Program date: April 5, 2024
Air date: April 8, 2024
From the City Club of Eugene:
“Extra! Extra! Refugee Journalists Become the Story—Migrating to Stay Alive,” is the theme of an April 4-7 University of Oregon conference, featuring journalists from around the world whose reporting caused them and their families to be threatened. The entire conference is free and open to the public. This City Club program is part of the conference, and you can read the schedule for all conference events.
During this City Club program, you will hear a report from last year’s World Press Freedom Day at the United Nations in Manhattan. A team of UO students attended and reported about contemporary struggles with our international journalism counterparts. As an example of the threat to journalists worldwide, a Zimbabwean journalist will describe her to move to Canada for her own security.
And we will hear about threats to journalism much closer to home, over time and into the present day. Oregon’s history includes stories about Black newspapers in Oregon and how the editors built on the mission of the Black press, founded in 1827, to counter racial exile and advocate for equal rights. Also featured at the conference are sessions about race, economics, and the current status of Black periodicals and journalists.
This program covers the work of two students who will be investigating how local migrant community members receive their news and how they go about verifying the truthfulness of that information.
Speakers:
Charlie Deitz is a career faculty instructor in the UO School of Journalism and Communication, with five years of broadcast reporting experience prior to his roles in academia. He worked with the founders of the UO-UNESCO Crossings Institute for Conflict-Sensitive Reporting and Intercultural Dialogue at its inception and was most recently made a senior research fellow with the institute. The Institute offers training in conflict sensitive reporting, to help journalists use a nuanced approach that can influence parties at odds to seek common ground and, ultimately, solutions to conflicts.
Last year, Deitz escorted and directed a team of graduate and undergraduate students attending World Press Freedom Day’s 30th anniversary events at the United Nations world headquarters in New York City. His research focuses on media and journalism ethics, as well as depictions of disability in the media.
Deitz earned a doctorate in media studies and an MS in communication at the University of Oregon.
Farai Gonzo is a journalist and academic who worked for Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation for more than a decade. A winner of numerous journalistic awards, Gonzo interned at the United Nations HQ for 18 months after winning the Dag Hammarskjold scholarship. Her work there included interviewing former Secretary General Boutros, Boutros Ghali as well as presenting at the Pentagon. Currently teaching at Centennial College in Toronto Canada, she has given public lectures in several North American Universities, including Harvard, under the auspices of the Scholar at Risk Network.
Gonzo earned a diploma in Mass Communication from Harare Polytechnic College, a BS and MS in Sociology from the University of Zimbabwe, a Post Grad Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education from Ontario Teachers’ College, and a PhD in Social Justice from University of Toronto.
Kimberley Mangun is an associate professor emerita of communication at the University of Utah. She taught media history and reporting at the University of Utah and researched the Black press and civil rights. Her award-winning book, A Force for Change: Beatrice Morrow Cannady and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1912-1936, examined the career of the editor and publisher who advocated for equality for Black Oregonians. That research also was the basis of an Emmy-nominated Oregon Public Broadcasting documentary that premiered in May 2007 and continues to air regularly on OPB.
Mangun’s second award-winning book was a cultural biography of Emory O. Jackson, editor of the Birmingham (AL) World from 1940 to 1975. The book situates Jackson and his advocacy in the long political and social struggle for civil rights that played out—often very violently—in Alabama.
Mangun’s research also has been published in American Journalism, Journalism History, Newspaper Research Journal, Oregon Historical Quarterly, Journalism and Communication Monographs, and in books including Social Justice, Activism and Diversity in U.S. Media History; African Americans in the History of Mass Communication: A Reader; Lynching Beyond Dixie: American Mob Violence Outside the South; and The Harlem Renaissance in the American West: The New Negro’s Western Experience. Mangun earned a PhD in journalism at the University of Oregon.
About the City Club of Eugene:
The mission of the City Club of Eugene is to build community vision through open inquiry. The Club explores a wide range of significant local, state, and national issues and helps to formulate new approaches and solutions to problems. Membership is open to all, and Club members have a direct influence on public policy by discussing issues of concern with elected officials and other policy makers. The City Club’s mailing address is PO Box 12084, Eugene, OR 97440, and its website is cityclubofeugene.org.
Video and Broadcast
This program will be live streamed, and the videotape will be made available on the City Club of Eugene’s Facebook page and You Tube Channel, in addition to our website. It will be broadcast on Monday, April 8, at 7:00 pm, on KLCC 89.7 FM.
Contact: For more information, visit CityClubOfEugene.org.