Media, politics and the often-troubled relationship between the two will be explored in the 1994 free, public Cook Lectures on American Institutions March 7–8 in Room 250, Hutchins Hall.
“Media and Politics: Three Perspectives” will feature media critics Roger Wilkins, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Todd Gitlin.
Wilkins, journalist, lawyer, professor and commentator, will examine “How the Media Fail Us: Reflections of a Retired African American Journalist,” while Jamieson, author, professor and commentator, will review “Lessons of the 1992 Campaign.” Both will speak 3:30–5:30 p.m. March 7.
Gitlin, author, professor, poet and lecturer, will analyze “Images in the Crosshairs: Current Campaigns against the Media as Political Surrogates” 3:30–4:30 p.m. March 8.
That evening at 7:30 p.m., all three will take part in a round-table discussion in the Law School’s Honigman Auditorium, Room 100. They will be joined by Law School Dean Lee C. Bollinger and Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism at New York Univer-sity. Rosen is a frequent contributor to general periodicals and media critic for “Tikkun,” and is working on a book, What Are Journalists For?
Wilkins is the Clarence J. Robinson Professor of History and American Culture at George Mason University. He has had a wide-ranging career in government, journalism, academia and the private-foundation world. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Watergate coverage at the Washington Post, he also has been a network radio commentator and a senior adviser to the two presidential campaigns of the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Jamieson is professor of communication and dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent book is Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction and Democracy, and she also is the author of Packaging the Presidency and Eloquence in an Electronic Age. Jamieson appeared weekly on the public affairs television series “Listening to America” with Bill Moyers during the 1992 general election campaign.
Gitlin is professor of sociology and director of the mass communication program at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written six books, including Inside Prime Time, The Whole World is Watching and The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. He also has published widely in general periodicals and scholarly journals.
The William W. Cook Lectures on American Institutions were endowed by Cook, a recipient of bachelor’s and law degrees from the U-M. This year’s series is co-sponsored by the Law School, the Program in American Culture and LS&A.
For more information, call Richard Campbell, 763-2479, or Rick Pildes, 747-1014.
