2021 Women and Media Award

Presented to Six Outstanding Women

The Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press announces recipients of the 2021 Women and Media Award! 

WIFP’s “Women and Media Award” is granted annually to women who have made outstanding contributions seeking media democracy and toward expanding women’s voices. It has been annual since 2013. Recipients receive the Award, $100 and deep appreciation for their crucial contributions to women and media. The Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press was founded in 1972 by Donna Allen, Ph.D. ww.wifp.org

Six outstanding women each are receiving the 2021 Women and Media Award.

Laura Flanders

Laura Flanders interviews forward-thinking people about the key questions of our time on The Laura Flanders Show, a nationally syndicated radio and television program also available as a podcast. A contributing writer to The Nation, Flanders is also the author of six books, including The New York Times best-seller, BUSHWOMEN: Tales of a Cynical Species. She is the recipient of a 2019 Izzy Award for excellence in independent journalism, the Pat Mitchell Lifetime Achievement Award for advancing women’s and girls’ visibility in media and a 2020 Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship for her reporting and advocacy for public media. lauraflanders.org    

Margaret Kimberley

Margaret Kimberley is a co-founder and Executive Editor and Senior Columnist for Black Agenda Report, a recipient of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromising Integrity in Journalism, and a board member of Consortium News.  

Ms. Kimberley is author of the book “Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents.” She is also a contributor to the anthologies “In Defense of Julian Assange,” “Capitalism on a Ventilator: the Impact of COVID-19 on China and the U.S.,” and “Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence.” Her activism includes membership on the interim steering committee of the Green Eco-Socialist Network, the Administrative Committee of the United National Antiwar Coalition, the Coordinating Committee of Black Alliance for Peace, and the Board of Directors of the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation.

She has appeared in national and international media including CGTN, RT, Al Mayadeen, Deutsche Welle (DW), Al Jazeera English, and Sky News. Ms. Kimberley co-hosts Black Agenda Report Presents: the Left Lens on Youtube. 

Margaret Kimberley is a graduate of Williams College and lives in New York City. 

https://www.margaretkimberley.com

Jennifer L. Pozner

Jennifer L. Pozner is a journalist, media critic, and Founding Director of Women In Media & News, a media analysis, education, and advocacy group dedicated to increasing women’s diversity, presence and power in public debate. Prior to founding WIMN in 2001, Pozner was Women’s Desk Director at Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), writing for Extra! magazine and contributing to CounterSpin! Radio. Previously, she was Media Watch columnist for Sojourner: The Women’s Forum. She has provided hundreds of feminist, anti-racist media literacy keynotes, workshops, and trainings throughout the U.S., Canada, Ireland and Turkey. 

Her first book, Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV, was called “required reading for every American girl and woman” by then-MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry. Her graphic novel Breaking (The) News: Using Media Literacy To Decode What We Watch, Read, Hear, Play, Post, Buy, Believe and Enjoy is forthcoming from First Second. She has written for the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Village Voice, Newsweek, Ms. Magazine, Bitch, Bust, In These Times, Macleans, Elle Canada, Los Angeles Review of Books, Women’s Review of Books, The Daily Beast, The Establishment, Politico, and Salon, among other outlets and anthologies. 

Pozner was an adviser and featured analyst for the award-winning documentary Miss Representation, appeared in Bullied and I Was a Teenaged Feminist, and wrote, produced, and starred in the media literacy satire web series, Reality Rehab with Dr. Jenn. She has offered media commentary on CBS, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, FOX, HLN, NPR, CBC, and The Daily Show. An incurable comedy nerd, the most fun she ever had as a political organizer was co-leading the satirical Billionaires for Bush (or Gore) and Billionaires for More Media Mergers as “Mya Cash, media mogul.” 

Barbara Ransby, Ph.D.

Dr. Barbara Ransby is the John D. MacArthur Chair, and Distinguished Professor of History, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Black Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She directs the campus-wide Social Justice Initiative, a project that promotes connections between academics and community organizers doing work on social justice. She is also the Editor of Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, and author of three books, including the award winning, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement. The Ella Baker book was the recipient of 8 national book awards and recognitions including the Liberty – Legacy award from the Organization of American Historians; the Joan Kelly prize from the American Historical Association; and the James A. Rawley Prize (also from the AHA). Dr. Ransby is a longtime Black feminist activist, author and scholar, and has received numerous awards and recognitions for her work. She publishes regularly in various scholarly and popular venues and is past president of the National Women’s Studies Association (2016-2018). In 2017 Dr. Ransby was honored as “one of the top 25 women in higher education,” by the publication, Diverse Issues in Higher Education. 

Nayoung Kim Park

Nayoung Kim Park is an adult survivor of child sexual abuse. She grew up in Seoul, South Korea and studied law and cultural anthropology at Yonsei University. She began her feminist activism with Korea Women’s Hotline, which is the oldest and largest organization combatting violence against women in South Korea. In 2014, she went to the United States to attend law school, because she wanted to learn from Catharine A. MacKinnon. She had read about how she and Andrea Dworkin tried to use civil rights law to empower those who have been victimized by pornography. During law school she was Catharine A. MacKinnon’s research assistant, taking all of her courses, and writing an independent research paper for her. Through volunteer work, internships, and clinical courses, she learned how to provide assistance to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, and sexual harassment in employment. Nayoung Kim Park pursued a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Michigan. In 2016, she was named a Dean’s Public Service Fellow by the University of Michigan Law School and received the Julia D. Darlow Award from the Women Lawyers Association of Michigan. She is also involved in the South Korean women’s movement and the global women’s movement, on stage, behind the scenes, and in spirit. 

linkedin.com/in/nayoung-kim-a7537597

Carolyn LaDelle Bennett, Ph.D.

Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is a lifelong nonfiction writer with interests in politics, public affairs and international relations. Her worldview is informed by her U.S. Peace Corps years teaching in West Africa and engaging with native peoples and multinational expatriates. Bennett’s ethics and humanity are fundamentally informed by her formative years growing up with parents in the U.S. South and in later years traveling across the United States and to some countries of Western Europe. Having a belief in basic values of nonviolence, sovereignty of all nations and rights of all peoples to protections under law and universal conventions, she has become increasingly alarmed not by foreign threats but by internally-rooted threats to global society — Americans’ proud domestic and international code of violence manifest in endless wars and fighting words; their excused pandering, entrenched viciousness, and incompetence of public officials who have severely damaged America’s world standing and virtually destroyed any vision of The Union. 

Bennett’s teaching and government experience, her credentials in educational philosophy and ethics, teaching and learning theories, journalism and public affairs (Michigan State University, PhD; American University, MA) make hers the heart of an educator who delights in sharing ideas. Her major published include: Betrayal, Public Welfare Abandoned for Private Wealth (2020); Alphabetic SOLUTIONS (2016); Unconscionable: How the World Sees Us (2014); No Land an Island: No People Apart (2012); Same Ole or Something New (2010); Breakdown (2009); Women’s Work and Words Altering World Order (2008); Missing News and Views in Paranoid Times (2006); No Room for Despair . . . Mary McLeod Bethune’s Cold War, Integration-Era Commentary (2005); Talking Back to Today’s News (2003); America’s Human Connection (1994); An Annotated Bibliography of Mary McLeod Bethune’s Chicago Defender Columns, 1948 -1955 (2001); and You Can Struggle without Hating, Fight without Violence (1988).