Alumnus Hersh, who broke stories on My Lai massacre, torture in Iraq, will join scholars to examine media

[Editor’s Note: The media conference “Constru(ct)ing the Current: Theorizing Media in a New Millennium.” will take place Friday, May 14 and Saturday, May 15. Alumnus Seymour Hersh cancelled his keynote address after the Chronicle went to press. John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation and author of It’s the Media, Stupid, will replace Hersh. For updated coverage, visit http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/04/040512.media.shtml.]

In this week’s issue of the New Yorker magazine, Chicago alumnus Seymour Hersh broke the story of a top general’s secret report, finding that Army personnel had performed “sadistic, blatant and wanton” torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, a former torture center of Saddam Hussein’s.

On Friday, May 14, Hersh will make his first public speech since the torture article was published at the University’s two-day symposium, “Constru(ct)ing the Current: Theorizing Media in a New Millennium.”

Having won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking the story of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, Hersh has continued to turn critical information into news with a series of New Yorker articles on Afghanistan, Iraq and the War on Terror. His investigations have made some of the biggest and most politically significant news anywhere.

Beginning with the assumption that news is neither a natural nor self-evident category, but the product of selection and representation, the two-day symposium will bring scholars together in an effort to understand how news comes into being.

The conference will explore why the media consider certain events historically significant, worthy of sustained coverage and commentary, while others generate little or no attention.

Scholars of society, law and communications, including Chicago’s Cass Sunstein, the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor in the Law School, and Robert Entman of North Carolina State University, will discuss such topics as “blogging” and partisanship in journalism; Al-Jazeera and the “Arab street;” public opinion and the creation of consensus; the politics of crime coverage and the televising of fear; and the history of terrorism in the media.

The symposium will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 6:15 p.m. Friday, May 14, with Hersh’s keynote address at 4:45 p.m., and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, May 15. All events are free and open to the public and will take place at International House, 1414 E. 59th St.

Further information is available from Alex Mawyer (admawyer@uchicago.edu) and Brian Schwegler (baschweg@uchicago.edu) or at http://socialsciences.uchicago.edu/mediaconf. People with disabilities who may need assistance should contact the office of Programs and Special Events at International House, (773) 753-2274, in advance of the event.

The Political Communications Initiative, with support from the International House Global Voices Program, the Division of the Humanities, the Graham School of General Studies, the Cultural Policy Center, the Norman Wait Harris Fund of the Center for International Studies, the Committee on Human Development, the Department of Political Science and the Franke Institute for the Humanities, is coordinating the event.