Speaker Bios. Lori Dorfman, DrPH Berkeley Media Studies Group

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1 Speaker Bios Lori Dorfman, DrPH Lori Dorfman directs the, a project of the Public Health Institute, where she oversees BMSG s research on the news, media advocacy training for advocates, and professional education for journalists. BMSG's work is anchored in a public health approach and based on empirical studies of the media environment. BMSG conducts and commissions research on how news, entertainment, and advertising present health and social issues. BMSG studies the process of news gathering, analyzes media content, and writes case studies. Dofman earned her doctorate in 1994 from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, where, using participant observation and content analysis, she studied how television news frames health. Dr. Dorfman s recent research examines news and advertising portrayals of various public health issues, including children s health, nutrition and agriculture, food and beverage marketing, paid family leave, racial discrimination, violence, and alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. Dr. Dorfman co-authored the major texts on media advocacy: Public Health and Media Advocacy: Power for Prevention and News for a Change: An Advocates' Guide to Working with the Media and teaches graduate students at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. She conducts media advocacy training for grass roots organizations and public health leaders, consults for government agencies and community programs across the U.S. and internationally, and publishes articles on public health and mass communication. She edited Reporting on Violence: A Handbook for Journalists, which helps reporters include a public health perspective in violence reporting and is part of an interdisciplinary team that conducts workshops on violence reporting for newspapers and local TV news stations. Dr. Dorfman s publications are available from Jeff Chester Jeff Chester is founder and Executive Director of the (CDD) and a leading public-interest media advocate for more than twenty years. CDD is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting a democratic media system in the digital age. His book Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy, was published in January 2007 by The New Press. He is also a frequent contributor to The 1718 Connecticut Ave. NW Suite 200 Washington, DC Shattuck Ave. Suite 804 Berkeley, CA

2 Nation and other publications. In 1991, Chester co-founded the nonprofit Washington, D.C.-based Center for Media Education (CME), along with Kathryn Montgomery. He was also a co-founder of the Telecommunications Policy Roundtable, and helped write its groundbreaking set of principles for the digital age in During the debate on the Telecommunications Act of 1996, he played a key role in fighting proposed measures to deregulate ownership rules in the broadcasting, newspaper, and cable industries. In 1996, Newsweek named him one of the Internet's fifty most influential people. Chester launched CME's project on open access and the future of the Internet in 2000, transferring it to the when that organization was established in That same year, he was awarded a prestigious Public Interest Pioneer Grant from the Stern Family Fund. Among his many contributions to public interest media policy is the role he played in helping to frame the debate on the issue of network neutrality a key principle designed to ensure that the Internet remains a democratic medium. Under Chester's leadership, CDD helped organize a national campaign during opposing plans by the FCC to eliminate key media ownership safeguards. He also led the effort to protect the editorial integrity of public broadcasting, helping it fend off criticism from then-chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Kenneth Tomlinson. Tomlinson was eventually forced to resign. Prior to his media policy career, Chester was a psychiatric social worker, investigative journalist, and documentary filmmaker. His work has appeared on PBS, NPR and in many print publications. He was one of the leaders of the policy campaign that established the Independent Television Service (ITVS) and also co-founded the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, an artists' rights advocacy group. He received his MSW in Community Mental Health from UC Berkeley in 1978 and his BA in psychology from California State University, San Francisco in Kathryn Montgomery, PhD American University Kathryn Montgomery is a Professor in the School of Communication at American University. Before returning to full-time teaching in 2003, she was President of the DCbased Center for Media Education (CME), which she co-founded with Jeff Chester in During her 12-year tenure at CME, Montgomery's research, publications, and testimony helped frame the national public policy debate on a range of critical media issues. She led a coalition of child advocacy, health, and education groups in a series of successful advocacy campaigns, leaving behind a legacy of policies on behalf of children and families. They include: a Federal Communications Commission rule requiring a minimum of three hours per week of educational/informational television programming

3 for children; a content-based ratings system for TV programs; and the first federal legislation to protect children's privacy on the Internet the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). In the early 1990s, Montgomery was a media studies professor at California State University, Los Angeles, and at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she developed new curricula in television history and criticism, and conducted research on the intersection of politics, regulatory policy, and content in the media. Her book, Target: Prime Time - Advocacy Groups and the Struggle over Entertainment Television (Oxford University Press, 1989), was the first study to document the efforts of a variety of issue groups to influence television programming. As director of the Youth, Media, and Democracy Project at American University, Montgomery conducts ongoing research on the uses of technology by young people, and assesses the major technology, economic, and policy trends affecting the future of digital media. With support from the Ford and Surdna Foundations, she produced a groundbreaking report in 2004, "Youth as E-Citizens," which documented the variety of ways that youth are using the Internet for politics and civic engagement. Montgomery is a contributing scholar to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation initiative on Digital Media and Learning. She is author of Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet, MIT Press, Patti Miller, MA Children Now Patti Miller is Vice President and Director, Children & the Media at Children Now where she oversees independent research projects on children and the media and monitors public policy developments in the communications field as it affects children. Before coming to Children Now, she worked in research and production for the CBS Evening News in Washington, D.C. She also worked as a project manager for a San Franciscobased research firm evaluating children s television programming for PBS. Ms. Miller holds a Master of Arts in Social Sciences in Education from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communications from the University of California at Berkeley. Sonya Grier, PhD American University Professor Grier received her Ph.D. in Marketing, with a minor in Social Psychology, from Northwestern University in Dr. Grier also has an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, with an emphasis on

4 marketing, non-profit management and international business. Professor Grier's research converges on topics related to the influence of social context on consumers and the social impact of marketing efforts. Some of her current research investigates the relationship between marketing efforts, both corporate and social, and consumer health-related attitudes and behaviors. She is also examining the role of marketing-related public policy in addressing health disparities. Dr. Grier has published articles in leading marketing, advertising and health policy journals, including Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Journal of Advertising, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Health Affairs and Annual Reviews in Public Health. Professor Grier spent three years as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. The interdisciplinary fellowship is designed to build the nation's capacity for research, leadership and action to address social factors affecting health. Professor Grier also spent two years as a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Trade Commission, where she provided consumer research expertise as part of a team examining the target marketing of violent movies, music and video games to American youth. Dr. Grier also has practical industry experience, having worked in Market Research at Kraft, Incorporated, in Brand Management at General Foods USA, and as an Independent Marketing consultant. Diego Castaneda, MPH School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley Diego Castaneda is a doctoral student at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. He earned his bachelor s degree from UC San Diego in Animal Physiology and Neuroscience. Following this, he worked at the UCSD School of Medicine as a Research Associate in the Dept. of Immunology for 4 and a half years studying the microbiology of asthma. Though he helped in the development of over 10 scientific papers about this disease, Castaneda realized that his true passion lay with human behavior research and decided to pursue his MPH at San Diego State in the division of Health Promotion. During this time, Castaneda worked as a research associate for an obesity intervention that focused on changing the micro and macro environments in South San Diego County. While working on this study, he was awarded a two-year grant by the National Institutes of Health to develop his own research project that compared fast food to healthy food logo recognition in young Latino children, and was selected to present these findings at the American Public Health Association annual meeting in Castaneda s primary interest in the doctoral program lies in learning how to develop creative health communication programs and strategies through the use of multi-media and education through entertainment.

5 Michael Jacobson, PhD Center for Science in the Public Interest Michael Jacobson is co-founder and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a nonprofit health advocacy organization with more than 900,000 subscribers to its Nutrition Action Healthletter. Founded in 1971, CSPI focuses on nutrition, food safety, scientific integrity, and alcohol policy. CSPI led the campaign to win passage of the law requiring Nutrition Facts labeling on packaged foods, health warnings on alcoholic beverages, and the law defining organic foods. It publishes attention-getting studies, including famous exposés of the nutritional quality of restaurant meals, and recently, hard-hitting reports on teens soda consumption and the staggering amounts of salt in processed foods. CSPI is a key player in the ongoing battle against obesity in America, advocating nutritious and safe diets and pushing legislators and corporations to take steps to protect the public s health. Dr. Jacobson frequently appears on local and national television newscasts, including The Today Show, Good Morning America, and 60 Minutes. His books include, as author or co-author: Restaurant Confidential, Marketing Madness, What Are We Feeding Our Kids?, The Fast-Food Guide, Safe Food: Eating Wisely in a Risky World, The Complete Eater s Digest and Nutrition Scoreboard and Six Arguments for a Greener Diet. # # #