Cleraun Media Forum

Venue: Cleraun University Centre (www.cleraun.com), 90 Foster Avenue, Mount Merrion, Co. Dublin (tel: 288 1734)

Fee: Attendance is free

Since the 11th Cleraun Media Conference, the Cleraun Media Forum has organised the following events:

Session 11: Monday 19 May 2008, 20.00 to 21.30
Blogging: some ethical issues
Tony Allwright is an engineer, occasional columnist with The Irish Times and a blogger on international and national issues — www.tallrite.com/blog.htm

Session 10: Monday 28 April 2008, 20.00 to 21.30
Challenging political spin
Andrew Lynch is Chief Political Commentator of the Evening Herald and also writes for the Sunday Business Post.

Session 9: Monday 25 February 2008, 20.00 to 21.30
Are financial journalists too close to business?
Damien Kiberd presents “Down to Business” on Newstalk 106-108FM. While presenting the station’s “Lunchtime Show” from 2002 to 2006, he and his team won 3 PPI awards, including news programme of the year. He also writes the Economics Column for the Business Section of The Sunday Times (Irish Edition). A founding editor of The Sunday Business Post, where he served as Editor and Director from 1989 to 2001, he edited three books based on the contents of Cleraun Media Conferences.

Session 8: Monday 10 December 2007
Is Christmas the time we should be thinking about the rest of the world? – The media and global development
Juno McEnroe has been a journalist with the Irish Examiner since 2003, covering political, crime and foreign stories. He has reported several times from Africa, and in the New Year will be reporting from Kenya and probably from Chad. After completing an MA in journalism in 2000, he worked freelance with the Sunday Times and Ireland on Sunday (now the Irish Daily Mail).

Session 7: Monday 5 November 2007
The US media on the death penalty: friend or foe?
John Holdridge is Director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Capital Punishment Project in Durham, North Carolina. Before studying law at New York University, he worked for a year as a journalist in Ireland. Prior to joining the ACLU in 2006, he was a public defender in Connecticut’s Capital Defence and Trial Services Unit and, before that, spent 11 years as director of the Mississippi and Louisiana Capital Trial Assistance Project in New Orleans. He has represented numerous “Death Row” clients at trial, on appeal, and in post-conviction proceedings. These include Michael Graham and Larry Maxwell, both innocent defendants who faced death by execution and were later freed. He wrote the pleadings and co-argued a seminal case in which the Louisiana Supreme Court recognized that indigent defendants have a right to effective counsel and that the overwhelming caseloads of the indigent defender system in New Orleans violated that right. In 2001 he received the National Legal Aid & Defender Association’s Life in the Balance Achievement Award. For a summary of his reasons for ending the death penalty in the US, see http://www.aclu.org/capital/general/30135res20070614.html

Session 6: Monday 15 October 2007
What journalists expect from Catholic diocesan websites, and what webeditors think the journalists want
Dr Daniel Arasa lectures in the Faculty of Institutional Social Communications at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome (www.pusc.it). He recently completed a detailed study of nine major Catholic diocesan websites (Los Angeles, Melbourne, Manila, Johannesburg, Milan, Madrid, Mexico, Sao Paolo and Bogota), and interviewed the webeditors and religious affairs correspondents in each country. He began this research while at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and previously worked as a news agency journalist.

Session 5: Monday, 23 April 2007
Blogging and traditional media: do the same standards of professional integrity apply?
Richard Delevan, Business Editor & Columnist, The Sunday Tribune

Session 4: Monday, 26 March 2007
Is an ethical journalist simply a competent journalist?
Tomás Ó Síocháin, Programme Editor, RTÉ / TG4

Session 3: Monday, 26 February 2007
Fairness and balance
Pat Leahy, Political Correspondent, The Sunday Business Post

Session 2: Monday, 22 January 2007
Investigative journalism: standards, sources, accuracy
Paddy Murray, Associate Editor, The Sunday World

Session 1: Monday, 4 December 2006
Safeguarding personal integrity
Dearbhail McDonald, Legal Affairs Correspondent, The Irish Independent

Further information from Paul Harman at paulharman@eircom.net