Fault Lines of Faith: Reporting from Myanmar, Bosnia and Northern Ireland

event_image Event offered by:
Bureau for International Reporting (BIR)

Event Details

Date:
Thursday, November 21, 2013
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM 
Location:
Banco Santander
45 East 53rd Street
New York, NY
Event type
Lecture / Panel  

Event Description

For the past two years, the long-repressed country of Myanmar has been undergoing a fragile transition to more democratic practices. But with freer speech and assembly have come new tensions between the majority Buddhists in the country and minority Muslim populations. More than half the country's provinces have seen violence, with hundreds of people dead; a Buddhist nationalist movement has been rising in popularity despite allegations that it is stirring anti-Muslim sentiment.

Kira Kay and Jason Maloney will screen and discuss their reporting from Myanmar, and also from two other locations profiled in the "Fault Lines of Faith" series, Northern Ireland and Bosnia. While they vary widely in geography and culture, the regions profiled in the "Fault Lines" series share multiple root causes to their sectarian tensions: questions of nationhood and self-identity; marginalization from political power and resources; a climate of human rights abuse and lack of access to justice. The series title depicts these deep societal challenges as much as the more obvious tensions at the surface of these conflicts. 

The BIR's "Fault Lines of Faith" series, created for PBS NewsHour, is supported by the Henry Luce Foundation. 

Event Speakers

    • Kira Kay
      Bureau for International Reporting

      Kira Kay is the founder of the Bureau for International Reporting (BIR), a non-profit news organization dedicated to the coverage of “overlooked” foreign issues and regions. As the primary on-air correspondent and producer for the BIR, she reports for PBS NewsHour and other PBS and cable outlets. Recent projects include an investigation into the rarely-covered but deadly insurgency in Southern Thailand; a three-story series from Liberia looking at post-conflict reconstruction and remaining fragilities, broadcast during that country’s 2011 elections; and repeated visits to Burma, examining that country’s current democratic transition and including obtaining a rare journalist visa to report from the parliamentary campaign of Aung San Suu Kyi in March 2012.

       

      Kay’s reporting on the conflict in Northern Uganda earned the Robert F. Kennedy Award for International Journalism, a first place National Headliner Award and two Emmy Award nominations, including for best story of the year.

       

      Prior to founding the BIR in 2007, Kay was a network news producer for 15 years, reporting both internationally and domestically for PBS, ABC, CBS and CNN. Some of her major non-BIR projects include covering U.S. military actions in Africa for Dan Rather Reports, an Emmy-winning story exploring the economic impact of a rising global middle class for NOW on PBS and reporting on the plight of Iraqi refugees in Jordan for the documentary series Wide Angle.  In 2004, Kay received an Emmy nomination for her work reporting on the Darfur crisis for 60 Minutes. That same year, she was awarded a fellowship in residency at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where she focused anti-terror operations in the Asia Pacific region. From 1992 to 2001 Kay was a producer for the ABC News magazine shows Primetime Live and 20/20.

       

      Kay completed her masters in foreign policy at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University and was a Fulbright scholar in Southeast Asia. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a fellow of the US-Japan Foundation Leadership Program.

       

    • Kira Kay
    • Jason Maloney
      Bureau for International Reporting

      Jason Maloney is Co-Executive Director of the Bureau for International Reporting (BIR) and serves as producer, cameraman and editor. Some of his BIR highlights include a series of reports on the Georgia/Russia war and an examination of Russia’s Muslim Republic of Tatarstan, for PBS and HDNet. His coverage of the civil war in Northern Uganda won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and received two Emmy nominations. Outside the BIR, some of Maloney’s important projects include an Emmy-winning report on the rise of the Indian middle class for PBS and an exclusive look inside the Russian youth movement Nashi for HDNet.

       

      From 2005 to early 2006 Maloney developed and served as editorial producer on a major documentary for the New York Times and the CBC on nuclear proliferation. The report, called “Nuclear Jihad”, won a duPont Award. In the summer of 2004, Maloney traveled to the Darfur region of Sudan to report for the CBS News program 60 Minutes on the humanitarian crisis there. His footage captured some of the first images of atrocities committed within Darfur itself.

       

      From 2002 to 2003, Maloney worked with the investigative TV unit at the New York Times on co-productions for PBS Frontline and NewsHour. "Chasing the Sleeper Cell" and "A Dangerous Business" both earned substantial recognition. From 1996 to 2001 Maloney worked at ABC News Primetime Live. "The Unwanted Children of Russia" won the duPont, Overseas Press Club and RFK awards.

       

      Maloney holds a BA from Dartmouth College and a master’s degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America and completed a term membership at the Council on Foreign Relations. His is the co-author of “Your America: Democracy’s Local Heroes”, published July 2008.

       

      Besides his active reporting work, Maloney is also a clinical associate professor of journalism at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, where he teaches both graduate and undergraduate level classes on international and television reporting.

    • Jason Maloney

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