CMI 2020 Annual Report

Speaker Series
NPR reporter’s Veterans
coverage continues at home
By Hayley Keys
Speaker Series
through phones, radios and TV screens,”
Lawrence said. “The program is meant to
help find a veteran who cannot help themselves.”
Lawrence said the idea was good in theory,
but after meeting a veteran who had been
put on the alert, he began to understand the
controversy.
“Your name and health conditions would
be made public, and you know it could feel
very violating,” Lawrence said. “You might
not want everyone who doesn’t know me to
know that I have problems.”
Lawrence finished the talk by telling the
crowd lighthearted stories about the people
he gets to meet every day. He mentioned
that he feels blessed to have a job where he
gets to interact with unique individuals on a
daily basis.
“I get to have a lot of fun meeting really inspiring
people,” Lawrence said. “Most of these
guys are totally squared away and doing
really well and have, you know, transitioned
in whatever way they needed to.”
Maddy Sedberry, a sophomore SAEM major,
attended the event to earn shadowing
hours, but she said she ended up really enjoying
the experience.
“I think it’s really interesting to hear about
veteran affairs. And I mean I’ve heard about
the issues, but honestly I never thought
about tackling mental health as a part of
that,” Sedberry said. “I think it was really
interesting to hear his topics on that and
how it might change in the future.”
Zach Washington, a freshman SAEM major,
said that Lawrence helped him become
more aware of the struggles of veterans,
something he hopes to share with others.
“This kind of helped inform me on a lot of
things and now I’m more consciously aware
of these issues and I always enjoy having an
opportunity to learn,” Washington said.
Sedberry also mentioned she hopes to bring
awareness of veteran affairs to her fellow
peers.
“I think I’m gonna take the information
and just you know talk about it with my
peers and be like, ‘Hey, I just saw this great
speaker, and this is what we talked about,’”
Sedberry said.
Editor’s note: This article first appeared in
The Globe.
Photo by Hayley Keys
WESA-FM reporter Chris Potter (left) moderates the discussion with Quil Lawrence in the Highmark Theatre.
Quil Lawrence is a National Public
Radio (NPR) correspondent who covers
veteran affairs around the world. On Oct.
17, as part of the Media Innovators Speaker
Series, Lawrence visited the Pittsburgh
Playhouse to talk to students and educators
about his experience as a journalist.
Lawrence said he spent many years acting
as a foreign correspondent in countries
like Iraq and Afghanistan, but he felt like he
wanted to do more.
“It just really started to occur to me that
I had something in common with [the
veterans], and I also wanted to understand
what it’s going to be like for them to come
home,” Lawrence said. “That was when I
started bothering NPR to bring me home
because there are all these reasons that we
need to see what happens, and we need to
make sure that America sort of makes good
on its contract with people.”
Lawrence spoke about his experiences
with different policies in place, and their
unintended consequences when it came to
veteran affairs.
“With the VA Mission, they decided they
are going to slowly expand this to all
veterans, but there are still a lot of problems,”
Lawrence said. “One of the biggest
problems that NPR has highlighted is that
people will get kicked off the program with
no explanation.”
According to Lawrence, the program was
created by the government to help caregivers
of veterans who are seriously injured.
He went on to talk about Matt Andrews,
a triple amputee who had recently been
kicked out of the program.
“He’s been through every manner of human
experience,” Lawrence said. “He’s been
homeless while a triple amputee, he’s dealt
with drug addiction and he was just kicked off
the caregiver program because the VA said he
hasn’t been making progress.”
Lawrence played a clip from one of his interviews
in which Andrews talked about his struggles
and his wife, Elizabeth, and mentions
the hardships they had been through.
“I’m still going to care for him, even if they
pay me or not,” Elizabeth said.
Another topic Lawrence talked about was
the Green Alert Program. This program was
implemented in Wisconsin, in an attempt to
decrease veteran suicide rates, but Lawrence
said it was met with controversy due to its
invasive nature.
“They instituted a Green Alert, and, like an
Amber Alert, it reaches people in the area
Photo by Center for Media Innovation
Prior to his presentation at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, Quil Lawrence talks with Carmen Gentile, military veteran and author of
Blinded by the Taliban. The roundtable discussion covered many topics related to media coverage of disabled veterans.
46 47