[act-ma] (Wed.) 1/28 Alex Jones and Charles Sennott on "The Media and Democracy" at Cambridge Forum

[director at cambridgeforum.org]

CAMBRIDGE FORUM
3 Church Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
617-495-2727
email: director at cambridgeforum.org
www.cambridgeforum.org

Release                                                                                       
January 28, 2015

THE HEALTH OF DEMOCRACY: THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA

On Wednesday, January 28, 2015, at 7:00 p.m. Cambridge Forum hosts ALEX S.
JONES, director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and
Public Policy, discussing “The Role of the Media” in fostering a
healthy democracy and a robust social contract.  CHARLES SENNOTT of The
GroundTruth Project responds.  A free press, public access to information,
and a broad range of ideas and opinions were considered so essential for a
healthy democratic republic that the Founders included protection for
freedom of the press in the First Amendment to the Constitution.  How is
today’s press – print and electronic – is carrying out its mission? 
Where do current threats to a free press come from?  How can citizens
inform themselves in today’s media environment?

Alex Jones is Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and
Public Policy and Laurence M. Lombard Lecturer in the Press and Public
Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He covered the press for The New York
Times from 1983 to 1992 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. His
most recent book, Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds
Democracy was published in August 2009. The New York Times Sunday Book
Review called Jones a bringer of light in the encircling doom.  He
co-authored two previous books, including The Trust: The Private and
Powerful Family Behind the New York Times, which was a finalist for the
National Book Critics Circle award in biography. He has been a Nieman
Fellow at Harvard, a host of National Public Radio's On the Media, and host
and Executive Editor of PBS's Media Matters. In 2011, he was awarded the
DeWitt Carter Reddick Award by the University of Texas for career
achievement and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He serves on the boards of the Committee of Concerned Journalists,
International Center for Journalists, Foundation of the Society of
Professional Journalists, Nieman Foundation, Black Mountain Institute, the
Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, and other professional
organizations.

CHARLES SENNOTT is the co-founder of GlobalPost, launched in 2008 to
produce a new source of original international reporting for the digital
age at a time of diminished foreign coverage by American media.. He also
heads up The GroundTruth Project, a foundation-supported initiative that is
dedicated to training the next generation of foreign correspondents in the
digital age and producing in-depth Special Reports for GlobalPost.  An
award-winning foreign correspondent with 25 years of experience, Sennott
has reported on the front lines of wars and insurgencies in at least 15
countries, including the 2011 revolution in Cairo and the Arab Spring,
Afghanistan, and Iraq. Sennott was a foreign correspondent for The Boston
Globe where he served as Middle East Bureau Chief based in Jerusalem from
1997 to 2001 and as Europe Bureau Chief based in London from 2001 to
2005.  After a year as a Nieman Fellow, he returned to the Globe in 2006
as a Staff Writer for Special Projects where he did pioneering work in
multimedia.

/This program is funded in part by MassHumanities, which receives support
from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National
Endowment for the Humanities./

The program is free and open to the public. The forum takes place at the
First Parish in Cambridge, 1446 Massachusetts Avenue in Harvard Square. 
Cambridge Forum is recorded and edited for public radio broadcast. Edited
podcasts are available, and select forums can also be viewed in their
entirety on YouTube.
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Cambridge Forum
3 Church Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-495-2727
www.cambridgeforum.org