Amanda Bennett

Last updated

Philip Morrow Oxley
​
​
(m. 1976⁠–⁠1983)​

Terence B. Foley
​
​
(m. 1987⁠–⁠2008)​

Donald E. Graham
​
(m. 2012)​
Amanda Bennett
Amanda Bennett, USAGM CEO.jpg
CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media
Assumed office
December 6, 2022
Education Harvard University (AB)
Occupation
  • Journalist
  • reporter
  • news editor
Awards1997, 2001 Pulitzer Prize, 2019 Fourth Estate Award

Amanda Bennett (born July 9, 1952) is an American journalist and author. She was the director of Voice of America from 2016 to 2020, and the current CEO of U.S. Agency for Global Media. [1] [2] She formerly edited The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Lexington Herald-Leader . Bennett is also the author of six nonfiction books.

Contents

Early life and education

Bennett was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was raised in Boonton, New Jersey, where she attended Boonton High School, graduating in 1971. [3] She graduated with a degree in English language and literature from Harvard College in 1975, where she was an editor on The Harvard Crimson . [4]

Career

Amanda Bennett, while director of the Voice of America, giving a presentation on the power of truth in a world of disinformation at the Media Literacy Conference in Sarajevo, September 22, 2017 VOA Director Amanda Bennett Media Literacy Conference Sarajevo Sept 22 2017.jpg
Amanda Bennett, while director of the Voice of America, giving a presentation on the power of truth in a world of disinformation at the Media Literacy Conference in Sarajevo, September 22, 2017

Bennett's journalism career began at the Harvard Crimson, where she was an editor. Following her 1975 graduation from Harvard College, she worked briefly as a bilingual (French-English) reporter on the Ottawa Citizen in Ottawa, Ontario. She had a 23-year career with The Wall Street Journal , which included reporting stints in Toronto, Detroit, Washington, D.C. and three years as bureau chief in Atlanta. In 1983, she became the second Wall Street Journal correspondent in China.

In 1987, she shared with her Journal colleagues a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for her work on how public health officials mischaracterized the AIDS epidemic in order to secure more public funding and financial support. [5] In 1998, she left the Journal to become a managing editor at The Oregonian , a regional newspaper owned by the Newhouse chain and headed by the pioneer journalist, Sandra Mims Rowe. At the Oregonian, she headed the creation of investigative projects. Among the projects she led was a year-long investigation of the $1 billion local asset manager, Capital Consultants, that led to the September 2000, suit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against the firm and its principal Jeffrey Grayson. The project was reported by veteran investigative reporters Jeff Manning and Jim Long. Bennett also led the Oregonian in an investigation of the Immigration and Naturalization Service that won the paper the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. [6]

In September 2001, she became editor of The Lexington Herald-Leader , a Knight Ridder paper. Twenty months later on June 2, 2003, Knight Ridder appointed her the first female editor in the 174-year history of their flagship paper, The Philadelphia Inquirer. In November 2006, Bennett stepped down as the Inquirer's editor. [7]

From November 2006 to June 2013, she was executive editor at Bloomberg News, where she created and ran a global team of investigative reporters and editors. She was also a co-founder, with journalist Lisa Kassenaar, of Bloomberg News' Women's project. Under her direction, a team of Bloomberg journalists for the first time tallied the personal assets of family members of a senior Chinese leader – vice president Xi Jinping. The story, which was widely circulated both inside and outside China, won the Polk Award and also resulted in Bloomberg's business in China being significantly disrupted. She resigned from Bloomberg News in November 2013.

Bennett has also been a freelance journalist and public speaker, and she has spoken at TED on journalism and end-of-life care. [8]

In 2016, she was named the 29th director of Voice of America. [9] In mid-June 2020, as the Trump administration replaced VOA's parent agency director with conservative filmmaker Michael Pack, Bennett announced her resignation. [10] [11] [12]

In November 2021, she was nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as the CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. [13] On June 7, 2022, she testified in a nomination hearing in front of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. [14] Later that month on June 23, she won Foreign Relations Committee approval in an "en bloc" vote by the Democratic majority on the committee. [15] Bennet was confirmed to the post of CEO by the Senate in a 60 to 36 vote on September 22, 2022. [16] Bennet was sworn in on December 6, 2022, succeeding acting CEO Kelu Chao. [17]

Professional affiliations

In 2003, she was elected to the Pulitzer Prize board. In 2010, she was elected co-chair of the Pulitzer Board. She was on the board of the Loeb Awards; the board of the Fund for Investigative Journalism; she was a board member of Axis Philly, a nonprofit online Philadelphia news site. She is on the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists. [18] She is a trustee of the German Marshall Fund. [19] She is on the advisory board of the Neiman Fellowship program at Harvard University [20] and is an advisory board member at the Philip Merrill Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. [21] She is also currently a Lenfest Institute for Journalism Board Manager. [22]

Personal life

She has two children with her late husband, Terence Foley, [23] and four step-children with her husband, Donald E. Graham, whom she married on June 30, 2012. She lives in Washington, D.C. [24]

Books written

Awards and honors

Bennett shared the Prize for national reporting with her Wall Street Journal colleagues, and in 2001 led a team from The Oregonian to a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Projects by the Bloomberg Projects and Investigations team won numerous awards, including Loeb, [25] Polk, Barlett & Steele, Headliners, Society of American Business Editors and Writers and Overseas Press Club Awards.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulitzer Prize</span> Award for achievements in journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States

The Pulitzer Prize is an award administered by Columbia University for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher. As of 2023, prizes are awarded annually in twenty-three categories. In twenty-two of the categories, each winner receives a certificate and a US$15,000 cash award. The winner in the public service category is awarded a gold medal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voice of America</span> International US-owned broadcaster

Voice of America is the state-owned news network and international radio broadcaster of the United States of America. It is the largest and oldest of the U.S.-funded international broadcasters. VOA produces digital, TV, and radio content in 48 languages, which it distributes to affiliate stations around the world. Its targeted and primary audience is non-American.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">U.S. Agency for Global Media</span> Agency of the United States government

The United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), known until 2018 as the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), is an independent agency of the United States government that broadcasts news and information. It is considered an arm of U.S. diplomacy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Center for Investigative Reporting</span> Non-profit organisation in the USA

The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) is a nonprofit news organization based in Emeryville, California. It was founded in 1977 as the nation’s first nonprofit investigative journalism organization, and has since grown into a multi-platform newsroom, with investigations published on the Reveal website, public radio show and podcast, video pieces and documentaries and social media platforms, reaching over a million people weekly. The public radio show and podcast, “Reveal,” co-produced with PRX, is CIR’s flagship distribution platform, airing on 588 stations nationwide. The newsroom focuses on reporting that reveals inequities, abuse, and corruption, and holds those responsible accountable.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sharon LaFraniere</span> American journalist

Sharon Veronica LaFraniere is an American journalist at The New York Times.

Walt Bogdanich is an American investigative journalist and three-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize.

Daniel Hertzberg is a former American journalist. Hertzberg is a 1968 graduate of the University of Chicago. He married Barbara Kantrowitz, on August 29, 1976. He was the former senior deputy managing editor and later deputy managing editor for international news at The Wall Street Journal. Starting in July 2009, Hertzberg served as senior editor-at-large and then as executive editor for finance at Bloomberg News in New York City before retiring in February 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Duhigg</span> American journalist and author

Charles Duhigg is an American journalist and non-fiction author. He was a reporter for The New York Times, currently writes for The New Yorker Magazine and is the author of two books on habits and productivity, titled The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business and Smarter Faster Better. In 2013, Duhigg was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for a series of 10 articles on the business practices of Apple and other technology companies.

Alison Fitzgerald Kodjak is an American journalist and currently works for the Associated Press as its Washington investigations editor. She previously reported for the AP from 1997 to 2000. She formerly worked for National Public Radio, where she led the science desk, the Center for Public Integrity, and at Bloomberg News for 10 years, and has also worked as a reporter for newspapers, including The Philadelphia Inquirer. She is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award, one of journalism's most prestigious honors.

Alan C. Miller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist and the founder of the News Literacy Project, a national education nonprofit that works with educators and journalists to offer resources and tools that help middle school and high school students learn to separate fact from fiction. In 2020, NLP expanded its audience to include people of all ages. leader of leftist propaganda.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Cohen (journalist)</span> American journalist and professor

Sarah Cohen is an American journalist, author, and professor. Cohen is a proponent of, and teaches classes on, computational journalism and authored the book "Numbers in the Newsroom: Using math and statistics in the news."

Alix Marian Freedman is an American journalist, and ethics editor at Thomson Reuters.

Tom McGinty is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist known for his use and advocacy of computer-assisted reporting.

Alejandra Xanic von Bertrab Wilhelm is a Mexican investigative journalist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 2013 along with David Barstow.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Pack</span> American filmmaker and official (born 1954)

Michael L. Pack is an American documentary filmmaker who was CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) from June 2020 to January 2021. Pack was nominated by President Donald Trump and took office at USAGM in June 2020 after Senate confirmation. He resigned on January 20, 2021 at the request of President Joe Biden, effective at 2:00 p.m., two hours after Biden took office.

Rebecca Blumenstein is a journalist. She was named President - Editorial of NBC News on January 10, 2023. Prior to that, Blumenstein was one of the highest-ranking women in the newsroom at The New York Times. She is the chair of the board of the Columbia Journalism Review.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julia Angwin</span> American investigative journalist

Julia Angwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American investigative journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and entrepreneur. She was a co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the impact of technology on society. She was a senior reporter at ProPublica from 2014 to April 2018 and staff reporter at the New York bureau of The Wall Street Journal from 2000 to 2013. Angwin is author of non-fiction books, Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America (2009) and Dragnet Nation (2014). She is a winner and two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sandra Mims Rowe</span> American journalist

Sandra Mims Rowe is an American journalist. She is the former editor of The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia, and of The Oregonian, in Portland, Oregon. She was one of the few women editors of metro newspapers in the 1980s, and was the first woman editor at The Virginian-Pilot and The Oregonian. She was the second female president of the American Society of News Editors, a decade after Kay Fanning, the editor of The Christian Science Monitor, was the first.

Esther Htusan, is a journalist from Myanmar. She is a former Foreign Correspondent for the Associated Press based in Yangon, Myanmar. In 2016, she was the first person from Myanmar to win the Pulitzer Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kelu Chao</span> Taiwanese American journalist

Kelu Chao is a Taiwanese American journalist. She was the acting interim CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), from January 20, 2021, to December 29, 2022.

References

  1. ↑ "Amanda Bennett - USAGM"
  2. ↑ "US Senate Approves Former VOA Chief to Head US Global Broadcasting"
  3. ↑ Paik, Eugene. "Boonton museum honors accomplished alumni", The Star-Ledger , June 19, 2009. Accessed August 3, 2014. "Ever wonder if any Boonton High School students made good in life? There's Amanda Bennett, of the class of 1971, a journalist who shared a Pulitzer Prize at the Wall Street Journal for her reporting on the AIDS epidemic."
  4. 1 2 "5th Annual Washington Women in Journalism Awards". Story Partners. April 26, 2018.
  5. ↑ "Medicine: AIDS Fight Is Skewed By Federal Campaign Exaggerating Risks". The Wall Street Journal. May 1, 1996. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  6. ↑ "2001 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service". Oregonian Media Group. Archived from the original on August 8, 2014. Retrieved April 8, 2001.
  7. ↑ "Philadelphia Inquirer Editor to Exit Job". The Washington Post. November 8, 2006.
  8. ↑ "TED Profile: Amanda Bennett". TED. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  9. ↑ "Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist Named VOA Director". Voice of America. April 14, 2016.
  10. ↑ "Voice of America director, deputy resign amid Trump clash". ajc. June 15, 2020. Retrieved June 20, 2020.
  11. ↑ "VOA Director Steps Aside Amid White House Criticism | Voice of America – English". www.voanews.com. June 15, 2020. Retrieved June 20, 2020.
  12. ↑ Lee, Matthew (June 17, 2020). "US broadcasting chief fires agency heads in major reshuffle". Omaha.com. Retrieved June 20, 2020.
  13. ↑ "President Biden Announces Additional Nominees". The White House. November 12, 2021. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  14. ↑ "Full Committee Hearing Nominations". United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. June 7, 2022. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  15. ↑ "Biden's USAGM Nominee Bennett Wins Senate Committee Approval". Voice of America. June 23, 2022. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  16. ↑ "PN1566 — Amanda Bennett — United States Agency for Global Media". United States Congress. September 22, 2022. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  17. ↑ "Amanda Bennett sworn in as USAGM CEO". U.S. Agency for Global Media. December 9, 2022. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  18. ↑ Avenue, Committee to Protect Journalists 330 7th; York, 11th Floor New; Ny 10001. "Board of Directors – About CPJ". cpj.org. Retrieved February 13, 2019.
  19. ↑ "Board of Trustees". The German Marshall Fund of the United States. January 9, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2019.
  20. ↑ "Advisory Board". Nieman Foundation. Retrieved February 13, 2019.
  21. ↑ "The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism". Philip Merrill College of Journalism. March 3, 2023.
  22. ↑ "Lenfest Institute Board of Managers". The Lenfest Institute.
  23. ↑ Am; Bennett, a; Babcock, with Charles (March 7, 2010). "Lessons from a $618,616 death". msnbc.com. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  24. ↑ Source, The Reliable (June 30, 2012). "Post CEO Don Graham marries Amanda Bennett". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  25. 1 2 "Loeb Award Winners". UCLA Anderson School of Management . June 28, 2011. Archived from the original on March 21, 2019. Retrieved February 2, 2019.
  26. ↑ Club, National Press. "Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and investigative journalist Amanda Bennett to accept 2019 National Press Club Fourth Estate Award at October 17 Gala". www.prnewswire.com (Press release). Retrieved January 14, 2020.
  27. ↑ University of southern California's Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy url=https://communicationleadership.usc.edu/fellows/senior/amanda-bennett/
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.