Pulitzer-Winning SB Alum Recalls Journalism at Alma Mater

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By Michael Kelly
SBU J-School Reporter

    Washington Post and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Scott Higham returned Nov. 14 to Stony Brook University—a place where he said he had some of the best years of his life—to participate in the School of Journalism’s “My Life As…” series. The Stony Brook graduate spoke to a overflowing 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, he said. Instead, he came to Stony Brook with the idea of becoming an FBI agent.

    But he quickly fell in love with journalism.

     He joined the recently formed Stony Brook Press, thinking it was “new and hip,” and soon saw that his articles could have an impact. Spurred by his earlier ambition to serve the public as his father had, he saw journalism as a venue through which he could do that.

     “I saw the power of the press,” he said. His reporting could inform the public and unseat corruption. He also saw “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, which he sold to The New York Times. He explained how at the time university police officers carried no firearms, and the university had set up a task force to consider whether to arm them. Higham soon realized that the panel was only a façade.

    A source had tipped him off that while the panel was still deliberating, the university police department had placed an order for 50 pistols, and the source gave Higham documentation confirming the purchases. The information in his hands made Higham feel an emotion typical of any fledgling reporter.

“I got really, really nervous,” he said.

Higham set up an interview with the head of campus police, and after the chief assured him that no guns had yet been purchased, Higham showed him the documents he had that proved otherwise.     After what Higham said felt like five minutes but was probably much a shorter time, 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 meets with a mixed reaction. His work for the Washington Post on the torturing of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004 outraged some readers while pleasing others.

    The Abu Ghraib scandal involved U.S. military personnel abusing Iraqi prisoners in Saddam Hussein's most notorious prison. More than 10 U.S. military members 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 whether he could get pictures from Abu Ghraib.

    One source, who remains anonymous to this day, gave Higham multiple CDs containing such pictures. Higham described looking at the pictures as “nauseating” but realized that he had something 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 that appeared in the Washington Post about the scandal, brought Higham a great deal of hate mail. People lambasted him, calling him a traitor to his country. But others held a different opinion of the job he had done.

    He said 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 incident.

    While his work may be met with resentment from some, Higham 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 drive him to make sure he gives the public the best information possible. And he always takes his time to make sure he's right.

    “There’s no value in being first and being wrong,” he said.

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