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Eric Erfors, Swedish journalist. |
Swedish Journalist Discusses U.S. Media And Elections During Visit In Georgia
Swedish journalist Eric Erfors spent three days at the University of Georgia and in Atlanta in mid October focusing on the role of media in covering the thousands of state and local elections that the international media rarely cover.
Erfors is a Stockholm-based editorial writer at Expressen, one of Sweden's largest newspapers, and he wanted to learn how local and state elections in the U.S differ from the presidential election, which is what most international media cover.
Powell Moore, member of the Board of Visitors of the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research, told the Swedish journalist that the presidential elections were very unusual, due to the unprecedented level of distrust that people had in both main candidates.
Moore who was spending time at the University of Georgia during Erfors’ visit.
In his most recent government service, Moore was the Representative of the United States Secretary of Defense to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, based in Vienna, Austria. In the first term of the G.W. Bush Administration, Mr. Moore was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs. He held the comparable position at the Department of State in the first term of the Administration of President Ronald Reagan.
Erfors’ program at the University of Georgia was organized by the Center Center and was part of a nine week Transatlantic Media Network fellowship, coordinated by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
The Cox Center is a unit of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and partnered with CSIS for the visit.
During his stay in Athens, Erfors also met with Dr. Charles Bulock, Richard B. Russell Chair in Political Science and Meigs Distinguished Teaching, who said that, according to the “pendulum principle,” American voters get tired of the incumbent president's party in the White House after two terms, but that Mr. Trump’s options to win were more narrow than Mrs. Clinton’s.
In the Grady College, the guest visited Newsource, the student TV studio, and talked about media coverage of elections with Professors Yvonne Cantrell Bickley and David Hazinski.
Erfors also had meetings with Dr. Charles Davis, dean of the Grady College, and with Dr. Janice Hume, chair of the journalism department, and talked about recent changes in the Grady curriculum designed to address the turmoil in the media industry and the opportunities offered by the new media.
Drs. Lee B. Becker and Tudor Vlad, director and associate director of the Cox International Center, respectively, talked with Erfors about a new perspective on journalism as a citizen and community activity and about the Center's international projects.
During his stay in Georgia, the guest visited CNN and the Martin Luther King Memorial in Atlanta. Before his arrival in Athens, the Swedish journalist visited Washington D.C., North Carolina and South Carolina.
Erfors joined Expressen in 1992 and is one of Sweden’s most experienced center-right commentators. He has traveled extensively covering international affairs and said that the traditional distinction between domestic and international politics is disappearing in an interdependent and globalized world.
The Swedish journalist appears frequently on Swedish radio and TV and in the international media. He has a degree from the Stockholm School of Journalism and also studied political science, history, social sciences, economics, and English at the University of Stockholm. He was also a visiting student at North Park College in Chicago.
