Soledad O\u2019Brien remembers a girl in her high school on Long Island, New York, who broke a front tooth and went for many months without getting it fixed.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien grew up in a stable, comfortable home and never had to worry about shelter, food, medical care, or other valuable parts of stable living. And she never gave much thought to why the girl didn\u2019t get her tooth fixed.<\/p>\n
But the girl and her front tooth are still on her mind decades later. That girl makes her think about all the young women, then and now, who live unstable lives, who can\u2019t meet daily needs that are met without much thought in other homes. \u201cI was so naive and stupid about those things,\u201d O\u2019Brien said during an \u201cOn the Issues with Mike Gousha\u201d program at Marquette Law School on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat sixteen-year-old girl walks around (with a broken front tooth). Think about her family circumstances, and think about what this girl was going through that that was completely normal. I don\u2019t think I ever thought about poverty, I don\u2019t think I ever thought about access to health care, or all these things as a journalist I would really dig in to.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few minutes later, as she was talking about covering the aftermath of an earthquake in Haiti in 2010 that killed tens of thousands of people, she returned to the girl with the missing tooth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am sure that if, in my high school, I had been standing with a young woman who had grown up in poverty, she would have said, do you see that girl who is missing a tooth? How do you not see that, Soledad? You don\u2019t see it because you are a comfortable middle-class girl who doesn\u2019t have to see, you have never thought about it one minute of your life, because your parents are teachers and they have excellent dental care. You don\u2019t have to see this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, she is dedicated to seeing people like that student. \u201cI think that translates into story coverage,\u201d she said. Genuinely seeing people whose stories don\u2019t get the attention they deserve, digging in depth into issues many hesitate to touch, and reporting with passion and authenticity have made O\u2019Brien one of the most respected and prominent journalists in the nation. A former CNN and NBC anchor, an author and documentary film maker, she is founder and CEO of a media company, Starfish Media Group, and anchor of \u201cMatter of Fact with Soledad O\u2019Brien,\u201d a weekly political magazine program shown nationwide on the Hearst television network and elsewhere.<\/p>\n
The program with Gousha, the Law School\u2019s distinguished fellow in law and public policy, was part of a full day of events for O\u2019Brien on the Marquette University campus, capped by delivering the annual Nieman Lecture, hosted by the J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communications.<\/p>\n
In her conversation with Gousha, O\u2019Brien hit frequently on a theme: There are people whose stories are important and compelling, and they aren\u2019t always the ones in the biggest positions or who are at the head of a march. One in five children in America live in poverty, she said, but \u201cwhen was the last time you saw a story on child poverty?”<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien said she loves it that the pieces she does sometimes make people uncomfortable. That can be a way to prod thinking. She sometimes wants to ask people, \u201cWhat have you been lulled in to?\u201d<\/p>\n
She was bluntly critical of the venue in which she has made much of her living, television news. \u201cTV news is painful to watch,\u201d she said. Why? \u201cIt\u2019s structured around people yelling at each other. . . . The opportunity to educate people is something we just don\u2019t see on television.\u201d The yelling and the drama of television talk programs is \u201ca waste of a platform,\u201d she said. She said the Sunday morning major network news talk shows too often offer \u201cthe same people all the time,\u201d adding, \u201cIt\u2019s offensive\u201d<\/p>\n
Issues around death and dying. Care giving. What\u2019s happening along the Mexican border, through the eyes of people who live there. These are all subjects that capture O\u2019Brien\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n
And she and her husband, Brad Raymond, launched a philanthropy, the PowHERful Foundation, which helps young women get to and through college. The foundation offers scholarships, but also helps recipients overcome obstacles that can get in the way of students succeeding through mentoring, counseling, or other help.<\/p>\n