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Empty Newsrooms, Booming Echo Chambers

Speakers

  • Head of Investigative Programmes, Al Jazeera America
    Diarmuid Jeffreys is an award-winning journalist and television producer with thirty years’ experience in the media industry. Now based in Doha, he is Head of Investigative Programmes and responsible for Al Jazeera’s People & Power investigative strand, the Africa Investigates series and a variety of stand-alone documentaries. In the last few years, his programmes have won recognition from the Royal Television Society, Amnesty International, One World Media, the Rory Peck Trust, the Association of International Broadcasters, Human Trafficking Foundation, and New York Film Festival. The author of three non-fiction books, he has also given evidence about the future of investigative journalism to the UK House of Lords.
  • deputy editor, agentura.ru
    Irina Borogan is an investigative journalist and a deputy editor of Agentura.Ru. She started her journalistic career in 1996. She was cofounder of the project Agentura.Ru, the Russian secret services watchdog. Borogan reported on terrorist attacks in Russia, including hostage takings in Moscow and Beslan. In 2006 she covered Lebanon War and tensions in West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 2009 Borogan had a series of articles investigating the Kremlin's campaign to gain control of civil society under pretext of fighting extremism. Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan's book The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia's Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB was published in September 2010 by PublicAffairs, NYC. On October 6, 2013 The Guardian reported the research made by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan over surveillance measures introduced by the Russian authorities at the 2014 Winter Olympics, including extensive electronic eavesdropping and surveillance.
  • President, Sahara Reporters Media Group Inc.
    Omoyele Sowore is a Nigerian activist and free speech advocate who has spent the last 20 years working to promote human rights and democracy in Nigeria, and to stop the militarization and violence that multinational oil companies have brought to his country. For more than 20 years, Omoyele has battled corruption in his home country of Nigeria. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, he protested against military rule in favor of democracy as a student activist. He has since turned towards new media as a way of exposing injustices in his country. In 2006, Omoyele founded a groundbreaking multimedia online platform known as “SaharaReporters”. The platform which now includes an online TV & Radio has published and broadcast hundreds of breaking news stories and investigations since its founding, many of which have made significant impact in Nigeria recently leading to the ouster of one of Nigeria's mostly powerful ministers accused of buying two BMW armored cars for $1.6 million.
  • Founder and President, Pat Mitchell Media
    Pat Mitchell is a lifelong advocate for women and girls. At every step of her career, Mitchell has broken new ground for women, leveraging the power of media as a journalist, an Emmy award-winning and Oscar-nominated producer to tell women’s stories and increase the representation of women onscreen and off. Transitioning to an executive role, she became the president of CNN Productions, and the first woman president and CEO of PBS and the Paley Center for Media. Today, her commitment to connect and strengthen a global community of women leaders continues as a conference curator, advisor and mentor. In partnership with TED, Mitchell launched TEDWomen in 2010 and is its editorial director, curator and host. She is also a speaker and curator for the annual Women Working for the World forum in Bogota, Colombia, the Her Village conference in Beijing, and co-chairs the US board of Women of the World (WOW). She partners with the Rockefeller Foundation to curate, convene and host Connected Women Leaders (CWL) forums, focused on collective problem solving among women leaders in government and civil society. In 2014, the Women’s Media Center honored Mitchell with its first-annual Lifetime Achievement Award, now named in her honor to commend other women whose media careers advance the representation of women. Recognized by Hollywood Reporter as one of the most powerful women in media, Fast Company’s “League of Extraordinary Women” and Huffington Post’s list of “Powerful Women Over 50,” Mitchell also received the Sandra Day O'Connor Award for Leadership. She was a contributor to Enlightened Power: How Women Are Transforming the Practice of Leadership, and wrote the introduction to the book and museum exhibition, 130 Women of Impact in 30 Countries. In 2016, she received a Congressional appointment to The American Museum of Women’s History Advisory Council, and in 2019 was named to the Gender Equality Top 100 list of women leaders by Apolitical. Mitchell is active with many nonprofit organizations, serving as the chair of the boards of the Sundance Institute and the Women’s Media Center. She is a founding member of the VDAY movement and on the boards of the Skoll Foundation and the Acumen Fund. She is also an advisor to Participant Media and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mitchell is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Georgia and holds a master's degree in English literature and several honorary doctorate degrees. She is the author of Becoming a Dangerous Woman: Embracing Risk to Change the World. She and her husband, Scott Seydel, live in Atlanta and have six children and 13 grandchildren.
  • Executive Chairman, ProPublica
    Paul E. Steiger was the founding editor-in-chief, CEO and president of ProPublica from 2008 through 2012. As Executive Chairman beginning Jan. 1, 2013, he remains actively involved in strategic issues, development, representing ProPublica in public venues, and consulting with management on business and editorial issues as needed and on a part-time basis. Steiger served as the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal from 1991 to 2007. During his tenure, members of the Journal’s newsroom staff were awarded 16 Pulitzer Prizes. In addition, ProPublica reporters received Pulitzer Prizes in May 2010 and 2011. He is a member of the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, based in Arlington, Va., which provides free legal assistance to journalists. He is a trustee of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, based in Miami, that funds efforts to enhance journalism and the functioning of American communities.
  • Deputy Executive Producer, FRONTLINE
    As Deputy Executive Producer of the PBS public affairs series FRONTLINE, Raney Aronson-Rath works to re-imagine the long-form documentary and develops cross-platform journalism partnerships with premiere news outlets. Her innovative approaches to long-form storytelling through experimental multiplatform projects include the Polk Award-winning Law and Disorder, Emmy Award-winner Big Money 2012, and most recently, Concussion Watch/League of Denial, a joint project with ESPN investigating the ongoing story of concussions in the NFL. Prior to managing FRONTLINE, Aronson-Rath produced several notable FRONTLINE films: News War, The Last Abortion Clinic, andThe Jesus Factor and worked as a producer at ABC News, The Wall Street Journal, and MSNBC. She received her master's from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.