Road to the White House: Arab Spring and Foreign Policy

With the 2012 presidential election season tumultuously underway the USC Annenberg School's Center on Communication Leadership and Policy (CCLP) continues their successful Road to the White House forum promoting political discourse between leading academics and the community to help inform and shape political policies. The first CCLP-hosted forum of the new semester kicked off on Wednesday January 25, 2012, to a successful reception spotlighting U.S foreign policy relations in the Middle East and North Africa and the effect of new media and technology.

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A Call for Civility in American Politics

Just a little more than a year ago, a gunman shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) at a meeting she was holding with constituents in Tucson, Ariz. Even though the shooter did not appear to be motivated by a political agenda, the intimate portrait of Giffords that emerged prompted many who engage in what now passes for political "conversation" to reassess the increasing tendency toward demonization of those whose beliefs or experiences have led them to hold positions different from our own.

When we routinely deride the intelligence and character of those with whom we disagree, the people at the receiving end of our vitriol are people like Giffords, who is a fellow in a program of the Aspen Institute and who, for all her own special talents and goodness, embodies a commitment to public service shared by thousands of other American political leaders of different parties and varying viewpoints.

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CCLP partners with USC Annenberg's Norman Lear Center to "Get it Right"

On January 6, 2012, the Historians, Journalists and the Challenges of Getting It Right debuted in Chicago at the 126th annual American Historical Association conference.

A partnership of CCLP, the Lear Center, and the American Historical Association's National History Center, Getting It Right begins with the premise that both professions, historians and journalists, are in the business of finding and assessing evidence; of analyzing events; and of narrating events.

Lear Center director Marty Kaplan chaired the publishing panel, which used Alan Brinkley's biography of Henry Luce as a springboard to talk about journalism and history.

For more information on the project and audio from the panel can be found here.

"Downton Abbey" hype may highlight PBS problems

PBS executives are promoting the second season of its imported British costume drama "Downton Abbey," doing their best not only to attract viewers to the program but also to present "Downton Abbey" as part of a new strategy to attract audiences.

However, critics such as Brian Lowry of Variety have responded by saying that this is more public relations than anything resembling a deliberate plan, "misreading something after the fact, then allowing execs to conflate an unexpected windfall into a 'strategy.'"

And across the Atlantic, the hype may have backfired. In the UK, where "Downton Abbey" runs on the commercial ITV network, its Christmas show was expected to triumph in the audience ratings. Instead, the program attracted fewer than half of the number of viewers tuned into a competing BBC broadcast.

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Latonero published in International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management

CCLP Director of Research and Instruction Mark Latonero, and his co-author Irina Shklovski, recently had their article, "Emergency Management, Twitter, and Social Media Evangelism," published. Their piece focuses on how social media technologies, specifically Twitter, are used to communicate with emergency response organizations and to collect information.

For more information please see the abstract here.

PBS President says no major retooling needed for public TV, but mulls adding pay-TV service

PBS President Paula Kerger said today she disagreed with Bill Moyers' call for a national meeting to reconsider and re-define U.S. public broadcasting.

Moyers called for a "constitutional convention" to spur a "rebirth" of public television and radio, in a speech this month to public TV executives.

"The core problem," said Moyers, "is that we still don't have an expansive national vision of what we're about, where we want to go and what we want to become. Until we are able to say clearly and comprehensively what it is we really want to do, how much it will cost, and how we intend to get there, we can't blame Congress, the White House or even the foundations for not supporting us more fully."

But PBS' president, speaking today on KQED Radio, did not support Moyers' call to action.

"I'm not sure I agree with him," Kerger said.

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Latonero leads Pacific Council dialogue on Arab Spring

Research director Mark Latonero led a lively conversation on the Arab Spring and the impact of social media in global political transformation. The program, The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted: Internet as Helpful or Harmful, was part of the annual members weekend program for the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Joining Latonero for the discussion was Golnaz Esfandiari, senior correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Victoria Esser, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Digital Strategy. Both discussed the role of social networking and how the emergence of new media technology is changing international relations. A lively discussion addressed whether the impact of social media and the Internet is real or overblown in relation to Iran in 2009 and Arab Spring.

Other topics explored include the role that social media plays in world affairs and as a platform of political expression. Discussants also addressed the U.S. Department of State's concept of 21st Century Statecraft--the leveraging of networks and technologies in service of America's foreign policy goals.

This article was written by Therese Dizon, Masters in Public Diplomacy student.

Cowan's play on press freedom completes tour in China

Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, a docu-drama co-written by CCLP director Geoffrey Cowan and the late Leroy Aarons, was performed in China in November and December 2011. The L.A. Theatre Works production was performed in Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou. The tour was sponsored by the U.S. Embassy and the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. Top Secret was last presented during a successful Off-Broadway run at New York Theatre Workshop in 2010.

This China production of Top Secret was directed by award-winning director Stephen Sachs. The cast included well known actors from stage, screen, and television including Henry Clarke, JD Cullum, James Gleason, Nicholas Hormann, Amy Pietz, Russell Soder, Josh Stamberg, Peter Van Norden, Steve Vinovich and Tom Virtue.

In conjunction with performances, CCLP presented post-performance discussions with Cowan and other special guests in partnership with China's leading law and journalism schools. This provided a valuable opportunity to contextualize the content of the play, which is authentically American, within Chinese society.

In addition to the performances and discussions, Cowan delivered the prestigious F.Y. Chang lecture, a joint program of Peking University Law School, Tsinghua University Law School and the Harvard University Law School East Asian Legal Studies Program.

Links to coverage:
Voice of America
New York Times
Los Angeles Times
Peking University
Le Monde (in French)

Tour Details
(see above for announcement of Shanghai performances)

November 21 - 26, 2011 / Shanghai
Seven performances in the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center's Annual International Contemporary Theatre Festival
Panel discussions with Cowan and NYU Shanghai public interest law professors and Fudan University School of Journalism.
One performance at the Peking University (PKU) School of Transnational Law as part of the celebrations in honor of PKU Shenzhen's 10th Anniversary;
Panel discussions, lectures, and workshops with bilingual law students, law professors, and local community led by law school Dean Jeffrey Lehman and Cowan.

November 29 - 30, 2011 / Guangzhou
Two performances at Sun Yat-Sen University
Panel discussions with Cowan about the role of journalists and journalism in society

December 1 - 5, 2011 / Beijing
Four performances at the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture's Annual International Theater and Dance Festival
Panel discussions and lectures at the Comparative Law Program at Renmin University of China Law School; Peking University; Tsinghua University
Panel discussions with the American Bar Association.

Report: 24 states cut funds for public broadcasting, four deleted all state support

Washington - Almost half of all U.S. states have reduced their funding for public radio and television, according to a report this week from Free Press.

The analysis shows $30 million was cut from state funding for the 2012 fiscal year and cumulative state support since 2008 has dropped by over $200 million.

Florida, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania completely eliminated state support for public broadcasting. In New Jersey, this resulted in the longtime state network going off the air in June, as CCLP reported last summer.

Since 2008, Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, South Carolina, and Virginia have reduced support of public broadcasting by 50% or more, according to the report. Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, and Oklahoma reduced state support by 25% or more.

This trend is not limited to the U.S.. As previously reported, government funding of public service media has been reduced in many countries. In the UK, the BBC is implementing a 16% budget cut.

(Disclosure: Free Press was a partner in the Oct. 18 CCLP Washington DC forum on BBC budget reductions.)

Panel discusses narrative framing in media

In the Nov. 9 Road to the White House: Politics, Media & Technology, the Trojan debate team and the panel of Annenberg faculty addressed the issue of narrative framing in media.

On the panel were faculty members Gordon Stables, Thomas Hollihan, Marc Cooper, and students Joel Lemuel, and Avi Munoz.

Hollihan led the discussion by defining the role of the press in today's media.

"The press don't tell us what to think but they do tell us what to think about," Hollihan said.

In relation to the presidential campaign, the news narrative have also had influence in what the public should be aware of.

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