“IS THE MEDIA CENSORED?” UC BERKELEY JOURNALISM DEAN TO SPEAK AT AU

AUBURN - Award-winning journalist Orville Schell will speak on censorship and the media in the AU Hotel and Conference Center Auditorium at 4 p.m. on Thursday, April 6th. Schell’s talk winds up the semester-long “The Nuisance of Freedom” series on censorship sponsored by the AU College of Liberal Arts.

Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, will address the media’s critical role in public life and the factors that shape that role in “Is the Media censored? Politics, Profits, and Propaganda.” His award-winning work on a range of topics from California politics to economic reform in China uniquely prepares him to address both domestic and international issues of censorship.

Schell serves as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and on the board of Human Rights Watch. He has contributed to China coverage for major television networks and has worked as both a correspondent and consultant for PBS “Frontline” documentaries and an Emmy-award winning program for “60 Minutes.”

Schell is author of more than 14 books. His most recent, Virtual Tibet: Searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood, includes interviews with Richard Gere, the “most famous American” Buddhist, and actor Steven Seagal, who believes he is the reincarnation of a lama, as well as a wry narrative about visiting the set of the Brad Pitt film “Seven Years in Tibet.”

Schell’s other titles include Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China’s Leaders and a five-volume series on China. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Granta, Wired and Newsweek, among many other publications.

Schell’s talk will be followed by “Self-censorship: When Is It Necessary? What Are Its Dangers,” a panel discussion including AU faculty Larry Gerber (History), Lisa Channer (Theater), Mark Miller Graham (Art) and Dale Harrison (Communication and Journalism). A question-and-answer session will follow.

Schell’s talk and the panel discussion are sponsored by the AU College of Liberal Arts, with assistance from the Center for the Arts & Humanities, the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art and the AU Departments of English, History, Art and Communication and Journalism. For more information, call 334/844-4946.

Auburn University is a preeminent land-grant and comprehensive research institution with more than 23,000 students and 6,500 faculty and staff. Ranked among the top 50 public universities nationally, Auburn is Alabama’s largest educational institution, offering more than 230 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degree programs.

(Contributed by Connor Henton.)

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