BUZZ
Taught how media works ‘under the uneven power dynamics posed by authoritarian, racist, misogynist, homophobic, classist and settler-colonialist regimes’
The University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Media at Risk will be shut down at the end of the month as its “longtime” founder, Communications Professor Barbie Zelizer, is retiring.
Zelizer started the center eight years ago in response to the alleged “increased threats to journalism” by President Trump and others.
She had said Trump’s first election “was an eye-opening moment for many of us,” that the West is “far less prepared” for attacks against the press, and that the rest of the world is better prepared to handle “[Trump’s] kind of regime.”
The center’s main website states “We are in uncharted waters. Intimidation threatens media practitioners worldwide, and disinformation campaigns destabilize public trust. Knowing how media practitioners work under the uneven power dynamics posed by authoritarian, racist, misogynist, homophobic, classist and settler-colonialist regimes helps us to defend media freedom everywhere.”
According to The Daily Pennsylvanian, Zelizer (pictured) said her retirement decision “evolved so quickly that there ‘wasn’t time’ to find another director for the center.”
UPenn Annenberg School Dean Sarah Banet-Weiser said closing the center “wasn’t even really a question” as without Zelizer it “makes [no] sense” to continue.
“She’s an incredible force at Annenberg,” Banet-Weiser said. “This center has really solidified the role of critical journalism, and the responsibility that we all have at Annenberg to think about things like suppression of the press and journalists at risk.”
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Zelizer said that she founded the center in 2018 following the “enormous” and “immediate” threat of Trump’s election.
“It needed people to be organizing in whatever fashion they could,” she said. “As a former journalist, I figured that was the best way that I could organize.” …
Banet-Weiser said that Zelizer was the “exact person to lead, to conceive of, and create the center,” particularly as journalists “around the world” were facing threats to their wellbeing.
“A center that called out media at risk came at the right moment to get us all thinking really intentionally about what it is that media practitioners, academics, journalists, can do to combat this increasing persecution of journalists, whether or not that’s with death threats or silencing them in other ways,” Banet-Weiser said.
Past events featured at the center include a talk examining “media research and practice as a force not only for survival, but for hope and transformation […] at a time of profound upheaval,” a discussion with CNN’s Brian Stelter about whether “Media Analysis [is] At Risk,” and a chat with Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi who claimed media self-censorship “has more than tripled in the US” since the 1950s’ McCarthy era.
Regarding censorship, during his tenure at the center research scholar Sébastien Mort spoke out against a 2019 UPenn appearance by then-Turning Point USA official Candace Owens, saying it was “disturbing in light of campus ‘free-speech’ ex order.”
According to her faculty page, Zelizer taught courses such as “Critical Perspectives in Journalism” and “Collective Memory and Journalism,” and is co-editor of the journal Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism.
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