries. She is a very keen awareness of the problems well be talking about tonight. Please join me in welcoming joel simon and Kathleen Carroll. [applause] thank you sheila. Joel why do you start out by talking a little bit about this that this new book. I would love to. Thank you so much and thank you sheila, thank you to the Journalism School for hosting this discussion. The new censorship explores fundamental contradictions of our modern global existence. Why in an age defined by information are the people who bring us the news dying in Record Numbers . Y. At a time when technology was supposed to make censorship impossible isnt actually on the rise . Lets start off with some raw numbers. According to cpj database last two years have been the most deadly and dangerous for journalists in history. A Record Number of journalists have been killed. A Record Number are in prison. Freedom of expression is on the wane according to independent advocacy core. In the new censorship what i try to do is address these issues not in theoretical terms but based on my own experience as executive director of the committee to protect journalism. So the book opens with a cpj mission we undertook to pakistan in this mission happens to coincide with a may 2, 2011 raid that killed osama bin ladin. The scene in pakistan gave me renewed understanding for the unique role that journalist play by informing their own societies but also the Global Public particularly in times of crisis and it also clarifies for me personally the imperative that i feel to support local journalists on the frontline in news. I begin my own career as a journalist covering mexico and Central America and im old enough to recall writing my very first story on a manual typewriter and by dictation. I made my living as a freelancer often telling the exact same story to multiple publications. This is a kind of journalism like so many others that have been completely disrupted by the internet. In the first chapter i describe the transition as ive seen it. When i was in mexico there were a few dozen International Reporters and we sort of served as information gatekeepers interpreting mexico for the world. We did a decent job but most of us were working on more or less the same stories for different markets and audiences. Just to sort of fastforward by the time the 2003 iraq war rolled around this kind of reporting was obsolete since news consumers people were following developments could curate their own news by using search. Then if you want to fastforward again to the 2010 arab uprisings that have been replaced by social media which not only democratized newsgathering spin in some ways it made it more efficient and more participatory. Journalism has not been transformed by these technologies. Frankly its been upended. There is also obviously tremendous excitement about whats happening in many ways particularly in a place like columbia columbia but there are tremendous challenges as well and i want to focus on some of those. In some ways the abundance of information thats available on line if skiers the tremendous gaps in our knowledge about global events because information is suppressed by violence and censorship. One of the leading obstacles in the free flow of information is the ride rice of what i call elected autocrats that empowered by Popular Support in their success at the polls, use their power to dismantle the institutions that constrain and particularly the media. In the book i look at a couple of case studies. I look at air to one in turkey in the late hugo chavez and venezuela and putin in russia. These are all leaders that use these strategies to map their recessive policies and they have used things like legal harassment and antiterror prosecutions in the creation of parallel media structures finance supported by the state. These strategies are effective because the leaders are able to position these actions consistent with international norms. This in my view is the very essence of the new censorship. Journalists also face a variety of threats from nonstate actors including criminal and terror groups and in fact if you look at the terror dynamics as were played out in iraq journalist threatened by militant groups who sought to kidnap and kill them and the u. S. Military using overaggressive and the unjustified detention of many reporters held for long periods in deplorable conditions. One of those journalists was an ap reporter. I address in the book specific actions that the median