Thirty years ago this spring, China faced a dramatic turning point in its modern history – the Tiananmen Square protests for political reform, and the military crackdown that crushed it. It was a watershed moment not only for China but in the history of the international media, redefining the relationship between the press, public opinion, and foreign policy making, and continuing to influence both Chinese politics and international perceptions of China to this day.

“Assignment China: Tiananmen Square” tells the behind-the-scenes story of the international correspondents who covered those dramatic events in Beijing, when more than a million Chinese citizens took to the streets calling for change.  Reported and narrated by Mike Chinoy, who was CNN’s Beijing Bureau Chief at the time, the film is one episode of a multi-part documentary film series on the history of American correspondents in China produced by the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where Chinoy is a non-resident fellow.

Left to right: Mike Chinoy, Xiao Qiang, Mary Kay Magistad, Kevin O’Brien.

The 90-minute documentary screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Mike Chinoy, Xiao Qiang, the founder and editor-in-chief of the bilingual China news website China Digital Times, and director and research scientist at the UC Berkeley School of Information’s Counter-Power Lab, which focuses on technology and the free flow of information in cyberspace, and Kevin O’Brien, the Alann P. Bedford Professor of Asian Studies and Political Science at UC Berkeley, and the Director of Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies.  Moderating will be Mary Kay Magistad, a former China correspondent for NPR (1995-99) and for PRI/BBC’s The World (2003-13), who now heads the audio journalism program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.