October 19, 2001
For Immediate Release

NPR's President to be Keynote Speaker at W&L Conference

LEXINGTON, Va. - Kevin Klose, the president and chief executive officer of National Public Radio (NPR), is the keynote speaker for a Nov. 2-3 conference on global media ethics sponsored by Washington and Lee University's journalism and mass communications department and the Knight Program in Journalism Ethics.

Klose's address, "Public Broadcasting's Global Role," is at noon Friday, Nov. 2, in Lee Chapel. His speech and conference presentations are open to the public. The conference is co-sponsored by Brigham Young University and Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, publisher of the Journal of Mass Media Ethics.

Klose, who has led NPR since late 1998, was a 25-year veteran of The Washington Post, where he served as a correspondent, city editor, Moscow bureau chief and deputy national editor. Prior to joining NPR, he was the director of U.S. International Broadcasting, the U.S. government's worldwide global radio and television news service.

From 1993 to 1997, Klose served as president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which broadcasts news to Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. He moved its base from Munich, Germany, to Prague, the Czech Republic, and devised strategies to coordinate all U.S.-funded international broadcasting efforts— including those of Radio Free Europe, Voice of America and Worldnet Television—to save money, refocus missions and modernize operations in the post-Cold War.

The conference, "Global Media: The Quest for Universal Ethical Standards," will draw journalists and journalism educators from the United States, India and Africa. Papers will be presented beginning at 2 p.m. Nov. 2 and 9 a.m. Nov. 3 in Leyburn Library's Northen Auditorium. Presentations include:

• "New Challenges of Globalization for Journalism," by Dr. Sidney Callahan, an author, former psychology professor at Mercy College and a columnist for Commonweal Magazine;
• "Accountability in Journalism," by Justice P.B. Sawant, president of the World Association of Press Councils and former chairman of the Press Council of India;
• "Global Journalism and the Myth of the Nation-State," by Dr. Deni Elliott, director of the Practical Ethics Center at the University of Montana.

Page updated Friday, October 19, 2001
Comments and Questions: Ruth Intress
© 2001 Washington and Lee University

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