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Event Highlights
Power and Pressure: The Media in Africa
April 27, 2011 from 1:00 pm to 7:00 pm
International Affairs Building, 15th Floor
Welcome and Opening Remarks
Anya Schiffrin
Media and the Extractive Sector
Arvind Ganesan, Angelo Izama, Peter Rosenblum, Ramata Soré
Moderator: Rachel Boynton
Transparency and Governance in Africa: The Work of NGOs
Kobina Aidoo, Ian Gary, Alexandra Gillies
Moderator: Eamon Kircher-Allen
African Media, Social Change, and the Politics of Representation
Ben Akoh, Dayo Olapade, Saskia Sassen
Moderator: Karen Attiah
How Do Changes in the Media Sector Relate to Economic Development?
Michael Behrman, Sanjukta Roy
Closing Remarks
Joseph Stiglitz
Facing the Fracture: Media & Economic Understanding
April 6, 2010 from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1501
9:00 Opening Remarks by Anya Schiffrin and Andrew Rich
9:30 Keynote by Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post
10:45 Newsroom Realities
Although little academic research has been done, the data suggest that journalists face increased pressure during economic crises. Information about sensitive topics can be harder to obtain, sources stop returning phone calls, and government officials increase their attempts to spin reporters. At the same time, media outlets worry about the fall of advertising revenues and layoffs. How does this crisis compare to others? What are the constraints journalists are facing today?
Panelists: Chrystia Freeland, US Managing Editor of the Financial Times; Professor Vanessa Perry, Georgetown University; Michael Massing, contributor to Columbia Journalism Review; Chi Chi Wu, National Consumer Law Center; Michael Hudson, Center for Responsible Lending; Chris Roush, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Moderator: Anya Schiffrin, Director of the Media and Communications Program at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs
12:00 Broadening the Coverage
There has been a lot of criticism of the US financial press for not seeing the crisis coming and for being "captured" by finance and mainstream thinking. But the economic crisis has been a chance for many reporters to broaden out their coverage and write about Main Street as well as Wall Street. Has coverage broadened enough? Are these changes in coverage here to stay or will it be back to business as usual once the crisis ends?
Panelists: Peter S. Goodman, New York Times; Alyssa Katz, New York University; Jeff Madrick, Roosevelt Institute; Robert Friedman, Bloomberg; Steve Pearlstein, Washington Post
Moderator: Dean Starkman, The Audit
1:30 Lunchtime talk with Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of Democracy Now!
2:45 The Internet and Economic Reporting
Around the world, the Internet has opened up analysis of the economic crisis in unprecedented ways. In China, Vietnam and many other countries, criticisms of government economic policy that would never be seen in the official press are being aired online. In the US, Talking Points Memo, Huffington Post, and a host of other sites have led the way and advanced much of the debate on economic policy. Bus is there great investigative reporting on the crisis happening online? Or is it largely opinion and commentary?
Panelists: Julia Angwin, The Wall Street Journal; Ed Harrison, creditwritedowns.com; Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism
Moderator: Lynn Parramore, Editor of New Deal 2.0
4:00 The Crisis around the World
In some parts of the world, such as China, the economic crisis has been covered in depth by official media and bloggers. In other places, like the Middle East, the crisis has not been a major story. In Central and Eastern Europe, advertising revenues have fallen dramatically, newsrooms have been slashed, and news coverage cut back. This panel will explore how the economic story has been covered and what shrinking revenues have done to the quality of reporting.
Panelists: Reg Chua, Editor of the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong; Pierre de Gasquet, Les Echos, Paris; Steve Schifferes, City University, London; Dame Babou, Sud Quotidien, Dhakar; Sabah Hamamou, Al-Ahram, Cairo; Zheyu Yang, Caixin Media, Beijing
Moderator: Rana Foroohar, Senior Economics Editor, Newsweek International
5:00 Closing Conversation with Joseph E. Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University, and Martin Wolf, Financial Time
Media in Iraq
March 31, 2010 from 12:15 pm to 2:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1302
Irex's Jackie Frank and freelance journalist Philip Robertson will talked about the state of the media in Iraq today. Frank discussed IREX's efforts to develop the media sector in Iraq through a combination of media law reform, grants and consultation to press associations and media outlets, support of journalism training institutions, professionalism training of journalists, and specialized outreach programs for elections and anti-corruption efforts. IREX has been working in Iraq since 2004, through grants given by the US Department of State (Department of Human Rights and Labor). Robertson spoke about covering the conflict in Iraq, his experiences with the fighters of Moqtada Al Sadr during the siege of Najaf and the struggle for independent reporting in the Middle East. In addition to his front-line reporting, Robertson gave his analysis of the media situation in Iraq, seven years after he arrived in Kurdistan by inflatable boat.
Jacqueline Frank (SIPA '05) worked in movies and television for many years, specializing in documentaries which took her to over 30 countries in Asia, Africa and Europe. Since graduating from SIPA, she worked in Egypt for Search for Common Ground, produced Darfur Now for Warner Brothers, and worked as Country Director on media development programs in Serbia and Iraq for IREX. She has been Country Director for the IREX Iraq program since November 2008, based in Baghdad.
Phillip Robertson has covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for a wide variety of news organizations. Over the past eight years, he has also published many long form feature articles in Salon.com, using first person narrative to communicate the effects of conflict on ordinary people. In 2003, Robertson was a finalist for the USC/Annenberg award for online journalism in the breaking news category. He has also reported for Time magazine, BBC World Service Radio, National Public Radio in the United States and the Christian Science Monitor. His investigative feature about cocaine smuggling and Chiquita Brands, The Octopus in the Cathedral of Salt, appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review's Fall 2007 issue. In August, 2008, after assignments in Colombia and Burma, he returned to Iraq for the Associated Press, covering the violence in the northern city of Mosul. Robertson received a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2009-2010 for Non-Fiction and is currently working on new projects in Burma and Afghanistan.
Dining with al-Qaeda
March 29, 2010 from 12:15 pm to 2:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1302
American media coverage of the Middle East is one reason that the U.S. stumbled into its continuing war in Iraq. Based on his new book Dining with al-Qaeda, Hugh Pope discusses the background to why broadcast and print reports from the region can range from the partial to the misleading. Despite the best of intentions, this is often because writers and editors cater to the assumed tastes of their American audience, avoid of issues that disturb domestic political constituencies, look for happy endings and prefer news about Americans doing good in the world (those 'plucky corporal stories'). Giving examples from a long career as a reporter for U.S. media in the region, Pope shows how each of these little omissions end up as bricks in a wall of incomprehension about what the region really can be.
Hugh Pope is Turkey/Cyprus Project Director for International Crisis Group, the conflict-prevention organization. Prior to this appointment in 2007, Pope was a foreign correspondent for 25 years, most recently spending a decade as correspondent covering Turkey, Middle East and Central Asia for The Wall Street Journal. Born in South Africa, Pope received a B.A. in Oriental Studies (Persian and Arabic) from Oxford University. His publications include Turkey Unveiled: a History of Modern Turkey (a New York Times 'notable book') and Sons of the Conquerors: the Rise of the Turkic world (one of the Economist's 'books of the year').
Fall 2009
Brown Bag Talk with Reporter Katharine Zaleski
September 21, 2009 from 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 253
The International Media, Advocacy and Communications (IMAC) program presented a Brown Bag talk with reporter Katharine Zaleski, who talked about her recent travels around the U.S. for her reporting on the health care debate, the future of digital journalism and how to get a job in online media.
Katharine Zaleski is the Senior News Editor at the Huffington Post. She has been in that role since May 2005, the month Huffington Post launched. Previously, Katharine worked for CNN after graduating from Dartmouth College. She has appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CBC, Air America, BBC Radio as well as other media outlets.
The Twitter Revolution?
October 15, 2009 from 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 711
The International Media, Advocacy and Communications (IMAC) Specialization held a Brown Bag lunch with journalist and Iran expert Iason Athanasiadis, who was arrested in the violent aftermath of the 2009 Iranian presidential elections.
Iason Athanasiadis is a regular contributor to the Christian Science Monitor and The Washington Times and was arrested in the violent aftermath of the 2009 Iranian presidential elections and was held in Teran's Evin Prison for twenty days.
He discussed his experiences, the 2009 elections and what role digital media played in the protests
How the Liberal Blogs Are Keeping President Obama Honest
November 10, 2009 from 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1302
The International Media, Advocacy and Communications specialization (IMAC) at SIPA welcomed John Aravosis, editor of AMERICAblog.com, one of the most influential Democratic political blogs in Washington, DC, who talked about the role of the liberal blogs in working with (and fighting against) the Obama administration during the 2008 presidential campaign, and on issues ranging from gay rights to health care reform.
He discussed the changing role that blogs have had in Washington's politics and how it is possible to earn a living as a blogger.
Pizza was served
For a listing of all events at SIPA this semester, please visit the SIPA calendar online.