Join us for an evening with
DAVID BERNKNOPF
Former CNN Vice President of News Planning
MONA ELTAHAWY
Award winning columnist and international public speaker
on Arab and Muslim issues
RICHARD ROTH
Senior UN Correspondent, CNN
ZACH SEWARD
Outreach Editor, Wall Street Journal
Moderated by
MICHELE MITCHELL
CEO and Executive Editor, Film@11
6:00-6:30 p.m. — Light Refreshments
6:30 p.m. — Panel followed by Q/A
Steelcase, Inc.
4 Columbus Circle (58th Street & Eighth Avenue), New York
ADMISSION
UNA Members: FREE
UNA Student Members: FREE
Guests and Non-Members: $15
From social media to live-streamed news coverage via the web, new media and technology are radically shifting the content and the timing of how we are informed about events across the globe. Thanks to the digital media revolution, the marketplace of information, ideas and new services in foreign affairs coverage is transforming and growing exponentially. This evening's presentation will look at how this new paradigm is impacting and shaping our exposure to — and engagement with — international news coverage.
Guest Speakers
DAVID BERNKNOPF
David Bernknopf is one of the owners of an Atlanta video production group, SplendidVid, LLC. His clients range from major law firms to multinational corporations including ChoicePoint, Chevron as well as companies in China, to major non-profit organizations such as the Sierra Club and the American Wind Energy Foundation.
A founding employee of CNN, he worked at the network for more than 21 years, from 1980 to 2001. He won three Emmys, a National Headliner Award, the Edward R. Murrow award and numerous other awards. He served in virtually every key role at CNN, from writer to documentary and political news producer. David produced coverage at almost every U.S. political convention from 1984 to 2000 and documentaries on subjects ranging from Northern Ireland peace efforts to religion in Cuba to the U.S. legal system. In 1999, he was made CNN's first Vice President of News Planning. In that role, he served as the network's "news futurist," making decisions about what events and trends CNN needed to cover and assigning reporters and producers to cover those stories. He left CNN shortly after producing on site coverage of the 9/11 attacks.
Mr. Bernknopf has lectured on journalism, public relations and communications theory at many universities and was a Visiting Professor at the University of Colorado from 1997 to 2008. He is a graduate of Northwestern University.
MONA ELTAHAWY
Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning columnist and an international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues. Her opinion pieces have been published frequently in The Washington Post and The International Herald Tribune, and she has appeared as a guest analyst in several media outlets.
During the 18-day revolution that toppled Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, she appeared on most major media outlets. Highly prolific on Twitter (more than 30,000 tweets and counting), she's positioned to explain the social-media side of a revolution spurred on, in no small part, by Facebook.
Before she moved to the U.S. in 2000, Ms. Eltahawy was a news reporter in the Middle East for many years, including in Cairo and Jerusalem as a Reuters correspondent and she reported for various media from Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia and China. She was the first Egyptian journalist to live and to work for a western news agency in Israel.
Her public speaking has taken her around the world, including to the first TEDWomen conference in 2010, where she spoke about the virtues of confusion in breaking stereotypes of Muslim women. In 2010 the Anna Lindh Foundation awarded her its Special Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism, and the Estlow International Center for Journalism and New Media (University of Denver) gave her its Anvil of Freedom Award. In 2009, the European Union awarded her its Samir Kassir Prize for Freedom of the Press for her opinion writing, and Search for Common Ground named her a winner of its Eliav-Sartawi Award for Middle Eastern Journalism.
Ms. Eltahawy is a lecturer and researcher on the growing importance of social media in the Arab world. She has taught as an adjunct at The New School in New York, the University of Oklahoma and the U.N.-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica.
RICHARD ROTH
Richard Roth serves as CNN's senior U.N. correspondent. Based in New York, Roth has covered the U.N.'s role and responses to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a variety of reports about American politics including the 2008 US presidential elections and the 2009 financial crisis. Other recent reports include the death of Michael Jackson, the Iran nuclear crisis, the Russia-Georgia conflict from the diplomatic perspective at the UN, the death of Heath Ledger, the resignation of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and most recently, relief in Haiti after the earthquake.
For the past decade, Roth has reported from the U.N. headquarters in New York City on several international crises, including Iraq, North Korea and Bosnia. In 2002 and 2003, he reported extensively on the escalating tensions between the United States and Iraq, the weapons inspection process then the ensuing war with Iraq. He also has covered various U.N. global conferences concerning issues such as social development in Copenhagen, women in China and the population in Cairo.
Prior, Roth hosted Diplomatic License, CNN's global program devoted to coverage of the United Nations. In December 2004, Roth traveled with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to South Asia to cover the disaster and aftermath of the tsunami that took more than 155,000 lives in the region.
Roth was reporting for CNN at the World Trade Center in New York when the towers fell on September 11th, 2001. In the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York and in Washington, D.C., Roth reported on reaction from the United Nations. Additionally, he was at Ground Zero in New York City covering President George W. Bush's visit to the scene of the devastation.
Before this assignment, Roth was a CNN general assignment reporter. In 1992, Roth was the host of CNN's special report Murder by Numbers, an in-depth profile of serial killers. In 1991, he contributed to CNN's special report Europe on the Brink: A look at Western Europe's Disappearing Borders.
From 1991-1992, Roth was part of the CNN team covering the Gulf War. Most recently, Roth was portrayed in the HBO movie Live from Baghdad. He's reported from Amman, Jordan, and Baghdad, where he was deployed for 65 days, as well as from Tel Aviv during a number of Iraqi Scud missile attacks.
In 1990, Roth served as CNN's correspondent at the opening of the Berlin Wall and the overthrow of the communist governments in Czechoslovakia and Romania. In 1989, he covered the Beijing student uprising in Tiananmen Square and the ensuing Chinese government crackdown. Roth also has covered the terrorist attacks on the Achille Lauro cruise ship and at the Leonardo DaVinci Airport in Rome, both in 1985. He reported on the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y., as well as the 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York.
Roth is the third longest-serving CNN employee. He joined CNN when it launched in 1980 as an assignment desk editor in the network's New York bureau. He served as CNN's New York assistant bureau chief in 1981, the Chicago bureau chief in 1982 and the Rome bureau chief from 1982-1986. Before joining CNN, Roth worked as an anchor and reporter for AP Radio and as a producer for WPIX-TV in New York.
Roth earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from New York University.
MODERATOR
MICHELE MITCHELL
Panel moderator Michele Mitchell is an award-winning broadcast journalist known for her political investigative work which has taken her to some of the dicier parts of the world. She began her career on television with CNN Headline News, where she was the political anchor from 2000-2003, covering elections, the war on terror and legislation. She particularly emphasized the Patriot Act, which earned her the verbal disdain of Attorney General John Ashcroft's staff and frequent appearances on "Politically Incorrect."
After her stint at HLN, Michele moved on to work with Bill Moyers on his PBS program "NOW." There, she reported on the Abramoff scandal, female voters (which brought her a Gracie award), voter fraud, and the war on terror. Her story about slavery in Nepal was an honorary citation at the Overseas Press Awards in 2009.
Michele currently is Executive Editor and CEO of Film@11, an independent media company, distributing news programming on the Internet and mobile. Film@11 has a worldwide reach of 1.8 billion. She produced the short documentary "Reporting for Duty," about Israeli reservists in the Second Lebanon War, which aired on PBS and on the Internet to a total audience of 10 million.
A graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, Michele started her career on Capitol Hill, where she was the youngest congressional communications director, for Rep. Pete Geren (D-TX), who went on to become the Secretary of the Army for both President Bush and President Obama. Michele left Capitol Hill to finish her first book, A New Kind of Party-Animal: How the Young are Changing Politics As Usual, and for a brief stint on the New York Times editorial board.
Michele has reported extensively from Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Jordan, West Bank, Israel, Lebanon, Libya and Morocco and most of the 50 states.
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