KNOXVILLE — Veteran international journalist Gary Thatcher will talk about “Twice Burned: Gathering and Presenting News in Troubled Countries” on Thursday in the McClung Museum Auditorium at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Thatcher’s lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held from 5 to 6 p.m. A reception will follow. This is the first in a series of international lectures being held by the College of Communication and Information.
“Gary Thatcher is one of the most experienced international broadcasters and journalists in the world and has insights on the development of a free press in Russia, the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere,” said Sam Swan, director of the college’s Internationalization and Outreach Program.
Thatcher, a veteran journalist and editor, has been the associate director of program support for the International Broadcasting Bureau since June 2000. There he oversees program placement, marketing, public affairs, development, and international media training, research and program quality review for the agency.
Thatcher also has handled a number of major assignments for the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), including the creation and launch of Radio Sawa, the board’s popular Arabic-language service.
From late 2003 until early 2004, Thatcher served in Baghdad as director of strategic communications for the Coalition Provisional Authority, where he served on the senior staff of Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III.
Prior to joining the U.S. government, Thatcher was first foreign editor, then national editor, of the Chicago Tribune, where he supervised the Tribune’s worldwide and U.S. news bureaus. He was also the national editor of The Christian Science Monitor.
He was a news executive, deputy director and acting director of Radio Free Europe, which broadcasts to northern, central and Eastern Europe under the overall supervision of the BBG.
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Contact:
Sam Swan, (865) 974-5155, samswan@utk.edu
April Moore, (865) 974-0463, amoore9@utk.edu
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