Robert McChesney in Iowa City Monday
(mods - I have permission to reprint material from BFIA)
http://www.blogforiowa.com/2014/03/05/author-of-dollarocracy-coming-to-the-university-of-iowa/
March 5, 2014 |
“Dollarocracy is the most important political book of the year, maybe of our times. This is exactly the book every concerned American needs to read, because the process of understanding what exactly is going on and taking America back from the corporations starts here.” —Thom Hartmann
“America has two problems: money and media.” – Randi Rhodes
Media activist Robert McChesney, co-founder of Free Press and co-author with John Nichols of Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America, will give a lecture March 10 on the University of Iowa campus. McChesney has most recently authored Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy. Click here for more information about Robert McChesney.
IOWA CITY- Prominent media activist Robert McChesney, Gutgsell Endowned professor at the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, will deliver the 2014 Li Chen lecture for the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication (SJMC) on Monday, March 10, at 6:30 p.m. in W128 Chemistry Building. The lecture is free and open to the public.
McChesney’s talk is titled “The Crisis of Democracy is a Crisis of Journalism: They Had a Past, But Do They Have a Future?”
He will discuss the role media play in democratic and capitalist societies and examine the relationship between the closure of newsrooms and the dearth of media coverage of public life. “We have to look to our past for an independent, uncensored newsroom,”McChesney said. “That’s the biggest challenge of our times in media and communication. We need good journalism.”
UI journalism associate professor and Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Berry said McChesney makes longtime journalists like himself think self-critically about journalistic conventions that journalists tend to accept by rote.
Until Berry read McChesney’s and John Nichols’s book, The Death and Life of American Journalism, he said he would have dismissed the notion of government lending a hand to ailing news organizations. “The authors make a strong and thought-provoking case, as they do for many other ideas they introduce,” Berry said. “That’s precisely why students, journalists and citizens will want to hear McChesney- he will make them think, question cherished notions, and consider new ideas.”
McChesney has written or edited 27 books, more than 100 journal articles, 150 book chapters, and another 350 newspaper pieces, magazine articles, and book reviews. From 2002 through 2012, he hosted the “Media Matters” weekly radio program every Sunday afternoon on WILL-AM radio.
The Li Chen Distinguished Lecture series is made possible by a gift to the UI Foundation. Li Chen lecturers must be working journalists or media scholars and must, in addition to presenting a public lecture at the UI, visit SJMC classes and meet with graduate students and faculty in the department.
For more about Robert McChesney, visit his website
