“Discrimination in the U.S. News Media”
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Griffin 3
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
During a career that has now spanned more than thirty years, Juan Gonzalez has emerged as one of the country’s best-known and most-respected Latino journalists.
Gonzalez has been a staff columnist for The New York Daily News since 1987, and a co-host for the past fourteen years of Democracy Now, a daily morning news show that airs on more than 700 community and public radio and television stations across the US and Latin America. His investigative reports on the labor movement, the environment, race relations and urban policy have garnered numerous accolades, including the 1998 George Polk Award for commentary and a 2004 Leadership Award from the National Hispanic Heritage Foundation. On Democracy Now his exclusive interviews, along with host Amy Goodman, of international leaders such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have repeatedly broken major news.
Gonzalez is the author of three books: the critically acclaimed Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America; Roll Down Your Window: Stories from a Forgotten America; and Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse. He is currently completing a comprehensive history of racial discrimination in the American news media.
One of the original founders of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ), Gonzalez served as the association’s president from 2002-2004 and was elected to its Hall of Fame in 2008. During his presidency, he spearheaded a nationwide effort by professional journalists to challenge the Federal Communications Commission’s dismantling of media ownership regulations, launched NAHJ’s innovative Parity Project, and secured more than $1 million from the McCormick Tribune Foundation to duplicate the project on a nationwide scale. In addition to his work with NAHJ, Gonzalez is considered one of the founding fathers of UNITY: Journalists of Color.
Even before he entered journalism, Gonzalez distinguished himself as a leader of the Young Lords, a militant civil rights organization of the late 1960s, and of the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights in the 1970s.
Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, he was raised in East Harlem and Brooklyn, New York. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University, has been a visiting professor in public policy at Brooklyn College, and was recently accorded an honorary JD from the City University of New York Law School.