Washington Post Investigative Reporter Scott Higham Returns to Stony Brook
By Michael Kelly On Nov. 14, Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post reporter Scott Higham returned to Stony Brook University, a place where he said he had some of the best years of his life. The Stony Brook graduate spoke to a packed Javits Lecture Center room about his passion for investigative reporting and his role as a public servant. Higham, a Huntington native, originally wanted to be a police officer like his father and serve the public, but his father dissuaded him from it. He came to Stony Brook with the hope of becoming an FBI agent, but quickly fell in love with journalism. He joined the newly formed Stony Brook Press, thinking it was “new and hip,” and soon saw how his articles could have a major impact. Spurred on by his earlier ambitions, he saw journalism as a venue through which he could serve the public like his father. “I saw the power of the press,” he said. His reporting could inform the public and unseat corruption. He said his eyes were also opened to “what a cool job it could be.” His passion for investigative reporting and serving the public came to the forefront in one of his first major stories, published in the New York Times. He explained how at the time, university police officers were not armed, and the university was trying to decide if they should be. They had put together a panel to decide whether or not to arm the police officers, but it was soon shown to Higham that the panel was only a façade. A source had tipped him off that while the panel was still deliberating, an order for 50 pistols had been made and the source gave Higham documentation confirming the purchases. The information in his hands made Higham feel a typical emotion of any young reporter. “I got really, really nervous,” he said. Higham set up an interview with the head of campus police, and after being assured by him that no guns had been purchased yet, Higham showed him the documents proving otherwise. After what Higham said felt like five minutes, but was probably much shorter, the campus police head asked him to turn off his tape recorder. “No,” Higham replied. Higham said the piece had an impact because it showed the public they had been lied to. “I was able to hold this guy accountable,” he said. But sometimes, Higham said, investigative reporting can be met with a mixed reaction. His work for the Washington Post on the 2004 Abu Ghraib prisoner torture story showed how some of the public can be outraged by a story, while others can be pleased. The Abu Ghraib prisoner torture scandal involved U.S. military abusing Iraqi prisoners in a Saddam-era torture chamber. More than 10 U.S. military personell have been found guilty of participating in the abuses in which Iraqi prisoners were beaten and humiliated. Higham explained how stories he had done about the Guantanamo Bay detention camp led him to be one of the top investigators in the Washington Post’s coverage of Abu Ghraib. He described how he started calling sources from his Guantanamo Bay stories to see what they knew about Abu Ghraib, and to see if he could get pictures from Abu Ghraib. One source, who remains anonymous, gave Higham multiple CDs containing such pictures. Higham described looking at the pictures as “nauseating,” but realized that he had something really powerful. The Washington Post chose to run some of the less offensive pictures, or as Higham put it, “ones you could look at and not throw up.” This decision to run the pictures and the stories about the scandal led Higham to receive a great deal of hate mail. Some lambasted him, calling him a traitor to his country–but others held a different opinion of the job he had done. He said how he had also received many e-mails thanking him for the public service he had provided. “Our country is better than that,” Higham said some readers wrote to him, thanking him for exposing the incidents. While his work may sometimes be met with resentment from some of the public, Higham still maintains his passion and energy for investigative reporting. “I just love the hunt,” he said. Finding out things people try to cover up and honestly informing the public still drives him to make sure he gives the public the best information possible. “There’s no value in being first and being wrong,” he said. |
