The Cowardice of America at War

Photo credit storqmplusI had to pull over to the side of La Cienega Boulevard last Tuesday evening as I drove home from work. I was crying. It was nothing, or it was the same old thing. I was listening to the news on National Public Radio when there was another story about another death in Afghanistan. Pfc. Andrew Meari, age 21. A village called Senjaray. An Afghan on a moped pulled up next to an American truck and blew himself up, killing Meari and another guy. The Americans, my countrymen, were there, near Kandahar, working to win the trust and……

Schell in The Nation – China in the Driver's Seat

"It's almost as if the continental plates of global politics are shifting beneath our feet," says Orville Schell, Senior Fellow. He spoke with Robert Dreyfuss of The Nation for an article titled "China in the Driver's Seat"…….

CCLP partners with State Department for Democracy Video Challenge

The Center on Communication Leadership and Policy is proud to announce its partnership in the Democracy Video Challenge, an innovative contest created by the United States Department of State to engage global citizens in a dialogue about democracy. The USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism is part of a public-private partnership that includes the Center for International Private Enterprise, the International Republican Institute, the International Youth Foundation, the Motion Picture Association of America, NBC Universal, the National Democratic Institute, NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, the Recording Industry Association of America, Taking IT Global, YouTube, and the U.S. State……

Today’s politics lacks key ingredient

These are serious times for our country — from challenges abroad, to our crippled economy, to the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico. With events filtered through a partisan midterm election and a heat wave smothering the nation's capital, it seems the first thing to wilt is Washington's sense of humor. Jon Stewart, David Letterman, Jay Leno and the rest of the late-night crowd continue to hold their own. But the ability of elected officials to indulge in a good collective laugh — not to make light of serious situations but to ease tensions — has become a too-rare civility……

‘Top Secret’ play and discussion series wraps in New York City

Produced by LA Theatre Works in partnership with New York Theatre Workshop and Affinity Collaborative Theatre, Leory Aarons and Geoffrey Cowan's Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, closed with rave reviews and an impressive model for using theater to explore and discuss the role of media in a democracy. The USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy organized conversations focused on the tension between issues of national security and a free press that included journalists, scholars, jurists, and public policy leaders from partner organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Columbia Journalism Review, New York University, and others…….

Republican political bubble may lose hot air

LOS ANGELES — In a rather charming video at randpaul2010.com, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Kentucky, Rand Paul himself, a libertarian by birthright, says that he was not named for Ayn Rand. The writer is acclaimed as a prophet by many libertarians, although she once said she would rather vote for the Marx Brothers than a libertarian. No, says Paul. The candidate chuckles and says his first name was actually "Randal." His wife called him "Rand" and it stuck. He goes on to express great admiration for the other Rand, the lady who invented "Objectivism" as……

Curtin, Glickman and Zacchino appointed CCLP senior fellows

A top news executive and two leading global policymakers have been appointed 2010-2011 senior fellows of Center on Communication Leadership & Policy (CCLP) at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. As part of CCLP, senior fellows contribute to the Communication Leadership blog, participate in public programs and lead projects in specific areas of engagement for the Center…….

Communication Leadership Reception: Senator George McGovern

The Center on Communication Leadership & Policy, in partnership with USC Annenberg School of Communication, communication professor Robert Scheer, and the USC Unruh Institute of Politics, presents a reception with former U.S. Senator and 1972 Democratic Presidential nominee George McGovern. Senator McGovern is the author of a new biography of Abraham Lincoln. From Publisher's Weekly, "In this modest, fluent bio, part of the American Presidents Series, former Democratic senator and presidential nominee McGovern finds an inspiring lesson in what a man can do with his life. McGovern's Lincoln is a smart, ambitious striver who overcame humble origins, repeated setbacks and……

From a press scholar, a rousing vote for the journalist

New media thinker Jay Rosen has been using the work of press scholar Daniel C. Hallin to explain how the Internet has eroded journalists' traditional power to define what issues are legitimate for proper debate. Hallin wrote that journalists tend to place public issues into three categories: a sphere of consensus, a sphere of legitimate controversy and a sphere of deviance. In a post on his blog, Press Think, Rosen argued that the press has done a lousy, unthinking job of deciding what goes into each category, and that through the Internet American citizens might assume this role for themselves…….

A new era of bipartisanship?

Early in this year's primary election season I did a study on bipartisanship for the Center on Communication Leadership of the University of Southern California. I'm afraid I was not very optimistic that Republicans and Democrats would be able to get together on much of anything after the Clinton and Bush years of what some call "hyperpartisanship." Now I'm not so sure. I concluded then that: "My own feeling is that only a strong president with a mandate for governing through a universal crisis — a necessary war or devastating climate change — can bring any bipartisanship or, better, nonpartisanship……