D.C.'s Newseum is the media's eye on history

The new incarnation of the Newseum in Washington, D.C., is dazzling, innovative and absorbing, a first-class addition to the capital's cultural institutions.

It is also, in some respects, an overpriced monument to journalistic self-glorification. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

A stroll around its six light-filled levels on Pennsylvania Avenue, with spectacular views of the Capitol and other majestic neighbors, reveals that it is actually a history museum disguised as a media retrospective. Eight giant, forbidding sections of the Berlin Wall -- stark concrete on the Communist side, graffiti-covered on the Western side -- are proof of that.

History also oozes from the photos and videos that recall disasters including the Hindenburg explosion, JFK's assassination and Sept. 11. But none of these images is quite as heart-stopping as the spire of mangled, twisted steel that had been the communications tower atop the World Trade Center, or a huge limestone chunk of the Pentagon from the day of the attacks.

If the anchors, reporters, photographers and cameramen who recorded those seismic events are bathed in a warm glow, that is not by accident. "I don't shy away from the narrative that there is something heroic about the practitioners of a free press," says Charles Overby, chief executive of the Freedom Forum, which built the Newseum.

While he sees the $450 million venture, which opened Friday, taking a "warts and all" approach, the truth is that the warts are small and strategically tucked away. The uplifting aura that permeates the building seems at odds with the growing public distrust of the news business and the huge journalistic blunders that have pockmarked its reputation.

In a corner of one narrow exhibit case are panels devoted to out-and-out liars: Janet Cooke of The Washington Post, Stephen Glass of the New Republic, Jayson Blair of The New York Times and Jack Kelley of USA Today. Each gets a paragraph or so. So does Judith Miller, whose badly flawed Times reports on then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction are briefly described under the headline "When Anonymous Sources Are Wrong."

That, and a couple of skeptical films, are about it.

Far more common are the journalist-as-hero exhibits, such as the one devoted to Watergate and John Mitchell's infamous quote about how Katharine Graham, the late Washington Post owner, would get a sensitive part of her anatomy caught in a big fat wringer if the paper published a story tying him to the criminal conspiracy. The paint-peeling Watergate hotel door that led to the burglars' capture is there, along with a monitor showing reports on the scandal by the likes of Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor.

Media buffs will enjoy such artifacts as Thomas Paine's writing desk, a spike used by the irascible columnist H.L. Mencken and pens wielded by the great Post cartoonist Herblock, not to mention the first satellite truck, rolled out in Minneapolis in 1984.

The Newseum is capable of striking lighter notes -- what other building would proudly display the 1983 New York Post headline "Headless Body in Topless Bar"? -- that prevent the experience from resembling a high school lecture. The same goes for a monitor playing comedic send-ups of media types.

I was equally fascinated by a dark room filled with old newspapers: the 1882 banner in the Neosho (Mo.) Times, "JESSE JAMES Assassinated" (the rest of the front page devoted to an ad for one store's clothing and hat department); the 1947 headline in the Washington Afro American, "Brooklyn Signs Jackie Robinson"; the 1962 front page of the Los Angeles Times (with "Marilyn Monroe Dies, Blame Pills"). And what might have been a ponderous press-freedom exhibit is leavened by an original Matt Groening drawing of Bart Simpson writing repeatedly on the blackboard, "The First Amendment Does Not Cover Burping."

There is a nice sense of serendipity to the place. Touch one computer screen and you can look at excerpts of famous books and documents, such as the Magna Carta and "Life and Times of Frederick Douglass."

Another stroll takes you past a 90-foot video wall that might be showing breaking news or documentaries (part of one of the building's 15 theaters, along with two television studios). While the Newseum displays 80 newspaper front pages each day, you can click on a screen for 500 such pages.

It is, in short, an overstuffed buffet, which diminishes its focus but increases the chances that you might find a few servings to your liking.

Overby says he hopes visitors will come away with a better understanding of the importance of a free press. Still, some insiders fear it will be viewed as a giant vanity project. And none of this comes cheap.

We're all spoiled by the plethora of free Smithsonian museums, but the $20 admission fee -- $13 for those 7 to 12, with younger kids free -- feels stiff. Eighty bucks for a couple with two teenagers? The Freedom Forum is delivering an upscale experience. (Yes, the Spy Museum charges adults $18, but doesn't claim any lofty educational goals.) On top of that, taking the family to the Newseum's Wolfgang Puck restaurant will set you back $13.95 for the Provencal salmon and $12.95 for the paella Valencia.

One of the last displays I happened upon featured film clips of Edward R. Murrow -- his show "presented by the Aluminum Co. of America" -- assailing the sleazy tactics of Joe McCarthy (and, moments later, interviewing a coquettish Marilyn Monroe). McCarthy, in a rebuttal, called Murrow "the cleverest of the jackal pack." The Newseum tends to glamorize Murrow and his successors and downplay the jackals. But without such exhibits, in an age of YouTube attention spans, much of this might be lost to the mists of history.