[Sci-tech-public] WEDNESDAY: Forum on Space, Media and Public Perceptions, 5pm Stata Center

[Scott Uebelhart]

The Space, Policy, and Society research group presents:
>From "Godspeed John Glenn" to Rovers on Mars: 
Space, Media, and Public Perceptions
A forum with:
John Schwartz, The New York Times
Mike Cabbage, NASA Office of Public Affairs
Phil Hilts, incoming director of the Knight Science Journalism Fellows
Moderated by:
Prof. David Mindell, MIT Science, Technology, and Society Program
Wednesday, April 30, 2008 
5:00pm-7:00pm
MIT Stata Center, Room 32-155
While the space community focuses on the completion of the space station and
a possible return to the moon, it is unclear how successfully they are
communicating the goals of these projects with the public. Three panelists
will discuss public attitudes toward spaceflight, how scientific endeavors
are presented in the media, and the communication challenges between the
science/engineering communities and the public. 
Biographies: 
John Schwartz is a science writer for the New York Times. He writes
primarily about space travel, and his work has taken him from the Mojave
Desert to Moscow. He has written on a wide range of topics, including
physician-assisted suicide, computer security, online pornography, robots,
and why pregnant women don't tip over. (It has something to do with an extra
curve in their spines.) Before coming to the Times, he worked for the
Washington Post, and before that, Newsweek Magazine.
Michael Cabbage is the director of NASA's News Services Division at NASA
Headquarters in Washington. Since taking that job 11 months ago, he has
overseen the agency's news operations, television network, Internet
services, photo office and multimedia programs. Cabbage came to NASA after a
two-decade career in journalism, spending the last 13 years as a reporter
covering the space agency and its programs for the Tribune and Gannett
newspaper chains. He also has served as a space consultant for ABC News.
Cabbage is co-author of the book "Comm Check: The final flight of shuttle
Columbia" and earned a graduate degree in journalism from Stanford
University.
Philip J. Hilts, the author of six books, has been a prize-winning health
and science reporter for both the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Over 20 years, he placed more than 300 stories on the front pages of those
papers. His stories have included a report back from one mile below the
Pacific Ocean surface in an active volcano, the confessions of a healer in
Zambia who was "curing" AIDS, and articles on hypnosis-induced court
testimony that resulted in four men being freed from jail. His most recent
book is RX for Survival: Why We Must Rise to the Global Health Challenge
(Penguin, 2005). Hilts teaches science journalism to graduate students at
Boston University and has taught journalism to undergraduates at the
University of Botswana.

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