Retired CNN Executive to Address 'Why Network News is Down the Tube' November 12

In the aftermath of an historic presidential election, a 40-year veteran of broadcast news will speak at Emory University about the current state of television news. Former CNN Headline News President V.R. "Bob" Furnad will address “Why Network News is Down the Tube” in a Nov. 12 lecture hosted by the Emory Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life (MARIAL). The talk is free and open to the public. It is at 4 p.m. at the MARIAL Center, 1256 Briarcliff Road, Suite 413E.

Furnad has covered seven presidents and 13 political conventions since 1972. He spent 18 years at ABC, and 17 years at CNN. His last position at ABC was senior producer for Good Morning America news. Furnad joined CNN in 1983 as its first political director and rose to the position of executive vice president and senior executive producer. He produced all live special event coverage including the first Gulf War, the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Moscow revolt, the Moscow coup, Tiananmen Square and the Oklahoma City bombing. In his last three years at CNN, Furnad was president of CNN Headline News, CNN Radio, CNN Airport Network and CNN Newsource. Furnad reorganized CNN Headline News to utilize the latest technologies, reduce costs, and make more resources available to gather news and create production elements.

Furnad retired in January 2001, and joined the Henry W. Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia as a visiting associate professor. He retired from UGA in May 2006. In 2001, Furnad worked on a television news project for the Kuwaiti government and, as part of Intelligent Media Consultants, worked with executives at the NDTV networks in India. Furnad also delivers a video exercise on ethics for broadcast news majors at journalism colleges across the country.

He has received two George Foster Peabody Awards, two Emmys and the DuPont-Columbia Award, and is chairman of FaithWorks, a ministry in Covington that provides emergency financial aid to help people pay electric bills and rent.

The Emory Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life (MARIAL) is one of five Sloan Centers on Working Families, supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Emory Center focuses its research on the functions and significance of ritual and myth in dual wage-earner middle-class families in the American South.

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