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The Conversation Project
The Conversation Project: A New Chautauqua offers Oregon nonprofits free programs that engage community members in thoughtful, challenging conversations about ideas critical to our daily lives and our state's future. Conversations are facilitated by some of Oregon's most respected humanities scholars.
What Never Was and Never Will Be: Can Our Media Serve Our Democracy?
Thomas Jefferson warned his countrymen, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization it expects what never was and never will be.” Virtually everyone agrees that the media’s informational role is essential to effective self-government but that mass media news rarely offers what we need to function as thoughtful and competent citizens. Beyond that, agreement often breaks down. Jeff Golden asks us to consider the following: What are the primary failings of contemporary mass media news? What is our responsibility and what are our opportunities to improve prevailing conditions? Do our viewpoints have enough common ground to point to possibilities for effective activism? If we are to heed Jefferson’s warning, how do we focus our time and energies?
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Equipment required: TV/DVD; paper and pens/pencils
Program available through October 2011
- Jeff Golden | Ashland
- jeffgolden100@gmail.com
- 541-821-8401
Jeff Golden majored in agitation in the Ivy League before dropping out to learn how to take care of himself in the mountains of southern Oregon. After a decade of homebuilding, logging, and river guiding, he began a career as a public broadcasting producer, columnist, radio talk show host, and commentator. He has served as Jackson County commissioner, chief of staff to the Oregon Senate president, and environmental policy aide to the City of Portland. Golden is a senior fellow of the American Leadership Forum and a media fellow of the Property and Environment Research Center. He was Oregon's first nominee for the JFK Profile in Courage Award. His books include Watermelon Summer, As If We Were Grownups, Forest Blood, and Unafraid: A Novel of the Possible. Golden was a Harvard National Scholar and holds a master's degree in communications from Stanford University.
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