April 12th - 6:30pm

Hedrick Smith

"Winning Back

our Democracy"

at

Bates Tech Central Mohler Campus

Hedrick Smith, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and editor and Emmy award-winning producer/correspondent, has established himself over the past 50 years as one of America’s premier journalists. His newest work is “The People vs the Politicians,” a one-hour documentary for MSNBC, showing how grass roots citizens reformers are winning back our democracy, state by state.

A companion YouTube channel carries the documentary segments and more than two dozen short videos on political reform movements. It has already attracted more than 160,000 viewers in a few short weeks. Smith is preparing a toolkit and discussion guide to help civic groups and university teachers organize classsroom studies, webinars and civic events based the film and its video segments.

The film is an outgrowth of Smith‘s most best-selling book, “Who Stole the American Dream?” His stunning account of how we have become Two Americas and fallen into a dysfunctional political system has been by reviewers both for its compelling stories and ”brilliant analysis.” From the enthusiastic public response to that book, Smith created an excgtensive and widely used informational website on reform issues, written with the verve and insight of a time- tested journalist.

In 26 years with The New York Times, Smith served in Saigon, Cairo, Paris, the American South and as bureau chief in Moscow and Washington. In 1971, he was a member of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team for the Pentagon Papers series and in 1974, he won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting from Russia and Eastern Europe.

His subsequent book The Russians was a No.1 American best-seller translated into 16 languages. Smith’s next book, The Power Game: How Washington Works, was bedside reading for President Clinton. Many members of Congress used it as a political bible. He has written three other best-sellers.

For PBS, Hedrick Smith has created 26 prime-time specials and mini-series since 1989 on such varied topics as “Inside the Terror Network,” “Is Wal-Mart Good for America?” “The Wall Street Fix,” “Inside Gorbachev’s USSR,” “Can You Afford to Retire?” and “Rediscovering Dave Brubeck.” He has won most of television’s top awards including two Emmys, two national public service awards from sigma Delta Chi, and two Dupont-Columbia Gold batons for the best public affairs programs on U.S. television in 1991 and in 2002.