Local Media Diversity Matters to All Americans
Keynote Speaker:
Congressman Xavier Becerra, (D-CA)
Featured Panelists:
Robert Entman, J.B. and Maurice Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs, The George Washington University
Philip M. Napoli, Director of the Donald McGannon Communication Research Center, Fordham University
Federico Subervi, Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Texas State University-San Marcos
Moderated by:
Mark Lloyd, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
As the Federal Communications Commission revisits its media ownership rules, it must consider the impact of media consolidation on the opportunities for democratic deliberation of all Americans. Congressman Becerra will discuss the important role Congress will play in ensuring the FCC meets its responsibilities. The Center for American Progress will present a new progressive proposal on how the FCC should measure local media diversity and why it is important.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Program: 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Admission is free.
Lunch will be served at noon.
Rayburn House Office Building
Room B-340 (in the basement)
Washington, DC 20515
Map & Directions
Nearest Metro: Blue/Orange Line to Capitol South
RSVP for this Event
For more information, please call 202.741.6246.
Biographies
Representative Xavier Becerra, first elected to the House of Representatives in 1992, is Assistant to the Speaker of the House and is the only member from Southern California currently serving on the powerful House Committee on Ways and Means. His committee is responsible for formulating our nation's tax, Social Security, Medicare, trade, and welfare laws. Rep. Becerra is also a member of the House Committee on Budget, which oversees the federal budget process. Congressman Becerra has dedicated himself to promoting issues affecting industries critical to the Southern California region such as entertainment, high technology, health care, and stimulating free, yet fair, trade.
The first Latino to serve on the Ways and Means Committee, he has used his position to increase opportunities for working families, to improve the Social Security program for women and minorities, to combat poverty among the working poor through our welfare laws, and to strengthen Medicare and ensure its long-term viability. Rep. Becerra currently serves on the Health, Social Security, and Oversight subcommittees.
Rep. Becerra is a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) where he served as Chairman during the 105th Congress (1997-98). He currently serves as Vice Chair of the 289-member Congressional Diabetes Caucus. The Congressman is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. At the international level, he serves as Vice Chairman of the U.S.-Korea Interparliamentary Exchange.
Robert M. Entman is J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University. Dr. Entman has written extensively on media and its impact on democracy and race.
Dr. Entman earned a Ph.D. in political science as a National Science Foundation Fellow at Yale and taught previously at Duke, Northwestern, and NC State Universities. His most recent books include Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy (University of Chicago, 2004); Mediated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy (Cambridge, edited with L. Bennett), which will be published in Chinese translation by Tsinghua University Press in 2006; and The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America (University of Chicago, 2000, with A. Rojecki), which won several awards, including Harvard's Goldsmith Book Prize and the Lane Award from the American Political Science Association. For his work on media framing, he was named the 2005 winner of the Woolbert Research Prize from the National Communication Association. Entman also has won the American Political Science Association's 2006 Murray Edelman Career Achievement Award in Political Communication. He is currently writing a book called Media Bias Scandals and, with Clay Steinman, is editing the anthology Key Works in Communication. Entman serves as co-editor (with Lance Bennett) of Communication, Society and Politics, a book series for the Cambridge University Press.
Philip M. Napoli holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Business at Fordham University and Director of the Donald McGannon Communication Research Center. Dr. Napoli is the co-principle investigator of the media diversity study.
Dr. Napoli is the author of the books Foundations of Communications Policy: Principles and Process in the Regulation of Electronic Media (Hampton Press, 2001); Audience Economics: Media Institutions and the Audience Marketplace (Columbia University Press, 2003) and the editor of Media Diversity and Localism: Meaning and Metrics (Erlbaum, 2007). Professor Napoli has testified before Congress and the Federal Communications Commission on media policy issues. His work has been supported by organizations such as the Benton Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Association of Television Programming Executives, the Social Science Research Council, and the Emma L. Bowen Foundation.
Federico Subervi (Ph.D. University of Wisconsin) is a professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Texas State University-San Marcos. Dr. Subervi is conducting research on media and the Latino community.
Since the early 1980s, he has been conducting research, publishing, and teaching on a broad range of issues related to the mass media and ethnic minorities, especially Latinos in the United States. His research also includes assessments of the images of Black in Brazilian television advertisements, and the media system of Puerto Rico, his country of origin. One of his most recent research projects was the "NAHJ Network Brownout 2005: The portrayal of Latinos in network television news, 2004, with a retrospect to 1995." In December he also completed a study for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication entitled "Assessing policies related to the recruitment and retention of minority faculty & graduate students at accredited and non-accredited schools of journalism and mass communication." His book, The Mass Media and Latino Politics, is scheduled for publication in 2007. Among his other activities from his home base in Austin, Dr. Subervi directs the Latinos and Media Project (www.latinosandmedia.org), a site dedicated to the dissemination of research and resources pertaining to Latinos and the media, and serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of Latinitas, Inc., an organization and web-based magazine for Latina adolescents and teens (http://www.latinitasmagazine.org/).
Mark Lloyd is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress focusing on communications policy issues, including universal service, advanced telecommunications deployment, media concentration, and diversity. He is also an adjunct professor of public policy at Georgetown University. His book Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America was published by the University of Illinois Press in January 2007.
From the fall of 2002 until the summer of 2004, Mr. Lloyd was a Martin Luther King, Jr. visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served as the executive director of the Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy, a non-profit, non-partisan project he co-founded in 1997 to bring civil rights principles and advocacy to the communications policy debate. Previously, Mr. Lloyd worked as general counsel to the Benton Foundation, and as a communications attorney at Dow, Lohnes & Albertson in Washington, D.C. representing both commercial and non-commercial companies. He also has nearly 20 years of experience as a print and broadcast journalist, including work as a reporter and producer at NBC and CNN, and is the recipient of several awards including an Emmy and a Cine Golden Eagle. He has served on the boards of directors of dozens of national and local organizations, and is currently the chair of the Telecommunications and Media Taskforce of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and his law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center.
The Center for American Progress is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to promoting a strong, just and free America that ensures opportunity for all. We believe that Americans are bound together by a common commitment to these values and we aspire to ensure that our national policies reflect these values. We work to find progressive and pragmatic solutions to significant domestic and international problems and develop policy proposals that foster a government that is "of the people, by the people, and for the people."