Former SLC mayor and presidential candidate Rocky Anderson visiting USU

LOGAN— In what will likely be the only Logan appearance by a 2012 presidential candidate, Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party will come to Utah State University on Friday, Oct. 26, to deliver a talk on “mass deception” in the press, and about politics and the mass media in the current election campaign.

Anderson, the outspoken former mayor of Salt Lake City, is co-founder of the Justice Party and its candidate for president. Last week, Anderson, along with Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and Constitution Party candidate Virgil Goode appeared on a special two-hour televised special by the activist group Democracy Now! that spliced responses by the third-party candidates into the debate between Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama at Hofstra University.

Anderson comes to Utah State University on Friday as a guest of the Department of Journalism & Communication’s Morris Media & Society Lecture Series. He will speak on “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Media in an Age of Mass Deception” from 10:30-11:30 a.m., including audience Q&A, in the Eccles Conference Center Auditorium on the USU campus. The event is free and open to everyone.

“We are very excited to have Rocky Anderson come to campus to give us an insider’s look at the presidential campaign, especially from the perspective of someone who is dependent on the press corps to get his message out,” said JCOM department head Ted Pease. “Rocky is no stranger to the challenges of working with the press, from his eight years as mayor of Salt Lake City, and as founder of High Road for Human Rights.

“For journalists and journalism students—and for the public—understanding press performance from the newsmaker’s perspective is important,” he added.

A former practicing attorney for 21 years, Anderson has long been an activist for a variety of social causes, including human rights, government reform and the environment. He has been president of the Utah chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Citizens for Penal Reform (which he founded), and Guadalupe Education Programs, and as a board member of Planned Parenthood Association of Utah and Common Cause of Utah. Other issues he has supported include gay-lesbian rights, campaign finance reform, an end to policies on “the war on drugs,” climate change and criminal justice reform.

Anderson’s appearance at USU is sponsored by the JCOM Department, with help from the USU Political Science Department, the USU student chapters of both the Society of Professional Journalists and the Public Relations Student Society of America, Aggie TV News and the Hard News Café.

For more information on his visit, or for media access, call the JCOM department at 435-797-3292.

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