Sut Jhally is the 2018 recipient of the Dallas Smythe Award At a time of Facebook data sales to advertisers and political campaigns – when manipulated media and advertising play an overwhelming role in the selection for political office, there is a renewed focus on organizations that analyze propaganda and deception in the mass media.
At their 2018 Conference in Chicago the Union of Democratic Communications honored Sut Jhally for his three decades of media activism. Sut Jhally, is professor in the Communication Department at UMass, Amherst. His interests include advertising and consumer culture, and the intersection of ideology, consciousness, and politics.
Jhally is the founder of the Media Education Foundation. MEF produces films that inspire critical reflection on the social, political and cultural impact of American Mass Media. On their website at <mediaed.org> one can find films, ranging from the commercialization of childhood, the effects of pornography, pop-cultural misogyny and sexism, to titles that deal with the devastating effects of rapacious consumerism and the wars for oil that it drives and the climate change that it causes.
One film, that caused attacks on Sut Jhally and the MEF is: The Occupation of the American Mind, Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States. The film deals with Israel’s 2014 Gaza Strip attack and is narrated by the legendary Roger Waters from Pink Floyd. To this day the 2016 film, that has shown around the world, has not been accepted at mainstream film festivals and has no US distribution.
Sut Jhally received the Dallas Smythe award. Smythe was a leading scholar in American and international communication policy.
The program is made up of excerpts from Sut Jhally’s one hour keynote address. Recorded on May 12, 2018, by Dale Lehman in Chicago.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)
