The WKU School of Media & Communication will host “Telling the Untold Story: Investigating the US Criminal Justice System,” a lecture with journalist Josie Duffy Rice.
The event, as part of the John B. Gaines Family Lecture Series, will be Thursday at 6:30 p.m. in the Jody Richards Hall Auditorium. Duffy will speak on corruption, injustices and challenges in prosecutorial and prison systems, while also discussing the power of journalism and its impact in bringing about reform in the Criminal Justice System, according to an event flyer.
Duffy works as a freelance journalist with stories published in the New York Times and the New Yorker, among other news outlets. She also co-wrote and produced the Peabody-nominated podcast “Unreformed,” which brings to light the conditions of an industrial school for black youths in Mount Meigs, Alabama.
“This reform school derailed the lives of thousands of Black children in Alabama for decades,” the podcast’s description stated. “Host Josie Duffy Rice investigates the history of the school at the tail end of the Civil Rights movement in Alabama and speaks to former students who are still haunted by their experience but had the will to survive.”
Duffy spoke to an introductory journalism class Wednesday to share her experience reporting on a criminal justice beat.
“Part of why you do this is for the historic record,” Duffy said to the class. “The record matters.”
