Finnegan, Lisa

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Finnegan, Lisa

PERSONAL:

Education: Fordham University, M.A.

ADDRESSES:

CAREER:

Freelance journalist. Former reporter for Port Jefferson Record, Long Island, NY, Saratogian, Saratoga Springs, NY, Press Enterprise, Bloomsburg, PA, and States News Service, Washington, DC; Occupational Hazards, Washington, DC, former editor and staff writer; Fordham University, Bronx, NY, former associate director of public affairs for media relations.

MEMBER:

American Psychological Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Deadline reporting award, Long Island Press Club, 1990, for story "Woman Killed in Stony Brook Home"; depth reporting award from New York State Associated Press Association, and local reporting award from New York Newspaper Publishers Association, both 1992, both for story "What's Wrong with Welfare?"; depth reporting award from New York State Associated Press Association, and local reporting award from New York Newspaper Publishers Association, both 1993, both for "Workers at Risk."

WRITINGS:

No Questions Asked: News Coverage since 9/11, foreword by Norman Soloman, Praeger Publishers (Westport, CT), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including the Boston Globe, Denver Post, Colorado Springs Gazette, Anchorage Daily News, Washington Lawyer, Asia Times, Manager, Flatirons, Fordham Urban Law Journal, and Newsday.

SIDELIGHTS:

Journalist and freelance writer Lisa Finnegan began her career as a reporter for the Port Jefferson Record in Long Island, New York, covering primarily local government issues. From there she went on to work at several newspapers, eventually ending up at the States News Service in Washington, DC. She has written about government, the environment, and health and safety issues. Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Finnegan earned a master's degree in educational psychology at Fordham University, where she met Professor Harold Takooshian, with whom she went on to research current attitudes toward terrorism. Finnegan went on to write No Questions Asked: News Coverage since 9/11, which addresses the manner in which the American press treated the Bush administration's post-9/11 policies and questions what the role of the press should have been during this time. She also looks at the current situation on the global political arena and how it has been affected by these failures on the part of the press. Vanessa Bush remarked in Booklist: "This is a penetrating look at American news coverage at a critical time in U.S. history." Carl Sessions Stepp, writing in the American Journalism Review, further commented: "Finnegan's most provocative proposition is that press docility stemmed from a calculation of self-interest…. Unfortunately, Finnegan doesn't back this with evidence." However, a contributor for Reference & Research Book Review felt that Finnegan "documents the many ways that the American media has come to serve essentially as a propaganda organ for government."