Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture
Senior Research Associate
Liz Mitchell
USC Annenberg
Liz Mitchell, a Los Angeles-based journalist, has written and produced news and non-fiction programming for networks, local stations and cable channels for more than four decades. From 1990 to 2010, she also worked as an instructor at USC Annenberg, teaching classes in broadcast newswriting and reporting. A member of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), Ms. Mitchell served on new media committees at the Guild for more than 10 years, co-authoring a landmark study for the WGA on the implications for writers of the then-emerging Internet.
After graduating from Seattle University's first two-year Great Books Honors Programs with a B.A. degree in English Literature and Philosophy, Ms. Mitchell began her career writing broadcast news at the CBS-owned station in Los Angeles, but soon moved into working on documentaries and television magazine shows. Documentary subjects ranged from Los Angeles County government, children of divorce and the state of labor unions to Infant Nutrition, Cholesterol and the problem of Hepatitis B in Asia. Magazine shows include Lifetime's "Physician's Journal Update," Discovery's "Storm Warning" and NBC's "Real People" and "Speak Up America." A recent promotional video for UCLA's AIDS Institute won an international medical award in the Advertising and Public Relations category. She is also the author of a coffee table book on an Orange County fashion company, St. John: Celebrating 35 Years.
Ms. Mitchel worked on the landmark study, "The Image of the Public Relations Practitioner in Movies and Television, 1901-2011" (The IJPC Journal, Fall 2011 to Spring 2012) and is co-author of "The Image of the Washington Journalist in Movies and Television, 1932 to 2013."