Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Monday, April 2, 2007
7:30 p.m., in Geneva Room

Terrorism and the Media

Afghanistan, Serbia, Iraq: not places at the top of the list for most American travel agents. That is, unless you’re a travel agent for terrorism analyst Peter Bergen or producer John Fielding.

Bergen and Fielding are members of a certain class of journalist, duty-bound to cover global hot-spots, who sometimes find themselves in a complex relationship between the stories they cover and the audiences they serve.

The next President’s Forum Series bring these journalists together, with political scientist Brigitte Nacos of Columbia University, to go beyond the headlines – exposing the truth about the relationship between war, terrorism and the media.

Bergen is an Emmy-nominated CNN journalist and producer with unprecedented connections inside the murky world of the War on Terror. Bergen’s latest book is titled “The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda’s Leader.”

He is currently a Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington D.C., an Adjunct Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a research fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security.

With almost a quarter-century of experience at ABC News and CNN, Fielding is a noted expert on the role of media in the international community. A writer and producer for Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel and Christiane Amanpour, Fielding has won multiple awards for his programming: most notably “Arkan,” a documentary on the Serbian warlord.

In 2002, he left CNN to become a free-lance writer, working with New York Times Television, World Bank Group, and the Crimes of War Project

Brigitte Nacos, of Columbia University, is a specialist on the role of the press in public affairs and the author of “Mass-Mediated Terrorism,” a study of how terrorist organizations manipulate the news, often with massive repercussions on American public opinion and presidential decision-making.

Professor Nacos currently teaches courses on politically motivated violence and terrorism. Her previous works include “The Press, Presidents and Crises” and “From Bonn to Berlin: German Politics in Transition.”

This information is accurate for the time period that this person(s) spoke at Hobart and William Smith.