Captain’s Blog
Sunday/Monday
Greenbelt Park, MD
LINK: http://www.nps.gov/gree/
Newseum
LINK: http://www.newseum.org/?gclid=CLWD4r7tqqQCFZpN5Qodh2Oc5g
We woke this morning to overcast skies and rain. Fortunately the temperature and humidity dropped dramatically and we were able to get a restful night. We still hadn’t decided what to do today by 11am. Finally, around noon we headed out to DC and the Newseum .
The train station 
is about 2 miles from the campground so off we went. Took the train into DC and our stop was two blocks from the Newseum. We have been to DC several times and on the last trip we almost toured the Newseum but had so many other stops on our agenda we skipped it. The Newseum is number one on our agenda this time.
The Newseum is the world’s most interactive museum with five centuries of news history that meets up-to-the-second with technology on America’s Main Street. The Newseum’ has 14 major galleries and 15 theaters that bring you into and immerses you in the world’s greatest news stories highlighting the people, places and times. It has six levels and lots to see and do.
Since we had gotten such a late start we knew we would not be able to finish the entire Newseum in one afternoon. So you can imagine how pleased we were that the entrance tickets are good for a contiguous two days.
Our first day, Sunday, we spent 2.5 hours touring but did stop for a quick lunch in the cafeteria. The food, from the Wolfgang Puck Catering service was superb. We both had the braised beef with mashed potatoes and roasted vegetables. If you closed your eyes and forgot you were in a cafeteria you would think by the quality and taste of the food you were in a five-star restaurant.
I cannot speak highly enough about the Newseum. It brings an entirely new perspective on the way we view the first amendment and its laws that guarantee every citizen the freedom of religion, speech, press, petition and assembly as well as that of news media and photojournalists. We barely had time to finish one level and part of another before the museum closed.
On Monday we headed to DC much earlier with the goal of completing the Newseum and going over to the Supreme Court for a tour. As we moved through the Newseum each exhibit inspired a different emotion. The Pultizer Prize exhibit brought gasps, tears and sometimes laughter as we viewed the pictures and editorials that went with them.
The Berlin Wall Gallery was amazing as we stood in front of eight 12-foot-high sections of the original wall and one of the three story guard towers used for guards to watch over the wall with orders to shoot to kill - and they did. Two hundred people lost their lives trying to get escape.
Both Ron and I were in awe of the presentations by the news media and the lack of bias when presenting the positives and negatives of their own profession. There were exhibits that inspired us and those that made us cry but none could match the 9-11 Gallery and the Hurricane Katrina Gallery.
The 9-11 Gallery always sends tremendous emotions hurtling through your senses no matter how many times one 
sees the burning towers and their collapse. To hear the story told and how they felt during this horrific event from the journalists and news commentators after the fact was very emotional.
Nothing elicits pain, tears and disgust like the Hurricane Katrina Gallery. Pain and tears for the people of New Orleans and Mississippi and disgust that our government didn’t act faster to help the victims of not only the natural disaster of Katrina but the man-made disaster of substandard levies that was the ultimate cause of the loss of so many lives. The journalists who followed the story were so deeply affected that many of them suffered from PTSD, resulting in both personal and professional disasters.
We toured the News History Gallery, Internet, TV and Radio Gallery, World News Gallery, Great Books Gallery, Master Control Room, saw all the movies in the fifteen theaters and by 3:30 PM we found ourselves rushing because we wanted to see the last show of the day on the Holocaust.
The presentation on the Holocaust was from a very different perspective and definitely showed that the news media was willing to take the blame when they fell sort of presenting the news. Despite the fact that the Jews had been rounded up and sent to interment camps to die as early as 1938 it was never front - page news in the US. Despite the fact that the New York Times was owned and run by a prominent Jewish family the atrocities that were inflicted upon the European Jews was never made front page news in the New York Times because the owner did not want the world to think it was a Jewish newspaper. Needless to say by the end of the war it was indeed front- page news but too late for the millions of people that died – 60 % of European Jews. Finally, in the 70’s the owner of the Times did write an apology stating that as a journalist his paper did not do enough to try to stop the killing of Jews in Europe. Too little, too late.
That concluded our day and we did get to see the entire Newseum. It only took us 9 hours and we probably could have spent more time there. We would recommend it to anyone with a keen interest in the news, history and the America way of life with its triumphs and tragedies.
View of the Capital from the NEWSEUM
No comments:
Post a Comment