Examining Media Bias
The subject of bias in our media is one that gets many people’s hearts racing right around election time. And that is just what Director of Interdisciplinary Studies Patricia La Noue had in mind when choosing this year’s topic for the annual Mosaic Roundtable Forum. “What we hope students will come away with after this forum is the ability to look at media with a more critical eye,” says La Noue.
In addition to encouraging campuswide discussion of contemporary issues, the Mosaic Roundtable Forum is a showcase for UMBC’s nationally-known faculty experts. (Terry Eastland, publisher of the Weekly Standard, will also be participating as a guest panelist.) As in previous years, this year’s panel represents a variety of disciplines and will examine the issue of media bias from several important perspectives:
Christopher Corbett, a former reporter and news editor with The Associated Press, has been a journalist for over 30 years. His latest book, Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express (Random House/Broadway Books, 2003) is in its seventh printing and was published in paperback this fall. In 1990, Corbett was the James Thurber Journalist-in-Residence at the Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio, where he also taught in the Ohio State University’s journalism school. Since 1994, he has written The Back Page for Baltimore’s Style magazine, which received the City and Regional Magazine Award for best column in 1998 and 1999. At UMBC, Corbett serves as faculty advisor to The Retriever Weekly and teaches journalism courses in the English department.
Susan Dwyer (moderator) is a specialist in moral psychology and ethics and public policy, and has published on reconciliation, moral development, feminist theory, free speech and cyberpornography. She is editor (with the late Joel Feinberg) of The Problem of Abortion and The Program of Pornography. Dwyer is associate professor of philosophy and director of the master’s program in applied and professional ethics at UMBC and is an adjunct member of the philosophy department at the University of Maryland College Park.
Jason Loviglio is co-editor (with Michele Hilmes) of Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio (Routledge, 2002) and is author of the forthcoming The Intimate Public: Network Radio and Mass Mediated Democracy ( University of Minnesota Press). In 2003, he was awarded the J. Franklin Jameson Fellowship by the Library of Congress and the American Historical Association to conduct research in the NBC archives at the Library of Congress. Loviglio is a founding member of the North American Radio Studies Network, a member of the international Radio Studies Network and a member of the International Advisory Board of Radio Journal. At UMBC, he is assistant professor of American studies and teaches courses in media, popular culture and multiculturalism.
Thomas Schaller has published commentaries and op-ed features in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Baltimore Sun, Salon.com and the American Prospect online, and is frequently interviewed on public television and radio. He is co-founder and executive editor of Gadflyer.com, a progressive Internet magazine. Schaller has published academic articles in American Review of Politics, Constitutional Political Economy, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Public Choice and Publius: The Journal of Federalism. He is co-author of a forthcoming book on black state legislators (State University of New York Press). At UMBC, Schaller is associate professor of political science.
UMBC’s 2004 Interdisciplinary Studies Mosaic Roundtable, “Bias in the American Media,” will be held Wednesday, October 27, from 1 to 3 p.m. on the 7th floor of the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery. Members of the UMBC community and the general public are welcome. Read more about the event in Insights Online.
(10/25/04)
