The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder will host the 9th Annual MacBride Roundtable on Communication Wednesday and Thursday, Oct. 1-2.
The conference will bring media scholars from around the world to Boulder to discuss mass communication trends. Boulder is the first North American site for the prestigious Roundtable.
The theme of the conference, Global Media and Global Responsibility: A Time to Choose, will examine rights and responsibilities of the press in a period of expanding technology.
Among the lecturers and panelists are Douglas Kellner, University of Texas at Austin; Joe Mehan, Columbia University; and Sakae Ishikawa, Sophia University, Japan. In addition, Zala Volcic, a ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä-Boulder journalism graduate student, will present her research on Slovene Media in the 1990s.
Stephen Bates, literary editor of the Wilson Quarterly, will mark the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Hutchins Commission report on A Free and Responsible Press, by discussing the U.S. effort to establish a voluntary code of press responsibility.
Bates is the author of “If No News, Send Rumors.” He will speak at 9 a.m. Thursday in the University Memorial Center Forum Room. A former fellow of the Annenberg Washington Program and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, he holds bachelor’s and law degrees from Harvard University.
Sean MacBride, a Nobel laureate, was president of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems in the late 1970s. The commission was charged by UNESCO to write a report on world communication issues.
The controversial MacBride Report, titled “Many Voices, One World: Towards a New More Just and More Efficient World Information and Communication,” made charges against media policies and practices, leading to industry pressure on the Reagan administration to withdraw its membership in 1983.
Since that time, efforts have been made to continue discussions deriving from the MacBride Report focusing on communication and human rights, and social and cultural citizenship. These activities have been manifested primarily in a series of MacBride Roundtables.
Past roundtables have been held around the world in Harare, Zimbabwe (1989), Prague (1990), Istanbul (1991), Dublin (1993), Honolulu (1994), and Seoul (1996). The roundtables are the main forum for advocates and analysts of the NWICO (New World Information and Communication Order) Movement, alluded to in the title of the MacBride Report.
The Boulder MacBride Roundtable will be the first such meeting in North America.
For a schedule of programs, please contact the Center for Mass Media Research at (303) 492-5374.