Kathryn C. Montgomery, Ph.D. -- Biography
Kathryn C. Montgomery, Ph.D., is Co-founder and President of the Center for Media Education (CME), a D.C.-based nonprofit organization public interest group dedicated to ensuring that the electronic media serve the needs of children and families. Under Dr. Montgomery's leadership, CME has helped frame the national public debate on a variety of critical media issues. CME's groundbreaking studies on new and traditional media have provided essential documentation for public interest privacy initiatives, such as:
- revision of the Children's Television Act to require that broadcaststations air three hours per week of educational children's programming;
- the Federal Trade Commission's 1997 issuance of guidelines and 1998 recommendation for legislation to protect children's privacy online; and
- the inclusion of content indicators and creation of a new "FV" category for the new broadcast ratings system for use with the V-chip.
Dr. Montgomery is currently directing CME's research initiative on New Media and the Healthy Development of Children. The project is uniting health professionals, industry leaders, and scholars from a wide variety of fields to develop a comprehensive, inter-disciplinary research agenda on the impacts of new media on children. As part of this initiative, CME has created InterActions, an online clearinghouse of research on children and new media (http://www.cme.org/) and a major conference planned for Fall, 1998 on "Creating a Quality Media Culture for Children in the Digital Age."
For more than twelve years, Dr. Montgomery was a full-time communications professor, first at California State University, Los Angeles (1978-1982), where she was Associate Professor and Director of Broadcasting, and then at University of California, Los Angeles, where she was Assistant Professor in the Film and Television Department. She also was invited to be a Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., where she conducted research on the use of media advocacy by public health and environmental groups. Dr. Montgomery's book, Target: Prime Time. Advocacy Groups and the Struggle over Entertainment Television (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), is the definitive study of the relationship between advocacy organizations -- representing women, African Americans, Hispanics, gays and lesbians, and a variety of issues -- and the network television industry. It also provides an analysis of the institutional structures and forces which shape prime-time television programming.
A regularly featured expert on children's media issues, Dr. Montgomery has appeared on the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, The Today Show, Nightline, and CBS News. CME's projects and reports also have been featured in publications including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today.