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NEWS RELEASE

September 9, 1998--For immediate release

for more information contact:
Bob Jensen, 471-1990 or 371-9327
rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
 or
John Downing, 471-6680
jdowning@mail.utexas.edu


UT TO HOLD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND COMMUNICATION

AUSTIN -- On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, veteran human rights activists, scholars and journalists from
around the world will gather at the University of Texas October 16-18 to
discuss how best to get the word out internationally about human rights.

The goal of the "Communicating Human Rights Internationally" conference is
to help clarify the meaning of human rights in an increasingly complex world
and plot strategies for communicating information about those rights in a
fast-changing media world.

"For people concerned about human rights, understanding media and
communication issues in the contemporary world is literally a matter of life
and death," said John Downing, a professor of radio-TV-film at UT and one of
the conference organizers. "Ending human rights abuses requires much more
careful honing of methods of mass communication."

Downing said the conference will be distinctive in the way it will pool
information from many sources on successes and failures in spreading the
word about human rights issues and abuses.

Among the speakers at the conference will be Jennifer Davis of the Africa
Fund; international law specialist Beth Stephens of the Center for
Constitutional Rights; Gillian Caldwell of the Video Witness Program; Xiao
Qiang, executive director of Human Rights Watch in China; economist and
political commentator Edward Herman; Amy Goodman, foreign correspondent and
host of Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now"; Chilean poet and activist Marjorie
Agosin; and journalists from The New York Times, CNN, the Houston Chronicle
and other media.

UT sponsors include the College of Communication, Department of
Anthropology, Department of Radio-TV-Film, Knight Chair in Journalism,
School of Law, Center for Women's Studies, Center for Asian Studies, Center
for Middle Eastern Studies, Institute of Latin American Studies, and the
Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

The conference -- which has been endorsed by such groups as Human Rights
Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, Amnesty International USA, Article 19,
Index on Censorship, and Human Rights Quarterly -- is free and open to the
public. For the schedule and more detailed information, call (512) 471-6680
or check the conference web site at http://www.utexas.edu/coc/rtf/chri/.