CBC's Tremonti to deliver H.T. Reid lecture

Anna Maria Tremonti, award-winning host of CBC Radio One’s The Current, will speak at Acadia University’s Festival Theatre building October 2. The accomplished journalist will deliver the H.T. Reid lecture on the topic “Can you call it a crisis if you can see it coming?”

In an interview, Tremonti said her talk will “explore the threads” of how journalists, politicians and people intersect in anticipating and coping with crises. “If you look at various crises -- if you look at the economic crisis --people were writing books about this two or three years ago. If you look at climate change, people have been saying ‘this is coming’ … before atrocities, like Rwanda, there were warning signs but no one paid attention.”

Journalists are sometimes blamed for fanning the flames of crises. To that criticism, Tremonti responds, “sometimes yes, sometimes no. Our jobs journalistically are to document and chronicle change in society, so when we’re seeing things change we should be on top of it. “Are there ways that we can track things better? Do we become the doomsayers or we grab onto things only when they’re a crisis?”

The Rwandan genocide is one example, she notes, where it “took a long time for North American media to jump on (a crisis.) Would governments have reacted differently if we had covered it from the beginning?” “The only way to … make decisions that benefit us is to get everyone involved,” Tremonti says. Policy makers and elected officials included.

Political and corporate decision makers should take responsibility and engage with the media, Tremonti says. “You made a decision you obviously believe in; come and talk about it.”

Tremonti’s lecture will be given in conjunction with the 35th annual Atlantic Provinces Political Science Association’s conference “Governing out of crisis,” hosted by Acadia’s Political Science department.

Conference organizer Dr. Rachel Brickner said Tremonti was an obvious choice. “Who better to talk about crises than someone who is on the front lines, mediating between the public, the policy makers, the academics, the government officials who are working on crisis solutions?”

The H. T. Reid lecture, endowed in 1957, has in the past been given by such eminent persons as Stephen Lewis, James Orbinski, and Thabo Mbeki. The H.T. Reid lecture begins at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free, but seating is first come, first serve.