CIPB NATIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE—BIOGRAPHIES

 

ROBERT K. AVERY

Professor of Communication at the University of Utah where he works with KUED-TV and KUER-FM and the University of Utah’s Student Broadcast Council. He received his Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University in 1971. A former public broad-casting executive, he is past Chairman of the National Association of Educational Broadcasters. Avery is founding editor of the scholarly journal, Critical Studies in Mass Communication. The most recent of his many writings on public broadcasting appear in the 1999 edition of A History of Public Broadcasting.

BEN BAGDIKIAN Former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley. As a journalist, Bagdikian was honored with a Pulitzer Prize. As an author, he was recipient of the George Foster Peabody Award for criticism of broadcast commentary. His books include The Information Machines and The Media Monopoly. Bagdikian has served on the American Library Association Commission on Freedom and Equality of Access to Information. Early in his career, he was Assistant Managing Editor for National News and for The Washington Post.   NOLAN BOWIE Senior Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. From 1986 to 1998, he served on the faculty of Temple University. Bowie has an extensive record of government and public service as an attorney and an expert on telecommunications policy.   JANNETTE DATES Dean of the School of Communications at Howard University and former member of Howard’s Department of Radio, Television and Film. She is Chair of the Black College Communications Association, member of the National Advisory Board of the George Foster Peabody Awards and member of the Board of Directors of the Broadcast Education Association. Earlier, Dates served as anchor and executive producer at Baltimore’s WBAL-TV (NBC) and a public affairs panelist at Baltimore’s WJZ-TV, (ABC). Her latest work is Split Image: African Americans in the Mass Media.   BARBARA EHRENREICH Award-winning political essayist, columnist and social critic. Her commentaries have appeared in Time magazine, The Nation, Harper's, Z Magazine and Mother Jones. Ehrenreich is a Guggenheim Fellow and author of several books, including Nickel and Dimed, Blood Rites: Origins & History of the Passions of War, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class, The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed, and a novel, Kipper's Game. She has appeared on "Good Morning America," "Today," "Charlie Rose" and "Donahue," among other television programs.

HENRY GELLER

Served as Communications Fellow with the Markle Foundation from 1989 through 1998. During this period, he also was a Senior Fellow at the Washington Annenberg Program of Northwestern University. From 1981-89, Geller was Director of the Washington Center for Public Policy Research and Professor at Duke University. From 1964-81, he was Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information, Administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in the U.S. Department of Commerce, Communications Fellow with the Aspen Institute, and General Counsel at the Federal Communications Commission.

GEORGE GERBNER

Professor of Telecommunications at Temple University and Villanova University. From 1964 to 1989, he was Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Gerbner's groundbreaking research on violence in television has been supported by many organizations, including the President's Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. Gerbner's many publications include Invisible Crises: What Conglomerate Media Control Means for America and the World.

DAVID EARL HONIG

A communications attorney with offices in both Washington, D.C. and Miami Beach. He is founder and Executive Director of the Minority Media and Telecommunications Counsel, an organization that coordinates FCC rulemaking and policy litigation on behalf of national minority organizations. Honig has litigated seventeen federal appeals in four courts, and participated in over 80 FCC rulemaking proceedings and hundreds of adjudicatory cases. He has published widely on communications issues and teaches civil rights litigation at the University of Miami School of Law.

WILLIAM HOYNES

Chair of the Sociology Department of Vassar College. His book, Public Television for Sale: Media, the Market and the Public Sphere was awarded the 1996 Goldsmith prize from the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. Hoynes is co-author of Media/Society: Industries, Images and Audiences and By Invitation Only: How the Media Limit Political Debate. His most recent study is “The Cost of Survival: Political Discourse and the ‘New PBS’.”

NICHOLAS JOHNSON

Professor at the Unversity of Iowa College of Law, specializing in mass media law, and the Chair of the National Citizens Communication Lobby. Johnson also served as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commsision (1966-73) during the years of public broadcasting's creation. He has been a Supreme Court Law Clerk to First Amendment defender Justice Hugo Black, a nationally syndicated columnist, and the author of How to Talk Back to Your Television Set.

BILL KOVACH

Curator of the Nieman Foundation’s journalism fellowships at Harvard University, the world’s oldest mid-career education program for journalists. He has been a journalist and writer for 40 years, including 18 as a reporter and editor for the New York Times. From 1979-1986, Kovach was chief of the Times Washington Bureau Previously , he was editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Over the years Kovach has supervised reporting projects that have won four Pulitzer Prizes. In 1999, he co-authored (with Tom Rosenstiel) Warp Speed: America in the Age of Mixed Media.

NANCY KRANICH

Associate Dean of Libraries at New York University. She established the Coalition on Government Information and hosted the annual Freedom of Information Day honoring champions of the Public’s Right to Know with the James Madison Award. Kranich also is on the Advisory Board of the National Security Archive in Washington. She has made more than 150 presentations and written more than 50 articles on media and democracy policy related issues.

JERRY M. LANDAY

Professor Emeritus in Journalism at the University of Illinois, where he still teaches “Issues in Television” to Chancellor’s Honors students. Landay is a former news correspondent for ABC and CBS. He writes frequently on media-democracy issues for major national publications.

LEWIS H. LAPHAM

An awarding winning essayist, as well as editor of Harper’s Magazine (1976-1981 and 1983-present). In addition to his monthly essay for Harper’s called “Notebook,” Lapham was a syndicated newspaper columnist and speaker at the nation’s leading universities, as well as NPR and CBC radio. Lapham also hosted and authored a six-part documentary series broadcast on public television and was the host and Executive Editor of “Bookmark,” a weekly PBS series.

EDWARD McCLARTY

Emeritus Dean of Telecommunications and Community Services, Modesto College and a former California State University Professor of Communication. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. For ten years, McClarty served as Chair and member of the California Public Broadcasting Commission. He also served nine years on the board of directors of KVIE-TV, Sacramento. McClarty is a former member of the Professional Standards and Ethics Commission, California Teachers Association.

HENRY MORGENTHAU III

An author and television producer. In twenty years at WGBH-TV Boston, he created and produced many documentaries and talk shows for the national network, including the Eleanor Roosevelt: Prospects of Mankind series and The Negro and the American Promise series. Morgenthau’s shows at WGBH won Peabody, Emmy, UPI, EFLA, and Flaherty Film Festival awards. Prior to that he worked as a television producer for ABC, CBS and NBC and was acting program manager at WYNC. Morgenthau’s family history, Mostly Morgenthaus, won the 1992 Jewish Book Council Prize for best autobiography/memoirs.

ALVIN H. PERLMUTTER

President of Alvin H. Perlmutter, Inc., a television production company and Chair and CEO of Sunrise Media LLC, a television and educational news film archive. Perlmutter has orginated more than a hundred PBS documentaries. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including six Emmys. Earlier Perlmutter served as Program Manager of WNBC-TV New York and as a Vice President for NBC News.

ALVIN F. POUSSAINT, MD

Director of the Media Center of the Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston. He also is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Faculty Associate Dean for Student Affairs at Harvard Medical School. Poussaint received his MD from Cornell University. An expert on race relations, Poussaint has authored many publications, including Raising Black Children (1992). In 1997, he received a New England Emmy as co-executive producer of "Willoughby's Wonders." Poussaint has served as script consultant to NBC's "The Cosby Show" and "A Different World."

WILLARD D. ROWLAND, JR.

President and General Manager of Colorado Public Television (KBDI-TV) in Denver. He also is Professor and former Dean (1987-99) of the University of Colorado School of Journalism and Communication. Rowland received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, where he was Associate Dean in the College of Communications. Previously, he served as Director of Research and Long-Range Planning for the Public Broad-casting Service. Rowland has published widely on a range of topics, including public service broadcasting and the public interest.

DANNY SCHECHTER

Co-founder, vice-president and executive director of Globalvision, a New York-based international television and film company. Through Globalvision, Schechter created and produced the award-winning series, “South Africa Now” and served as co-executive producer of the weekly “Rights and Wrongs: Human Rights Television” with Charlayne Hunter-Gault. An Emmy award winner with ABC’s “20/20,” Schechter has directed seven independent films and written The More You Watch, The Less You Know (Seven Stories, 1997)

BILL SIEMERING

Is on the Open Society Institute staff working with the Network Media Program. He has over 30 years of experience in public radio station management, program development, fundraising program evaluation. He served as a founding member and the first director of programming of National Public Radio and hired the initial program staff for "All Things Considered." While V.P. at WHYY-FM, Philadelphia, he helped build "Fresh Air" into a national program. He is the recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Since 1993, he has assisted with the development of independent media in new democracies including South Africa, Mozambique, Slovakia, Macedonia, Moldova and Mongolia.

HEDRICK SMITH

Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times Washington and Moscow Bureau Chief and author of four best-selling books, including The Russians and The Power Game: How Washington Works. For the past ten years, Smith also has been an independent producer. He has created, reported and hosted six PBS prime-time series. Inside Gorbachev’s USSR, Smith’s PBS series on perestroika, won the du-Pont Columbia gold baton and a George Polk Award in 1991. His inner city documentary, "Across the River," won the Sydney Hillman award in 1995 for challenging media stereotypes.

JOHN WICKLEIN

A former public broadcasting producer and executive, coaches editing and reporting for The Washington Post and other papers. A former editor and reporter for The New York Times, he has been a contributor to The Atlantic Monthly, Columbia Journalism Review, and American Journalism Review. Wicklein was the first news director at Channel 13 in New York and later served as program officer in charge of news and public affairs programs for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In 1988, while at the Ohio State University, he founded the Working Group for Public Broadcasting, whose proposal served as the initial model for CIPB.

JACK WILLIS

Former producer and executive in commercial, cable and public television. He is currently Senior Fellow at the Open Society Institute where he is director of its media policy program. Most recently he was President and CEO of Twin Cities Public Television. Before that, Willis was Vice-President of programming and production for CBS Cable as well as Director of Programming for Metromedia Producer’s Corp and public television’s WNET/13 New York. His programs have won many awards, including seven Emmys. With his wife Mary, Willis has written several highly rated movies of the week.