In the past several years, more than 100 journalists around the world have been killed doing their job, while 24 countries jailed 125 journalists last year alone. The Wolfson Center for National Affairs at The New School presents Martin Fishgold, editor and former president of the International Labor Communications Association, who will talk with a group of respected journalists including Robert Fitch, author of Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America's Promise, and Rob Mahoney, deputy director, Committee to Protect Journalists, JoAnn Wypijewski, columnist for Mother Jones and a freelance writer who covered the Abu Ghraib trials for Harper's Magazine, and Cal Skaggs, film producer and director about how new legal threats to journalists are emerging daily and how the U.S. military has stonewalled investigations into the deaths and detentions of journalists in Iraq.
Other than these dramatic instances, journalists here and abroad are threatened in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to hide the truth. What does it mean to be a journalist and how are journalists in this country fulfilling the roles of afflicting and comfortable and comforting the afflicted?
Bio
Martin Fishgold
Martin Fishgold is the editor and former president of the International Labor Communications Association.
Robert Fitch
Robert Fitch is the author of Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America's Promise. He has taught at Cornell and New York University, organized for the unions, and written for the Village Voice, The Baffler, Newsday, the Washington Post, the Las Angeles Times and The Nation.
Robert Mahoney
Deputy Director, Committee to Protect Journalists
Robert Mahoney worked as a journalist in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East before joining CPJ in August 2005 as senior editor. He reported on politics and economics for Reuters news agency from Brussels and Paris in the late 1970s, and from Southeast Asia in the early 1980s. He covered south Asia from Delhi for three years from 1985, reporting on the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, the civil war in Sri Lanka, and the fallout from the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. In 1988, Mahoney became Reuters bureau chief for West and Central Africa based in Ivory Coast, spending considerable time in Liberia covering the civil war. He served as Reuters Jerusalem bureau chief from 1990 to 1997, directing print and later television coverage of the Palestinian intifada, the Iraqi missile attacks on Israel, the Oslo peace process, and the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He worked as chief correspondent in Germany from 1997 to 1999 before moving to London to become news editor in charge of politics and general news for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. In 2004, he taught journalism for the Reuters Foundation in the Middle East, and worked as a consultant for Human Rights Watch. He became CPJ deputy director in January 2007.
Calvin Skaggs
Cal Skaggs is a film producer and director about how new legal threats to journalists are emerging daily and how the U.S. military has stonewalled investigations into the deaths and detentions of journalists in Iraq.
JoAnn Wypijewski
JoAnn Wypijewski is a columnist for Mother Jones and a freelance writer who covered the Abu Ghraib trials for Harper's Magazine.