On this West Virginia Morning, a nonprofit provider of pop-up clinics will deliver free dental, vision and medical care to those in need in Charleston. Emily Rice has more.
On this West Virginia Morning, a nonprofit provider of pop-up clinics will deliver free dental, vision and medical care to those in need in Charleston. Emily Rice has more.
Also, in this show, trust is in short supply in America as divides continue to erode our faith in a collective community. People distrust each other as well as our government and institutions. This week, Us & Them host Trey Kay hosts a discussion focused on our trust in science. One of his guests is Dr. Jonathan Zimmerman, an education historian from the University of Pennsylvania. He’s the author of “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools.”
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
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Caroline MacGregor produced this episode.
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The public is invited to join Us & Them podcast host Trey Kay for a deep discussion on journalism and trust in the news media.
Updated on Oct. 17, 2023 at 12:30 p.m.
Join us Thursday, Oct. 19 at 4 p.m. in the Atrium of Marshall University’s Drinko Library
HUNTINGTON, WEST VIRGINIA — The public is invited to join Us & Them podcast host Trey Kay for a deep discussion on trust in science.
“Diminished Trust: How Do We Restore Faith in Science?” Thursday, Oct. 19, at 4 p.m. in the Atrium of Marshall University’s Drinko Library. Kay will talk with Dr. Jonathan Zimmerman, University of Pennsylvania’s education historian and author of “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools”; Dr. Habiba Chichir, Marshall University’s biological anthropologist; and Dr. Adam Franks, MD, Associate Residency Director for Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine.
The event is free and open to the public and includes an audience Q&A segment with preference given to students. The live event will be taped for use in a future episode of Us & Them. The event is co-sponsored by Marshall University’s John Deaver Drinko Academy, the West Virginia Humanities Council and West Virginia Public Broadcasting, the broadcasting home of Us & Them.
Last month, Kay and his team hosted a “Diminished Trust” event at West Virginia University that focused on waning public trust in journalism and the news media. Kay says, “Trust is in short supply in America these days. Across the board and across the political spectrum people seem to lack trust in our government… in many of our agencies and organizations – even in each other. That’s why our Us & Them team is staging these conversations to encourage citizens to consider how long our society can sustain this erosion of trust.”
“The current diminishment of trust in science is one expression of anti-intellectualism, a longer trend in our culture, and one which waxes and wanes,” says Dr. Monserrat Miller, Executive Director of Marshall’s John Deaver Drinko Academy. “Diminishing trust in science, though, is something that we need to explore and discuss because it poses a range of dangers from public health to cynicism about the idea of truth itself.”
Us & Them’s guests for this event include:
Dr. Jonathan Zimmerman is Professor of History of Education and the Berkowitz Professor in Education at the University of Pennsylvania. A former Peace Corps volunteer and high school teacher, Zimmerman is the author of “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools” (University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed.) and eight other books. Zimmerman is also a columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer and a frequent contributor to the Washington Post, the New York Review of Books, and other popular publications. Zimmerman taught for 20 years at New York University, where he received its Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008.
Dr. Habiba Chirchir is a biological anthropologist and anatomist. Her research focuses on understanding the relationship between changes in skeletal anatomy and behavior by investigating trabecular and cortical bone. She conducts comparative analyses of anatomical features in fossil human ancestors, modern humans, other primates and non-primate animals including dogs and big cats using CT imaging. Chirchir earned a BA from the University of Nairobi, an MA from New York University, and a PhD from George Washington University. Chirchir is a research associate at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.
Dr. Adam M. Franks is a family medicine physician at Marshall Health, and a professor and vice chair of the department of family and community health at Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. Franks’ practice provides full-spectrum care for children and adults, including obstetric and gynecologic care. His research areas include COVID-19 protocols, opioid monitoring protocols, and blood borne pathogen exposure monitoring protocol adherence.
Trey Kay is the creator and host of Us & Them, a podcast/radio program distributed by PRX that airs on West Virginia Public Broadcasting. Kay’s passion for reporting on culture wars began in his hometown of Charleston, W.Va., with “The Great Textbook War” (2009), a radio documentary. He followed that award winning work with “The Long Game: Texas’ Ongoing Battle for the Direction of the Classroom” (2013), which he researched as a Spencer Fellow for Education Reporting at the Columbia Journalism School. He’s produced for This American Life, The New Yorker Radio Hour, Marketplace, American RadioWorks, Morning Edition, Inside Appalachia and PBS Frontline. Kay also taught at the Columbia Journalism School, Marist College and at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He splits his time between New York’s Hudson Valley and West Virginia’s Kanawha Valley.
***Editor’s note: A previous version of this news release incorrectly stated the Marshall event would be a discussion on journalism and trust in the news media. The Marshall event will be a deep discussion on trust in science.
The public is invited to join Us & Them podcast host Trey Kay for a deep discussion on journalism and trust in the news media. The event will be held on Sept. 20 at Reynolds Hall on West Virginia University’s campus in Morgantown.
Join us Wednesday, Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. in Reynolds Hall on the WVU Campus
MORGANTOWN, WV — The public is invited to join Us & Them podcast host Trey Kay for a deep discussion on journalism and trust in the news media.
“Diminished Trust: How Do We Restore Faith In The News Media?” will take place Wednesday, Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. in Reynolds Hall on the West Virginia University (WVU) campus. Kay will talk with special guests Raney Aronson-Rath, editor-in-chief and executive producer of PBS Frontline, and June Cross, director of the documentary journalism program at the Columbia Journalism School.
The event is free and open to the public and includes a Q&A section for attendees with precedence given to students. The live event will be taped for use in a future episode of Us & Them.
The event is co-sponsored by WVU’s Reed College of Media, the WVU Division of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, the West Virginia Humanities Council and West Virginia Public Broadcasting, the broadcasting home of Us & Them.
Kay says the premise of the episode is right in the title. “Do you trust what you hear reported on the radio, read online or in print, or see on television?” Kay asks. “What does a lack of trust in our “Fourth Estate” mean for democracy in America? In the Mountain State? In Morgantown? At a land-grant university like West Virginia University? Is this lack of faith in the watchdogs of news an existential threat to who we are? How do we regain this trust? These are critical questions today.”
Us & Them guests and host are respected in their fields:
Raney Aronson-Rath is the editor-in-chief and executive producer of Frontline, PBS’ flagship investigative journalism series, and is a leading voice on the future of journalism. She oversees the program’s acclaimed investigative reporting on air and online, and directs the series’ editorial vision — executive producing more than 20 in-depth documentaries each year on critical issues facing the country and the world. At a time when broad skepticism of the news media has reached new highs, Aronson-Rath has cemented her program’s reputation as a source of trustworthy and consistent investigative journalism. Under her leadership, Frontline has won every major award in broadcast journalism including Peabody Awards, Emmy Awards, and, in 2019, the first Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Gold Baton to be awarded in a decade. Frontline has been honored with myriad other journalism awards including Overseas Press Club Awards, Scripps Howard Awards, and in 2020, for the first time in the series’ history, the Nieman Foundation’s Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism and the Peabody Institutional Award. She led an ongoing charge for transparency in journalism – through the Frontline Transparency Project, an effort to open up the source material behind the program’s reporting. She served as the sole public media representative on the Knight Commission on Trust, Media, and Democracy, a blue-ribbon panel that published a landmark report on the causes and consequences of growing distrust in democratic institutions, including the press.
June Cross is Columbia University’s Fred W. Friendly Professor of Media and Society and director of the Documentary Journalism Program. She is a winner of the duPont-Columbia Journalism Award, a National Emmy and a 2021 Peabody Award. Her career has highlighted stories of the dispossessed and the intersection of race, politics and public health. She is best known for “Secret Daughter,” an autobiographical documentary made in 1996 which was later developed into a memoir by the same name. She began her career as an intern at The Boston Globe and PBS’ flagship station, WGBH. She went on to what is now PBS NewsHour, and then to CBS News, before obtaining a job as staff producer at PBS Frontline, where she worked for nine years. She joined the Columbia Journalism School in 2001 and received tenure in 2006.
Us & Them host Trey Kay speaks with a class of podcasting students at WVU‘s Reed College for Media Studies. These students will help Kay‘s team with the presentation of the live event that will focus on “restoring faith in the news media.” This event will feature Raney Aronson-Rath, editor in chief and executive producer for PBS Frontline, and award-winning documentarian June Cross. This event will be recorded and used in a future episode of WVPB‘s Us & Them.
Courtesy WVU
Trey Kay is the creator and host of Us & Them, a podcast/radio program produced by PRX for play on West Virginia Public Broadcasting. Kay’s passion for reporting on culture wars began in his hometown of Charleston, W.Va., with “The Great Textbook War” (2009), a radio documentary he produced with Deborah George. It was honored with Peabody, Murrow, and duPont-Columbia journalism awards. He later produced “The Long Game: Texas’ Ongoing Battle for the Direction of the Classroom” (2013), which he researched as a Spencer Fellow for Education Reporting at the Columbia Journalism School. In 2005, he shared in another Peabody for his contribution to Studio 360’s “American Icons: Moby Dick.” He’s produced for This American Life, The New Yorker Radio Hour, Marketplace, American RadioWorks, Morning Edition, Inside Appalachia and PBS Frontline. Kay also taught at the Columbia Journalism School, Marist College and at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He splits his time between New York’s Hudson Valley and West Virginia’s Kanawha Valley.
The taping at WVU is the first in a series of public Us & Them events focused on diminished trust in America. In October 2023, the show will travel south to Marshall University in Huntington for a discussion on trust in science.
The woman who sparked the 1974 Kanawha County Textbook Controversy has died. 82-year-old Alice Whitehurst Moore passed away at her home in Tennessee over the weekend.
The woman who sparked the 1974 Kanawha County Textbook Controversy has died. 82-year-old Alice Whitehurst Moore passed away at her home in Tennessee over the weekend.
Moore was on the Kanawha County Board of Education and sparked a national debate with her objection to a new set of language arts books designed to reflect America’s increasingly multicultural society. Moore helped mobilize a protest that targeted schools and businesses throughout the county.
National attention came when boycotts paralyzed businesses in Kanawha and eight surrounding counties. Moore never advocated violence, however some protesters resorted to such tactics.
The controversy extended well beyond the Kanawha Valley. It provided the newly formed Heritage Foundation with a cause to rally an emerging Christian conservative movement.
It’s with deep sadness that I report the passing of a dear friend and someone who helped define the Us & Them podcast in its earliest days. Alice Whitehurst Moore passed away on Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023. Her daughter Chrissie Moore-Henthorne says her mother died at her home in Acton, Tennessee surrounded by her family. She was 82 years old.
I first became aware of Alice when she served on the Kanawha County Board of Education in West Virginia in the 1970s. In 1974, when I was in 7th grade in that school district, Alice sparked a national debate and conversation on multiculturalism when she objected to the adoption of a new set of language arts classroom textbooks for the district.
The books were recommended by a group of English teachers to reflect America’s increasingly multicultural society. Alice reviewed many of the proposed books and found a significant number of the passages and themes to be objectionable. She met with concerned parents in church basements and community centers and mobilized a book protest.
The effort drew national attention because it called for boycotts that paralyzed businesses for Kanawha and eight surrounding counties. Although Alice never advocated violence, some protesters resorted to violent tactics. School buildings were hit by dynamite and Molotov cocktails, sniper bullets hit some school buses, journalists were beaten and protesting miners shut down some of the region’s coal mines.
Alice Moore’s campaign flyer.
Courtesy
Textbook supporters said new curriculum materials would introduce students to fresh ideas about multiculturalism. Opponents said the books undermined traditional American values. The controversy extended well beyond the Kanawha Valley and became a rallying point for the then newly formed Heritage Foundation and its Christian conservative movement.
As a student, I was aware of how the protests made my hometown of Charleston, West Virginia the spotlight of news. Decades later, I chronicled the story of the Kanawha County Textbook Controversy in an award-winning audio documentary The Great Textbook War.
Shown is a woman at a protest in the 1970s who was inspired by Alice Moore.
Courtesy
I met Alice while making that report, and we developed a deep friendship that led to the creation of the Us & Them podcast. Our very first episode was called “Trey & Alice” and it provides some insight into the loving and sometimes contentious relationship that Alice and I had through the years.
Alice left West Virginia in the early 1980s and returned to her hometown of Acton, Tennessee. She lived there until her passing. She was the wife of a Church of Christ preacher and the mother of five, the grandmother of seven and the great-grandmother of four.
I want to share my deepest condolences to Alice’s family and gratitude to her for supporting the work of speaking across the differences that divide us.
A caricature of Alice Moore drawn by the Charleston Gazette’s Taylor Jones.
Two award-winning West Virginia Public Broadcasting programs — Inside Appalachia and Us & Them — can each add a Public Media Journalists Association 2020 Award to their lists of achievements.
Inside Appalachia, WVPB’s weekly news magazine show, which broadcasts to the world the beautiful complexities of life here, won second place in the Audience Engagement Program category for its episode, “Without Enough Support, Working Moms Struggle to Make Breastfeeding Work.” Roxy Todd is the show’s producer. She had help on this episode from Appalachia Health News Reporter Kara Lofton, Assistant News Director Glynis Board and Associate Producer Eric Douglas.
Credit WVPB
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WVPB
For this story, host Trey Kay visited the protest line at West Virginia’s only center that offers affordable access to abortion to see if people can talk across this divisive topic. He also sat down with Margaret Chapman Pomponio, executive director of West Virginia Free, and Karen Cross, the political director for the National Right to Life Committee. This story won a second-place Public Media Journalists Association 2020 Award in the Podcast category.
Us & Them won second place in the Podcast category for its episode, “Abortion Divides.” The podcast is a joint project of WVPB, PRX and Trey Kay Productions that explores all sides of the cultural issues that too often divide us with the intent to make us rethink our opinions and bridge divides. Trey Kay is the podcast and radio show’s creator and host. Marisa Helms co-produced this episode.
Executive Director Chuck Roberts said he’s proud of the work that goes into both programs.
“We continue to see great things come out of each of these programs,” Roberts said. “Inside Appalachia brings our region to the world, and Us & Them continues to take on divisive topics in a way that promotes conversation rather than confrontation. We are so proud of these programs and the talented people behind them.”
At its first-ever Virtual Awards Gala, PMJA announced the awards for work done in calendar year 2019. WVPB’s awards were given in Division A, which includes organizations with reporting staffs of eight to 15 people, for stories published/aired in 2019. The awards recognize the best work in public media journalism from across the country. Stations compete against others with similar sized newsrooms. Overall, judges reviewed nearly 1300 entries.
PMJA is an association representing those responsible for the day-to-day direction, reporting and editing of local public media newsrooms with the mission to enhance news and information services and programming throughout public media.
In the winter of 2016, we told the story of Anne Kelly Skinner, a Charleston, WV lawyer, who was transitioning from male to female. As Anne’s body became less dude-like and more womanly, she was pleased. However, she worried her voice wouldn’t match her new body. There are many physical challenges for transgender people, one that doesn’t get a lot of attention is how a trans woman learns to sound like a woman. If a woman sounds like a guy, can she truly feel like a woman? We revisit Anne, three years later, to find out how she’s doing and if she has found what she calls, her femme voice.
