March 29, 2005

Media Ownership & Media Bias: A Crisis in the Newsroom—a panel discussion featuring three of the nation’s top editors—at the Lobero Theatre

Summary Facts:

• Media Ownership & Media Bias: A Crisis in the Newsroom
• A dialogue with three pre-eminent editors featuring Lionel Barber, U.S. Managing Editor of the Financial Times, Bill Keller, Executive Editor of The New York Times and Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate magazine
• Moderated by journalists/authors Ann Louise Bardach and Virginia Postrel
• A UCSB Center for Film, Television and New Media Event
• Saturday, May 7
• 3 pm / Lobero Theatre, 33 E. Canon Perdido Street, Santa Barbara
• General public $10 / UCSB students $5
• Tickets/Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535

Three of the most influential news editors in the world—Lionel Barber of the Financial Times, Bill Keller of The New York Times and Jacob Weisberg of Slate magazine—will take part in the fascinating panel discussion on Media Ownership & Media Bias—A Crisis in the Newsroom on Saturday, May 7 at 3 pm at the Lobero Theatre, 33 E. Canon Perdido Street, Santa Barbara. This event, presented by The Media Project of the UCSB Center for Film, Television and New Media (CFTNM), the College of Letters & Science Critical Issues Endowment, the Arthur N. Rupe Chair in the Social Effects of Mass Communication and UCSB Arts & Lectures, will be moderated by esteemed journalists Ann Louise Bardach and Virginia Postrel.

At the present time five huge corporations—Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS)—own most of the newspapers, magazines, movie studios, publishing houses, and radio and TV stations in the United States, with General Electric’s NBC a close sixth. Many have questioned this unprecedented concentration of media power in the hands of a corporate few. Scholar and media critic Robert McChesney has written, “The corporate media cement a system whereby the wealthy and powerful few make the most important decisions with virtually no informed public participation. Crucial political issues are barely covered by the corporate media, or else are warped to fit the confines of elite debate, stripping the ordinary citizenry of the tools they need to be informed, active participants in a democracy.”

This panel discussion will debate the dangers and virtues of the concentration of media ownership, asking questions such as: Is there any upside? Is media bias inevitable? What necessary safeguards should or need to be imposed? Is the Internet part of the solution or the problem? Should or can standards be imposed by the industry?

Constance Penley, professor of film studies and Co-Director of the Center for Film, Television and New Media, says, “I am very grateful to Ann Louise Bardach, the Director of The Media Project of the Center, for organizing this event, which we hope will be only the first of several such debates about what many see to be a crisis in the newsroom.”

Lionel Barber, the Financial Times’ US managing editor, is responsible for the FT’s US edition and for all US news on FT.com. Prior to this position, he was the editor of the FT’s Continental European edition, FT news editor, Brussels bureau chief, and both Washington correspondent and US editor. A graduate of Oxford University, Barber has written several books and has lectured widely on US foreign policy, transatlantic relations, European security and monetary union in the US and Europe.

Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, had previously been an Op-Ed columnist and senior writer for The New York Times Magazine. His numerous positions with The Times include managing editor, foreign editor, chief of the Johannesburg bureau, and correspondent and bureau chief in Moscow. In 1989, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Soviet Union. He graduated from Pomona College and completed the Advanced Management Program at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate magazine, the Internet magazine published by The Washington Post Company, originally joined Slate as Chief Political Correspondent. Weisberg has worked as contributing writer to both The New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair and as a reporter for Newsweek in London and Washington, a writer and editor for The New Republic, and writer of the “National Interest” column for New York Magazine. He attended Yale University and New College, Oxford.

Ann Louise Bardach is the author of Cuba Confidential, named one of ten best nonfiction books of 2002 by the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Bardach, winner of the prestigious PEN/USA Award for Journalism in 1995, is the Director of The Media Project at the CFTNM. She currently writes for Slate and previously was a contributing editor to Vanity Fair for ten years. She has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post and has been a columnist for Newsweek International.

Virginia Postrel is the author of The Substance of Style and The Future and Its Enemies. She writes the Economic Scene column for The New York Times business section and a quarterly column for Forbes. From 1989 to 2000, Postrel was editor of Reason magazine and she founded Reason Online, the magazine’s website, in 1995. Postrel has been a columnist for Forbes and its companion technology magazine Forbes ASAP. Her work also appears in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. Postrel graduated from Princeton University with a degree in English.

Ron Rice, professor of communication and Co-Director of the Center for Film, Television and New Media says, “This session featuring influential journalists and editors is a major event in our year-long series ‘Media Ownership: Research and Regulation.’ The series’ capstone is a day-long conference on May 21 which will discuss media ownership trends, legal/historic/ethical issues, access to print and online media, and the relationships between research and policy.” For more details, please see the Center’s website at www.cftnm.ucsb.edu.

This event is presented by The Media Project of the UCSB Center for Film, Television and New Media, the College of Letters & Science Critical Issues Endowment, the Arthur N. Rupe Chair in the Social Effects of Mass Communication and UCSB Arts & Lectures. It is sponsored by public radio station KCRW-Santa Monica (KCRW.com), now heard on 106.9 FM in Santa Barbara.

Tickets for the event are $10 for the general public and $5 for UCSB students, who must show valid ID when purchasing tickets and at the door. Tickets are on sale now and can also be purchased at the door, if still available.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.