The Cost of Not Being There: What Happens When Wars are No Longer Covered?

press release: Public Lecture: "The Cost of Not Being There -- What Happens When Wars are No Longer Covered?"

Protracted proxy conflicts, increasing dangers to journalists covering wars, budget constraints and, at times, an apathetic public have helped drive a disturbing trend of news organizations committing fewer resources, air time minutes and column inches to today’s armed conflicts. In his upcoming lecture, filmmaker and journalist Justin Kenny (Peabody and Emmy winning Foreign Editor/Senior Producer of the PBS NewsHour from 2012-2015), will unpack the problem, it’s cost and propose some solutions.

Presented by filmmaker and journalist Justin Kenny (Peabody and Emmy winning Foreign Editor/Senior Producer of the PBS NewsHour from 2012-2015)

October 16, 6:00-7:30 p.m., Memorial Union, 800 Langdon St. Check the Today in the Union board for room.

RSVP to: https://www.facebook.com/events/311804606070652/

About the speaker: Justin Kenny is an award winning journalist and filmmaker whose work primarily focuses on international humanitarian and social justice issues. From 2012-2015 he led the PBS NewsHour's international coverage as the program's Foreign Affairs Senior Producer/ Editor. During his tenure the program doubled the amount of original overseas on the ground reporting and his work received some of America's top broadcasting honors including two News and Documentary Emmys (Outstanding Business and Economic Reporting in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast for "Who's behind the Chinese takeover of the world's biggest pork producer?" / Outstanding Investigative Journalism in a Regularly Scheduled Newscast for "Hazardous Work: Diving into the Philippines' Dangerous Underwater Mines."), a George Foster Peabody Award (News Winner for "Desperate Journey" series on European migrant and refugee crisis), and a National Headliner Award (First Place - Continuing Coverage of a Major News Event for “No End in Sight: Fighting ISIS”). In 2016, he left his position at the PBS NewsHour to launch Small Footprint Films (SFF) a news and documentary production company. For his first project with SFF, Kenny and his collaboration partners gained rare access inside Bangladesh's billion dollar leather industry where they documented child labor and widespread worker safety and pollution violations for the PBS NewsHour. In 2017, he wrote and directed The New Barbarianism with Stephen Morrison for the Center for Strategic of International Studies Global Health Policy Center. The feature documentary aired on PBS in March 2018 and named "Best Documentary Feature" at the Los Angeles Film Awards. He is currently filming The Boy from Serniki a feature documentary about Holocaust survivor and war crimes prosecution witness Nathan Bobrov. Kenny is a graduate of Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia.