Joe Saltzman, director of the Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture (IJPC), a project of the Norman Lear Center, was the keynote speaker on Friday, June 14, 2002 at a program sponsored by The Media & American Democracy Institute for Secondary School Humanities Teachers. He will speak on the Images of the Journalist in Popular Culture and Their Impact on the Public, the Media and the American Democracy.
The three-day Institute schedule is sponsored by the Program on the Media and American Democracy at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication in collaboration with Harvard University's Graduate School of Education and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. It is partially funded by a grant from the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation. The program began in 1997 and consists of five universities collaborating with Harvard to provide high quality professional development for teachers. The five universities are USC Annenberg; the University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism; the University of Miami School of Communication; Syracuse University, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, and the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism.
The program has two main goals. First the Institute exposes teachers to the latest ideas and practices related to the intersection of media, politics, and the American democratic system of government. The second goal is to involve educators in content learning, in discussion and debate, and also to help them structure the Institute's concepts into intellectually engaging and thoughtful curriculum units for their students. Topics include The First Amendment and Freedom of the Press; the Rights, Roles and Responsibilities of the Media in a Democracy; Ethics and the Media; Political Campaigns and the Media; Alternative and Ethnic Media and Politics; the Media at the Warfront; Investigative Journalism, and the Media and Hollywood.