Media critic Janine Jackson will present “Can You Trust Mainstream News Media? Racial and Other Biases” at Ithaca College on Tuesday, Oct. 25. Free and open to the public, her 7 p.m. talk in Emerson Suites is sponsored by the college’s Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM).
Jackson is the program director of the media watch group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), serving as producer and host of its nationally syndicated radio show “CounterSpin,” which is heard in the Ithaca area on WRFI. She also contributes frequently to FAIR’s newsletter, Extra! and co-edited “The FAIR Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the ’90s.”
PCIM director Jeff Cohen, who founded FAIR in 1986 and left the organization 16 years ago, says Jackson has a unique ability to both point out where media bias is occurring and explain why it happens.
“Many news consumers in our country have lost faith in corporate-dominated mainstream media,” says Cohen. “Whether she’s speaking on media coverage of the Iraq invasion, police shootings or the current election circus, Jackson’s critical voice is always enlightening.”
Jackson has appeared on ABC‘s “Nightline” and CNN Headline News, among other outlets, to discuss media controversies, and testified before Congress during one of the battles over funding for public broadcasting. Her writings have been included in the books “Civil Rights Since 1787” and “Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism.”
Based in Ithaca College’s Roy H. Park School of Communications, the Park Center for Independent Media is a national center for the study of media outlets that create and distribute content outside traditional corporate systems. For more information, visit www.ithaca.edu/indy or contact Jeff Cohen at jcohen@ithaca.edu.