Nationality United States Education University of Florida Died June 25, 2007 | Name Dana Bullen Alma mater University of Florida | |
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Born August 6, 1931 Boston Known for Being the executive director of the World Press Freedom Committee | ||
Dana Ripley Bullen II (b. Boston, August 6, 1931 - d. Alexandria, Virginia, June 25, 2007) was executive director of the World Press Freedom Committee, a nonprofit organization based in Reston, Virginia from 1981 to 1996. He had been the foreign editor of The Washington Star, which closed in 1981, before joining the committee’s staff.
Bullen’s fight against censorship started in 1980 when he worked as a volunteer for the committee. The group’s current executive director, Mark Bench, said Dana Bullen’s efforts “were critical” in organizing successful opposition to a New World Information and Communication Order, first proposed in 1976 by some member nations of Unesco. The order would have allowed those countries to restrict the distribution of news about them.
As executive director, Bullen “was able to see from a distance, though hidden in code words, restrictions by intergovernmental organizations on press freedom”, Bench said. “In many cases, by taking the mask off those code words, he was able to prevent those restrictions.”
Bullen attended Phillips Academy, Andover, and earned a bachelor's degree in journalism at the University of Florida in 1953 and a law degree there in 1956. He worked at The Star for 21 years, as a reporter and then foreign editor. a former executive director of the World Press Freedom Committee.
He died from cancer, aged 75, in 2007 and was survived by his wife and a brother.