The UCI Center for the Study of Democracy and International Studies Program present the Religion, Media and Politics Lecture

"The Catholic Church: Why Protect Predatory Priests Instead of Vulnerable Children?"
with Walter Robinson, Distinguished Professor of Journalism, Northeastern University

Thursday, February 28, 2013
2:00–3:20 p.m.
Steinhaus Hall, Room 174 (Bldg 502 on campus map)

Robinson spent more than 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Boston Globe where he specialized in political and investigative stories. From 2000 through 2006, Robinson was assistant managing editor for investigations, and editor for the paper’s investigative unit, the Spotlight Team. In 2002, Robinson and his Spotlight Team unearthed the clergy sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Robinson is the co-author of the 2002 book, Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church. The Globe won several investigative reporting prizes, as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003. Robinson, a native of Melrose, is a 1963 graduate of Boston College High School, and a 1974 graduate of Northeastern University. He was a Northeastern junior when he won his first investigative reporting award for the Boston Globe for a story on police misconduct. Earlier, he interrupted his Northeastern education to spend four years in the U.S. Army, including a tour in Vietnam as an intelligence officer with the First Cavalry Division. From 1981–82, Robinson was a journalism fellow at Stanford University. In 2002, Emerson College in Boston awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 2005, Northeastern University awarded him an honorary doctorate in journalism. Since April 2007, Northeastern graduate and undergraduate students in his investigative reporting seminars have had numerous front page investigative stories published in the Boston Globe. Robinson is also director of the New England First Amendment Center. And in July 2010, with financial support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, he started the Initiative for Investigative Reporting in the School of Journalism, which has formed partnerships with community news organizations to help them do investigative and watchdog reporting.

This event is free and open to the public.

For additional information, call 949-824-2904 or email sbrasier@uci.edu.