Press Freedom and the (Crooked) Path Toward Democracy Lessons from Journalists in East Africa

Meghan Sobel Cohen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and the Master of Development Practice at Regis University in Denver, Colorado. Dr. Cohen's research focuses on digital development and the role of news media in combating human rights abuses and humanitarian crises around the world, particularly in East Africa. She has given a TEDx talk about sex trafficking that has been viewed more than 1.5 million times and she has published in journals such as Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, International Journal of Communication, African Journalism Studies and International Communication Gazette. She has a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, M.A. from the University of Denver and B.A. from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Karen McIntyre Hopkinson is an Associate Professor of Multimedia Journalism and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Richard T. Robertson School of Media and Culture at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Her international and interdisciplinary research focuses on journalism processes and effects. More specifically, she studies socially responsible forms of journalism, such as constructive journalism and solutions journalism. She also studies press freedom and journalism practice in East Africa and served as a Fulbright scholar in Rwanda during the 2018-19 academic year. Dr. McIntyre received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, her master's from University of California, Berkeley, and her bachelor's from California State University, Chico. She has traveled to more than 40 countries and is originally from Lake Tahoe, California.