St. Cloud State University’s Department of Mass Communications will grant the Defense of First Amendment Forum Award to the Dean of Northwestern University’s international campus in Qatar on April 24th.

Everette Dennis also founded a media program as part of the World Internet Project that examines freedom and censorship in the Arab region. The forum will concentrate on news coverage of public protests and conflicts. This year’s theme of the forum is Under Fire: Media Coverage of Community Outrage. Two panels of professors and experts will speak about the importance of media coverage.

The event starts at 9:00 a.m at the Atwood Memorial Center’s Theater. Due to the time difference between the two campuses, the panel will play a pre-recorded message given by Dennis. The forum is also known as Media Day and dates back to the early years of the 1970s.

Denis has been the director of the graduate studies in the school of journalism at the University of Minnesota where he published 15 of his many books. He has written books on subjects of “Media and Democracy”, “The Cost of Libel and Justice” and other similar issues.