Eric Alterman
Called "the most honest and incisive media critic writing today" in the National Catholic Reporter , and author of "the smartest and funniest political journal out there" in the San Francisco Chronicle , Eric Alterman is the media columnist for The Nation , the "Altercation" weblogger for MSNBC.com and a fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he writes and edits the "Think Again" column. Alterman is the author of the national bestseller, What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News (2003,2004), and most recently The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America (with Mark Green, February 2004) and When Presidents Lie: Deception and its Consequences , (forthcoming in September/October, 2004). His Sound & Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy (1992, 2000), won the 1992 George Orwell Award and his It Ain't No Sin to be Glad You're Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen (1999, 2001), won the 1999 Stephen Crane Literary Award. Alterman is also the author of Who Speaks for America? Why Democracy Matters in Foreign Policy (1998). A contributor to virtually every significant national publication in the US and many in Europe, in recent years he has also been a contributing editor to, or columnist for: Worth , Rolling Stone , Elle , Mother Jones , World Policy Journal and the Sunday Express (London). A senior fellow of the World Policy Institute at New School University and Adjunct Professor of Journalism at Columbia University, Alterman received his BA in History and Government from Cornell, his MA in International Relations from Yale and his PhD in US History from Stanford. He lives with his family in Manhattan.

David Brock
David Brock is the author of four political books, including The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. His preceding book, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, was a 2002 New York Times best-selling political memoir in which he chronicled his years as a conservative media insider. Brock serves on the advisory board of Democracy Radio Inc. and is the recipient of the New Democrat Network's first award for political entrepreneurship. He is the President and CEO of Media Matters for America.

Wally Bowen
Wally Bowen is founder and executive director of the Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN), a nonprofit Internet Service Provider and community network based in Asheville, N.C. A journalist and media activist, Bowen also founded Citizens for Media Literacy in 1991 to promote new ways for citizens to gain access to the media. MAIN is one outcome of this work. Most recently, MAIN launched a new low-power FM radio station, WPVM 103.5 FM, the Progressive Voice of the Mountains. In addition to broadcasting in the Asheville, N.C. area, WPVM is also webcast over the Internet via the MAIN homepage. Bowen was also instrumental in establishing public access TV in the Asheville area. MAIN will soon begin webcasting video from Asheville's new public access TV operation. All of MAIN's alternative media activities are funded primarily by revenue from the community network's nonprofit Internet and webhosting services. "We simply give local citizens the option of spending their Internet dollars with MAIN, rather than spending them to support 'Big Media' such as AOL, MSN or Earthlink," says Bowen.

Jeff Chester
Jeff Chester is executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a nonprofit organization devoted to ensuring that the digital media serve the public interest. A former journalist and filmmaker, his work has appeared in many publications, radio and on TV.
In the 1980s, Jeff led the national campaign that prompted the creation by Congress of the Independent Television Service (ITVS) for PBS. In 1990, he co-founded the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, which focused on protecting artists' rights. The following year he created Ralph Nader's Teledemocracy Project on cable TV reform. In 1992, he co-founded and served as executive director (until 2000) of the Center for Media Education, a leading force on such issues as Internet privacy, media ownership, and children's TV. At CME he led the successful campaign at the Federal Trade Commission to impose conditions on the merger of AOL and Time Warner. He also co-directed the campaigns that led to stronger rules by the FCC on children's educational TV, and to the passage of the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
Under Jeff's leadership, CDD co-led the two- year campaign against proposals by the media industries and FCC Chairman Powell to eliminate critical ownership safeguards. His work helped generate unprecedented public support opposing the Big Media lobby. He has also campaigned to maintain the Internet's open and non-discriminatory architecture, through work in the press, Congress, and in the courts.
In 1996, Newsweek Magazine named him one of the Internet's fifty most influential people. He established CDD in 2001 with the support of a Stern Family Foundation "Public Interest Pioneer" award.
Chester holds an MSW in community mental health from UC Berkeley. He is currently finishing a book for The New Press on the digital media and the public interest.

Jeff Cohen
Cohen founded FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) in 1986, and served as the group's executive director. In recent years, he has been an advisor to the group rather than a staff member, as he pursued a career as a media commentator. In May 2001, he became president of FAIR's board of directors. Cohen appeared regularly as a panelist on Fox News Channel's "Fox News Watch."  Cohen was also a senior producer for Phil Donahue's new talk show He also appeared on MSNBC each weekday afternoon as an on-air commentator.

Mark Cooper
Dr. Mark Cooper holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and is a former Yale University and Fulbright Fellow . He is Director of Research at the Consumer Federation of America where he has responsibility for energy, telecommunications, and economic policy analysis. He has provided expert testimony in over 250 cases for public interest clients including Attorneys General, People's Counsels, and citizen interveners before state and federal agencies, courts and legislators in almost four dozen jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada. He is the author of two books - The Transformation of Egypt (Johns Hopkins, 1982) and Equity and Energy (Westview, 1983).

Malkia Cyril
Malkia A. Cyril is a 28-year-old African-American organizer and Brooklyn native. She has worked with low-income youth and communities of color as an organizer for the past eight years with organizations such as the Applied Research Center, the Alameda County Homeless Youth Collaborative, Youth Together, the Community Organizing Team of BOSS, Youth Force Coalition, Uniting Communities Against War & Racism, and We Interrupt This Message. Malkia has directed numerous youth organizing projects, focusing specifically on poverty and race, and has worked closely with young people on media accountability for balanced news coverage of youth and youth policy. Malkia has facilitated media and organizing training for youth and adults, coordinated and written several publications including, Soundbites & Cellblocks.

John Dunbar
John Dunbar joined the Center for Public Integrity in 1999. He came to the Center  from the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville where he was chief investigative reporter. Since joining the Center, Dunbar has worked on the award-winning 50 States Project, the Center's Enron and Harken Oil investigations and a report on the California energy crisis. He is currently in charge of a three-year investigation of the telecommunications industry. Dunbar's work has received numerous awards recognizing his work at the Center. He is a graduate of the University of South Florida in Tampa, where he earned a bachelor's degree in mass communications.

Al Franken
Comedian, author and Air America Radio host. A 1973 graduate of Harvard, Franken performed stand-up comedy before joining Saturday Night Live. Between 1975 and 1980, Franken won five Emmy Awards, four for writing and one for producing. Franken returned to SNL for a 10-year run in 1985, during which time he created one of the SNL Hall of Fame characters, self-help guru Stuart Smalley.   Franken recently published "Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right."

Clara Frenk
Clara Frenk has been a political producer, booker and writer for over 10 years. Her broadcast experience includes ABC News (television and radio), CNN, Fox Morning News, CNBC. She has been a featured speaker at the yearly Campaigns and Elections seminars, where she has taught political professionals message shaping and how to book clients on cable and network television and radio. She is currently a freelance producer living in the Washington, D.C. area. She also runs her Web site, www.dcmediagirl.com.

Jeremy M. Glick
Jeremy M. Glick is a phd candidate in African diaspora literature and political and aesthetic theory at Rutgers University. He has taught in the New Jersey prison system and worked extensively with youth in his home for 10 years of New Brunswick, New Jersey. He has taught in such diverse institutions as UC-Santa Cruz, NYU's Africana Studies Dept, UMDNJ Medical School, and Rutgers Newark and New Brunswick English Depts. He is the recepient of the Robeson-Bambatta-Baraka Self-Determination Award from The Caribbean Tent Festival of New Brunswick, NJ for a decade of service and struggle for the African commmunity and the Kinsella Prize for an essay on Frantz Fanon, Violence, and Sculpture. Mr. Glick's writing has appeared in Black Voice/Carta Latina, The Rutgers Daily Targum, The Rutgers Review, The Village Voice, The Home News and Tribune, Post-Road Literary Journal, BET.Com, Blu, Stress, AWOL magazines et al. He has appeared on such broadcasts as The O'Reilly factor, Democracy Now, The Tavis Smiley Show, Asia-Pacific Forum, and The Al Franken Show et al. He is a co-editor of the first post-9/11, anti-war anthology Another World is Possible: Conversations in a Time of Terror. He sits on the editorial board of the newspaper Unity and Struggle with his friend and comrade Amiri Baraka. He has worked with and advised such groups as Not In Our Name, Sept 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, United For Peace and Justice, Santa Cruz's radical education project E-Squared, The Third World and Native Indigenuous Newspaper, 100 Black of Rutgers University. He has worked closely in the struggle to set free Black radical political prisoners and various local community initiatives and grassroots electoral campaigns. Jeremy resides and thrives now in Brooklyn.

David Goodfriend
Co founder Air America Radio. Goodfriend, an attorney, was an adviser to former FCC commissioner Susan Ness. Subsequent to that position Goodfriend was the director of legal and business affairs at EchoStar

Peter Hart
Peter Hart is a co-host and producer of FAIR's radio show CounterSpin . He also handles administrative duties and coordinates FAIR's media activism work. Peter wrote the book The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly. Hart graduated from Rutgers University in 1997, and presented research as an undergraduate to the AEJMC National Conference (Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication). He was also a member of the Paper Tiger Television collective in New York City for a number of years.

Larry Irving
Larry Irving, an Internet pioneer, technology strategist and futurist, is the President of the Irving Information Group. The Irving Information Group is a consulting firm providing strategic planning and market development services to international telecommunications and information technology companies. Prior to forming the Irving Information Group, in October 1999, Irving served for almost seven years as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information, where he was a senior advisor to the President, Vice President and Secretary of Commerce. In addition, he was an influential architect of the Clinton-Gore Administration's telecommunications, Internet and E-Commerce policies and initiatives. Always ahead of the curve, Irving is widely credited with coining the term "the digital divide" and informing the American public about the growing problem it represents. He initiated and was the principal author of the landmark Federal survey, Falling Through the Net, which tracks access to telecommunications and information technologies, including telephones, computers and the Internet, across racial, economic, and geographic lines. Irving was named one of the 50 most influential persons in the "Year of the Internet" by Newsweek magazine, which described him as the "Conscience of the Internet". Prior to joining the Clinton-Gore Administration, Irving served ten years on Capitol Hill, most recently as Senior Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance. He also served as Legislative Director, Counsel and Chief of Staff (acting) to the late Congressman Mickey Leland (D-Texas).

Larry Johnson
Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm that helps multinational corporations and financial institutions identify strategic opportunities, manage risks, and counter threats posed by terrorism and money laundering. Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism, is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management. Mr. Johnson has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC's Nightline, NBC's Today Show, the New York Times, CNN and the BBC. He was even employed as a Fox News Contributor during 2002. Mr. Johnson has authored several articles for publications, including Security Management Magazine, the New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. He has lectured on terrorism and aviation security around the world, including the Center for Research and Strategic Studies at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France. He represented the U.S. Government at the July 1996 OSCE Terrorism Conference in Vienna, Austria. From 1989 until October 1993, Larry Johnson served as a Deputy Director in the U.S. State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism. He managed crisis response operations for terrorist incidents throughout the world and he helped organize and direct the US Government's debriefing of US citizens held in Kuwait and Iraq, which provided vital intelligence on Iraqi operations following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Mr. Johnson also participated in the investigation of the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103. Under Mr. Johnson's leadership the U.S. airlines and pilots agreed to match the US Government's two million-dollar reward. From 1985 through September 1989 Mr. Johnson worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. During his distinguished career, he received training in paramilitary operations, worked in the Directorate of Operations, served in the CIA's Operation's Center, and established himself as a prolific analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence. In his final year with the CIA he received two Exceptional Performance Awards.

Gene Kimmelman
Consumer's Union, Media Reform Expert
Mr. Kimmelman is a recognized expert on deregulation and consumer protection issues, particularly in the area of telecommunications. He is a frequent witness before congressional committees that set telecommunications policy. He was the lead consumer advocate on the omnibus Telecommunications Act of 1996 and was successful in seeing significant consumer protections added to the telecommunications deregulation legislation. Mr. Kimmelman is widely quoted on telecom issues in a variety of publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. He has done numerous interviews for network and cable television news programs. Prior to joining Consumers Union in 1995, Mr. Kimmelman served for two years as chief counsel and staff director for the Antitrust Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Prior to that, he was legislative director for the Consumer Federation of America where, during his 10-year tenure, he directed CFA's legislative, regulatory and judicial intervention program. Mr. Kimmelman began his career as a consumer advocate and staff attorney for Public Citizen's Congress Watch.

Robert McChesney
McChesney is the author of eight books on media and politics, professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and host of the weekly talk show, Media Matters, on WILL-AM radio. McChesney also writes widely for both academic and non-academic publications. He gives talks frequently on issues related to media and politics in the United States and world today.

Mark Crispin Miller
Mark Crispin Miller is a media critic, a professor at New York University and the author of "Boxed In: The Culture of TV."

John Nichols
is The Nation's Washington correspondent. He has covered progressive politics and activism in the United States and abroad for more than a decade. Formerly a writer and editor for The Toledo Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspapers, he is now editorial page editor for The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. He has, as well, covered electoral politics for The Progressive for a number of years.

Chellie Pingree
President, Common Cause
Chellie Pingree, former Maine Senate majority leader, U.S. Senate candidate and small business owner, is the president and chief executive officer of Common Cause.

Steve Rendall
Steve Rendall is FAIR's senior analyst. He is co-host of CounterSpin , FAIR's national radio show. His work has received awards from Project Censored, and has won the praise of noted journalists such as Les Payne, Molly Ivins and Garry Wills. He is co-author of The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error (The New Press, 1995, New York City). Rendall has appeared on dozens of national television and radio shows, including appearances on CNN , C-SPAN , CNBC , MTV and Fox Morning News . He was the subject of a profile in the New York Times (5/19/96), and has been quoted on issues of media and politics in publications such as the Chicago Tribune , Washington Post and New York Times . Rendall contributed stories to the International Herald Tribune from France, Spain and North Africa; worked as a freelance writer in San Francisco; and worked as an archivist collecting historical material on the Spanish Civil War and the volunteers who fought in it. Rendall studied philosophy and chemistry at San Francisco State University, the College of Notre Dame and UC Berkeley.

Bernie Sanders
Independent Representative from Vermont
On January 3, 1991, when Bernie Sanders was sworn in as Vermont's at-large member in the House of Representatives, history was made. Sanders became the first Independent elected to Congress in 40 years. He has since been re-elected five times. He is the longest-serving Independent in the history of the House of Representatives

Danny Schecter
Danny Schechter "The News Dissector" edits Mediachannel.org, the world's largest on line media issues network with ll68 affiliates. A former CNN, CNBC and ABC producer, he co founded Globalvision an independent TV and film company and frequently appears in the media dissecting media content. He is the author of six books including The More You Watch The Less You Know which investigates Rupert Murdoch's media emplire. His latest, "EMBEDDED: Weapons of Mass Deception" details how the media "failed to cover the war on Iraq." He is making a new feature length non-fiction film based on his findings called WMD.

James Wolcott
Currently the cultural critic for Vanity Fair , James Wolcott has also been a staff writer at The Village Voice, Esquire, Harper's , and The New Yorker . He lives with his wife, Laura Jacobs, and their two cats, Roland and Jasper, in New York City. Wolcott's novel,
The Catsitters , an adroit comedy of contemporary manners that wickedly renders the hapless foibles of an unmarried man on the canvas of modern urban life. It is also a bulletin from deep behind the lines of the dating scene that bares one of the most closely guarded male secrets: Behind the bluster and bluff of "guy talk," most men are looking for The Right One, too. His newest book "Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants: The Looting of The News in a Time of Terror" is being published by Miramax books in August. ( see amazon.com)

Av Westin
Av Westin former CBS News reporter and ABC News producer is now the Executive Director of the National Television Academy Foundation.