We are heavily dependent on the media to decipher the noise, confusion and panic around Coronavirus.
With seemingly paradoxical addresses from parliament and all areas of society being heavily affected by lockdown, the media’s role of presenting accurate, valuable and unbiased information is more important now than ever.
It should be able to present us with the immediate facts and discuss the implications of these facts, but is it doing this? Join this insightful panel discussion with journalists from the UK and the USA and better understand the media’s relationship to the hard facts, the bigger stories and the role it plays in our lives.
Kerry-Anne Mendoza is Editor-in-Chief of The Canary. She is known for creating one of the UK’s top independent political blogs Scriptonite Daily, for authoring the best-seller Austerity, and for her Middle East reporting, notably Operation Protective Edge from Gaza through the Summer of 2014.
Her passions are politics, economics and current affairs, which she examines with the basic question: “How do we build a world that works for everyone?” She is based in Bristol, UK
Tom Mills is a lecturer in Sociology and Policy at Aston University. He is a former co-editor of New Left Project and author of the book The BBC: Myth of a Public Service which is an important and timely examination of a crucial public institution that is constantly under threat.
Victor Pickard is an Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, Pennsylvania. Most recently he authored Democracy Without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society.
Previous books include Net Neutrality: A New Deal for the Digital Age (with David Berman). He is also co-editor of the books Will the Last Reporter Please Turn out the Lights (with Robert McChesney), The Future of Internet Policy (with Peter Decherney), and Media Activism in the Digital Age (with Guobin Yang).
Des Freedman was a founding member and recent chair of the Media Reform Coalition and was project lead for the Inquiry into the Future of Public Service Television chaired by Lord Puttnam.
He is a former editor of the Sage journal ‘Global Media and Communication’ and has edited several strands for Open Democracy. His latest books include Misunderstanding the Internet (with James Curran and Natalie Fenton) and The Contradictions of Media Power.
Des is currently Deputy Head of Department and Co-Director of the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre.
Date/time: 19 May, 6pm-7pm.
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/media-in-lockdown-tickets-105061058454