Spectrum

By WOUB Public MediaNews

Spectrum episodes

March 28, 2018 With Seriousness and Satire, Top Scholar Examines Climate Change in Trump Era
The serious side of Dr. Michael E. Mann approaches his battle with the climate change deniers in the Trump Administration with scholarly excellence. But, the author side of Dr. Mann approaches the same topic with science, satire and cartoons.

Dr. Mann is one of the world’s foremost authorities on climate change and its impacts. He is an award-winning scholar. He is a Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State University, with joint appointments in the Department of Geosciences and Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI). He also is the director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC.)

He has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles in his field and is known as one of the top scholars on this topic.

He discusses with the Spectrum podcast the serious side of climate change and the dangers we face with climate change deniers both in the Trump Administration as well as in Congress.

He also, however, discusses his most recent book and how he takes a different approach to effectuate change.

As an author, he makes the climate change issues accessible to the general public through the use of satire and cartoons in “The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy,” published by the Columbia University Press.

In this book he teamed up with Pulitzer-prize winning political cartoonist Tom Toles of the Washington Post to approach the topic with a combination of hard science, satire and humor.

According to a book summary presented by Amazon: “The Madhouse Effect portrays the intellectual pretzels into which denialists must twist logic to explain away the clear evidence that human activity has changed Earth's climate. Toles's cartoons collapse counter-scientific strategies into their biased components, helping readers see how to best strike at these fallacies. Mann's expert skills at science communication aim to restore sanity to a debate that continues to rage against widely acknowledged scientific consensus. The synergy of these two climate science crusaders enlivens the gloom and doom of so many climate-themed books―and may even convert die-hard doubters to the side of sound science.”

The book makes the complicated issues surrounding climate change accessible to both believers and deniers.

Dr. Mann is lecturing about his book at the Templeton-Blackburn Memorial Auditorium on the Ohio University campus on March 28, 2018 at 7:30 p.m.
27 min
March 21, 2018 From Travails to Triumph: A Woman NYC Chef Who Persisted Through Adversity
In the early 1970s, Madeline Carvalho Lanciani traveled from suburban Dayton, Ohio to New York City as a young woman with dreams of being an opera singer.

After many twists and turns in life, she now owns the famous Duane Park Patisserie in the fashionable Tribeca District. She is famous for her baking, her creativity and for her tenacity.

March is National Women’s History Month and the theme this year is NEVERTHELESS SHE PERSISTED: Honoring Women Who Fight All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Madeline is truly a study in persistence and the embodiment of this theme.

Early in her New York life, singing jobs became scare. Besides having a day job, Madeline started baking at home to help pay her bills. She sold her goods in local Greenwich Village shops.

Soon, she decided to put singing on the shelf and instead, she followed her passion of baking and cooking full-time. She attended a local culinary school where she was the only woman student.

After graduation, when she had to look for a job she ran into the stone wall of sexual discrimination. No one in the NYC food industry would hire a woman.

However, Madeline’s tenacity and resilience persisted and she talked herself into a job at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. She worked free for five months to prove herself. When eventually hired, she was the only woman in the kitchen of 99 men. Her story there was one of travails and triumph.

After on-the-job hazing, abuse and discrimination in the kitchen, she persisted and rose to be the chef at one of the Plaza’s top restaurants.

She and her first husband then started their own bakery in Greenwich Village but the business outlasted the marriage. They got divorced and both remarried.

Madeline’s second marriage produced her two children but it was a tough marriage for her. In various ways, it was an emotionally destructive marriage for Madeline.

Eventually, she divorced her second husband and was essentially a broke single mom of a six year old and a three year old.

Undeterred, Madeline found an empty warehouse in the Tribeca District of the city. She borrowed money, renovated it and started her own Patisserie. Today, her shop is one of the top in all of New York City. She is known for her superior quality and creativity.

Madeline paved the way for women in her field while suffering multiple levels of abuse in the workplace and emotional turmoil at home. She is truly an example of persistence and grit.
28 min
March 14, 2018 Is “Fake News” an Accurate Description of Today’s Media Landscape?
“Fake News” is a term that does not have one definite meaning. Its definition is fluid depending on who is using it to describe news coverage, says an assembled team of experts.

Spectrum brought together a veteran journalist, a scholar in the fields of communication and education, and a media executive with 30 years of experience in public broadcasting to dissect the topic of “Fake News” and what it means.

Allison Hunter is currently the Editor-In-Chief of WOUB News. Over her career she has had experience in both commercial and public broadcasting. She has produced award-winning news programming in the major markets of Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles as well as the smaller markets of Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hunter also currently co-hosts a news related podcast #457SEO.

Dr. Scott Titsworth has been the Dean of the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University since 2009. The Scripps College consists of the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism, the School of Media Arts and Studies, the School of Visual Communication, the School of Communication Studies and the J. Warren McClure School of Information and Telecommunication Systems.

Dr. Titsworth has an international reputation as a top scholar in the area of classroom communication effectiveness. He also hosts a nationally distributed podcast called “Teaching Matters” where he examines the unique needs of students in the 21st Century and the “Technological Age.”

Mark Brewer is the General Manager of WOUB Public Media. He is an experienced media executive with over 30 years in public broadcasting in Ohio, Minnesota, and Texas. He currently manages six public radio stations, six public television stations, social media, and an online news service.

All agree that the term “Fake News” is used by those who want to denigrate the news product either by claiming that the “event” never happened or that news reports have the facts wrong – thereby leading to a mistaken public impression.

If the term only was used to describe mainstream media, the panel, concurs that it would be easier to counteract the idea of falsity with greater media transparency and openness. However, the problem of “Fake News” is exacerbated by social media and the myriad of bots, trolls, fake news sites dedicated to distributing false reports.

In short, legitimate news is diluted and polluted by truly fake news that is generated by those who wish to advance a position or destroy someone else’s position.

“Fake News” needs to be counteracted by accurate reporting and complete transparency on how a story is resourced and produced. Openness counteracts the assertion of falsity, the panel says.
57 min
March 07, 2018 Syria is Beleaguered by Internal Wars and External Interventions, says Expert
This month the civil war in Syria will enter its eighth year of fighting. More than 400,000 have been killed, nearly 1 million injured and over one-third of the nation’s infrastructure has been destroyed, says Dr. Bassam Haddad, an expert on Syria.

Millions have been displaced from their homes and other countries have felt the glut of millions of Syrian refugees fleeing the fighting.

What started as an internal civil war in 2011 against the dictatorship of President Bashar a-Assad has become a cauldron of international intervention. In addition to the United States and Russia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have been involved in supporting one side or the other. Hezbollah also has been involved along with ISIS who, at one time, controlled 45 percent of the country, Dr. Haddad notes.

ISIS took control of much of the northern and eastern parts of Syria in 2013 in an effort to establish its own caliphate. But, ISIS was finally routed from their territory by a military coalition after fierce battles. ISIS now holds only limited portions of the rural countryside, Dr. Haddad says.

At the eight year mark of the Syrian struggles, the country still faces internal political unrest, external interventions, battles between Turkey and the Kurds and a massive task to rebuild the physical part of the country and infrastructure destroyed by war.

Dr. Haddad talks to Spectrum about all of these issues. He puts the conflicts into historical context from the beginning of the uprisings and discusses the current challenges facing this war-weary nation.

Dr. Haddad is a scholar, a teacher, an author, and a documentary film-maker. His second book is provisionally titled “Understanding the Syrian Tragedy: Regime, Opposition and Outsiders” to be published by Stanford University Press.

He also has been the co-producer/director of the award winning documentary film, “About Baghdad” and he also directed the acclaimed film, “Arabs and Terrorism.”
46 min
February 28, 2018 “Black Girls Matter”- Study Shows Black Middle School Girls Get Disciplined More Often than White Students
Students of color, students who don’t know English well and LGBTQ students are “vastly over-represented among students who face school disciplinary actions,” says Dr. Lisa Harrison and Dr. Theda Gibbs-Grey of the Patton College of Education at Ohio University.
This has led Dr. Harrison and Dr. Gibbs-Grey to launch a research study called “Black Girls Matter: Exploring the School Experiences of Middle School Black Girls Who Have Experienced School Suspensions.”
Discipline rates of Black girls far exceed those of white girls in the same classes.
“Instead of finding understanding, they get discipline,” says Dr. Harrison. This can have life-long impacts and contribute to high drop-out rates.
Harrison and Gibbs-Grey currently are following the progress of eight middle school Black girls at an Ohio school. They are conducting “school observations, interviews with the girls and their parents, as well as documenting their school disciplinary records,” Dr. Gibbs-Grey noted.
“We are also providing a year-long mentorship program that meets with the girls once per week for the school year,” Gibbs-Grey added.
The research has found school structures that work and those that don’t.
The researchers have found systems that need restructuring “to prevent negative academic and life outcomes for the girls locally and nationally who deserve much more,” according to Gibbs-Grey.
The two researchers hope to institute national and local changes in “school discipline and academic success among students who are marginalized.” They currently are in the seventh month of a year-long study.
Dr. Theda Gibbs-Grey has her doctorate in Curriculum, Instruction and Teacher Education with a specialization in Language and Literacy and Urban Education from Michigan State University.
Dr. Harrison has her doctorate from the University of Georgia in Middle School Education
39 min
February 21, 2018 Recent Indictments Show Russia Sows Discord in America, Russia Expert Says
Russia intended to support candidates against Hillary Clinton- the object of Vladimir Putin’s hatred, says expert on Russia, Dr. Steven Miner, scholar, author and professor in the Contemporary History Institute of Ohio University.

Russia also intended to disrupt American politics and social systems leading up to and after the 2016 Presidential Election, says Miner after perusing the 35 pages of indictments filed February 16 by United States Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The Russians intended to cause discord and chasms within the United States and Miner says they have been successful.

The indictments accuse 13 Russians, who infiltrated the United States with special agents, of illegal activities surrounding the 2016 Election and three Russian companies who helped illegally finance the espionage.

Some American experts have called this infiltration an act of war. Dr. Miner calls the operation acts of aggression. He agrees that the Russians have and will continue to breed chaos within the American systems and with the American public unless stopped by Congress or the Trump Administration.

Some five days after the indictments were made public, Dr. Miner is surprised that President Donald Trump has not condemned the Russian activities or done anything overtly to stop Russian meddling.

Trump also has not imposed sanctions against Russia for past election interference. Those sanctions earlier were passed by Congress by overwhelming margins.

Many, including Dr. Miner, are surprised with Trump’s apparent indifference to the Russian aggression and his lack of any coherent policy to counteract Russian interference.

Dr. Miner is an international expert and specialist in recent Russia/Soviet and East European history. He also is an award winning author. He just completed writing a book called “The Furies Unleashed: The Soviet People at War, 1941-1945.”
40 min
February 14, 2018 Hometown Journalists Add to Poverty Problems of Their Areas, Scholar Says
Often Appalachian natives decry the “drive by journalists” from big cities that come to small Appalachia towns just to capture pictures and depictions of poverty, unemployment, drug addiction and squalid and trashy living conditions.

They come, stay for a day or two, take pictures of the most decrepit conditions and human devastation, conduct a few interviews and then leave painting the whole region with the same brush of destitution.

The same criticisms have been levied by some against the recent book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, written by J. D. Vance.

Michael Clay Carey, a former journalist and current assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at Samford University in Birmingham Alabama, instead thinks that local news media in Appalachian towns often ignore poverty and local social ills to the detriment of their citizenry.

They generally don’t report about poverty, economic or health issues, because they don’t want people to think that they are exploiting stereotypes, according to Carey in his new book, The News Untold: Community Journalism and the Failure to Confront Poverty in Appalachia.

However, in a study of three small towns in the Appalachian region, Carey found that by ignoring major indigenous problems that the local media, in fact, do perpetuate stereotypes. Ignoring the issues makes it more difficult to truly isolate the problems and discuss viable solutions.

Ignoring economic need can make it more difficult to find permanent economic solutions and be less vulnerable to “boom or bust” industries, Carey notes.

Instead of less coverage of problems, Carey proposes more coverage by local media.

“Critical and inclusive news coverage of poverty at the local level can help communities start to look past stereotypes and attitudes, and encourage solutions that incorporate broader sets of community voices,” Carey writes.

Before returning for his graduate work, Carey spent more than a decade as a small town reporter and editor. He now “researches the impacts of stereotypes and the roles media play in the formation and maintenance of individual and group identity,” according to his biography
38 min
February 07, 2018 We Look Behind the Washington Headlines with NPR Security Editor
The news in Washington D.C. regarding the investigation of the Trump campaign for possible conspiracy with Russians in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice on the part of the President is roiling.

According to Philip Ewing, National Security Editor for National Public Radio (NPR), the news comes at such a rapid pace that all journalists are scrambling to keep up with the latest developments and skirmishes.

Ewing, in this edition of “Spectrum,” attempts to bring us up-to-date on the latest moves by the parties and gives us perspective behind the Washington headlines we read and hear each day.

Most recently we have had attacks on the FBI and the Department of Justice by the White House. Meanwhile, some Republicans in Congress are raising questions about the investigative techniques used by the FBI.

These accusations of wrong-doing on the part of law enforcement are clearly part of President Trump’s defense strategy to ward off any potential damage from the Robert Mueller investigation, says Ewing.

That attack concept also has permeated the Republican side of the House Intelligence Committee chaired by Republican Devin Nunes. Last week, he released a memorandum claiming to outline improprieties by the FBI and the Justice Department in obtaining a warrant from a special court to secretly listen to conversations of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

The memorandum was unclassified by President Trump and released to the public and the media last Friday by the House Committee prompting the Democrats to seek to release their own 10 page memorandum contra to the GOP missive, according to Ewing.

On Monday, Feb. 5th, the House Intelligence Committee unanimously sent the Democratic memorandum to President Trump for a decision whether to declassify its contents. The President has five days to decide whether to declassify all or part of the memorandum. We await his decision.

Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, President Trump’s lawyers are advising him not to voluntarily submit to an interview with Mueller’s team for fear of possible perjury, Ewing adds.

As the “Battle of the Memos” goes on in Congress, other matters in Washington are getting limited attention. For example, the deadline for passing a federal spending bill elapses this week. Although Ewing says that he does not expect another government shut-down, some in Congress are working feverishly to come up with solutions to the funding impasse.

Also, this week President Trump refused to impose new sanctions on the Russians. This refusal is in direct contradiction to the wishes of Congress. Congress, by an overwhelming majority in both Houses, mandated the President to impose new sanctions against Russia. The President refused and that issue is now at an impasse between the White House and Congress.
45 min
January 31, 2018 Booming Gaming Industry is Expanding to Include Healthcare, Education & Finance
The days of video or computer games being just for the entertainment of a small segment of our population are over.

The gaming industry is exploding and developing beyond the confines of simple games into applications for healthcare, rehabilitation, education and even finance.

The business of gaming is worth over a $100 billion globally per year. Games bring in more money that music and movies combined, says Chris Volpe, entrepreneur and CEO of Multivarious Games headquartered in Columbus, Ohio.

Volpe is also the co-founder of the Ohio Game Developer Association, a group designed to bring more gaming business to the heartland. Volpe says that the Midwest is perfect for start-up game development companies.

As more and more people become internet connected at younger ages, Volpe says that developers need to take advantage of this “opportunity for growth.”

Volpe notes that the average age of a gamer is 36 and a game purchaser is 40 years old. He also says that 42 percent of gamers are female. It is no longer just a teenage phenomenon.

Volpe also sees videogames as a storytelling medium. This is especially true of new Virtual Reality technologies being developed and explored.

Because the technology and game methodology are growing so fast, Volpe says that being a game developer is like operating in the historic “Wild West” where there are few rules or limitations and there are major opportunities.

Volpe’s company is working especially closely with healthcare professionals to provide therapeutic games. Recently, Multivarious Games produced a game for Nationwide Children’s Hospital to help children with muscular dystrophy.
42 min
January 24, 2018 Media Coverage of Fed. Shutdown Misses Impact on Average Person
Some observers characterize politics as a game…a sport where there are game plans, strategies, and winners and losers on almost a daily basis.

And, often the news media cover politics as if it were a sporting competition with play-by-play descriptions and color analysis.

Such was the case during the most recent three-day federal shutdown over the spending resolution– a battle between Democrats and Republicans and a battle between the White House and the Senate.

Terminology mimicked sports coverage. Was it the “Schumer Shutdown” or the “Trump Shutdown?” When it was resolved, did the Democrats “cave” or “choke” or did they “win” concessions from the GOP?

While the news media concentrate on covering the “game” of politics, stories about how the shutdown impacted average Americans in the heartland went untold, according to Andrew Alexander, former Washington Post ombudsman and former Washington bureau chief for Cox Newspapers.

Often the media report from a limited perspective or from a Washington D.C. point of view and ignore the ramifications of governmental actions on average Americans. Media does a good job of describing the impacts of actions for the coasts – Washington, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco but too often ignore the heartland, where the bulk of President Trump’s base reside, Alexander said.

Alexander is a veteran of covering governmental shutdowns since back when House Speaker Newt Gingrich shut down the government during the Bill Clinton Administration in the 1990s.

Alexander is a former Washington Post ombudsman, a former Washington Bureau chief for Cox Newspapers and an award winning veteran journalist with more than four decades of experience.

During his career, he reported from more than 50 countries and directed major news coverage both domestically and internationally.

Alexander also serves on the New York based Committee to Protect Journalists – This group assists journalists who have been subjected to attacks, arrests and harassment worldwide.

He noted that during the first year of the Trump presidency that the media are encountering, for the first time, a President who by-passes reporters to deliver constituent messages directly through social media. This has left some media confused about how to cover those messages and the President himself – sometimes facing false leads or being misdirected from the “real news.”

Alexander, however, calls some of the investigative reporting done by news organizations to uncover stories of this President’s activities and falsehoods – “magnificent.”

Overall, however, Alexander is deeply concerned about the attacks of this Administration against the First Amendment and freedoms of speech and press. He believes our citizenry needs to be better informed about the fragility of those rights and take appropriate actions to protect them.
42 min

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