The First Amendment is NOT a Suicide Pact, with Lowell Bergman (Fall 2024)

Freedom of Speech does not include unlimited reach. Until the Internet, all electronic speech was regulated. Lowell Bergman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and Emmy Award-winning television producer, discussed today's extremist interpretation of free speech, and what it means for the future of democracy. The presentation was facilitated by author Peter Richardson.
About the Speakers
Lowell Bergman is the Emeritus Reva and David Logan Distinguished Chair in Investigative Journalism at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, founder of Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program and co-founder of The Center for Investigative Reporting. He spent three decades working in national television news with ABC, then CBS’ “60 Minutes,” and PBS’ documentary series “Frontline.” His work has been honored with multiple Emmys, duPonts and Peabody’s. His “60 Minutes” investigation of the tobacco industry was dramatized in 1999 in the Academy Award-nominated feature film “The Insider.” In 2004, The New York Times received journalism’s highest honor, the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, for his work with David Barstow on “A Dangerous Business,” which detailed thousands of egregious worker safety and environmental violations in the iron pipe and other industries. Bergman was a New York Times correspondent until 2008 and a senior producer and consultant to Frontline until 2015.
Peter Richardson has written critically acclaimed books about Hunter S. Thompson, the Grateful Dead, Ramparts magazine, and radical author/editor Carey McWilliams. A longtime lecturer at San Francisco State University, Richardson has also written for The Nation, The New Republic, Los Angeles Times Book Review, and San Francisco Chronicle.