Alicia Shepard

rdf:langString Alicia Shepard

rdf:langString Alicia C. Shepard (born April 27, 1953, in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American journalist, media writer and expert on the work and lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. In February 2014, she moved to Kabul, Afghanistan to work with Afghan journalists. In fall 2012 Shepard joined the University of Nevada, Las Vegas faculty as a guest professor for the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs. She joined National Public Radio (NPR) in October, 2007, for a three-year appointment as the Ombudsman for the nonprofit public media organization that ended May 31, 2011. In that role, she said on June 21, 2009, that waterboarding, as practiced by Americans on terror captives, should not be called 'torture', although she later mentioned in an interview that "I think that it does... constitute torture." On this matter she claimed she was supporting an NPR policy originated by Managing Editor David Sweeney. Shepard taught media ethics at Georgetown University to its masters program from 2007 until 2010. She also taught journalism at American University. She was a Times Mirror Visiting Professor at University of Texas at Austin for the 2005-2006 academic year, where she taught a class she designed on Watergate and the press. She spent the last four years interviewing more than 175 people connected to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and sifting through the new archival materials that UT bought from Woodward and Bernstein for $5 million in 2003. She is the author of the 2006 book "Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate."