December 5, 2016
Barbara Walters Special Tuesday Reveals a woman with a Mission
DONNA RICE HUGHES: FROM ‘MEDIA PUNCHING BAG’ TO INTERNATIONAL CHILD INTERNET SAFETY EXPERT
WASHINGTON, DC—Enough Is Enough®®(EIE) President/CEO Donna Rice Hughes sits down with Barbara Walters in the season premiere of the Investigation Discoveries’ Barbara Walters Presents. In the episode airing Tuesday, December 6 at 8PM ET/7PM CT “The Scandal that Changed History,” Barbara Walters shows the aftermath of the 1987 scandal involving Mrs. Hughes (then Ms. Rice) and then presidential hopeful Gary Hart. This will be Mrs. Hughes’5th interview with the legendary Walters since 1987.
The scandal was the watershed event in which mainstream media went tabloid and thrust then Ms. Rice into the vicious crossfire of a frenzied press, a presidential race and public opinion for 18 months. Ms. Rice was called by one media outlet -the media’s favorite punching bag until Dan Quayle came along. Instead of punching back and cashing in, she chose to take the high road. After going underground for 7 years, she eventually married and used this difficult experience to focus her efforts on protecting children from online sexual exploitation. She emerged as the nation’s leading pioneering 1994 on the frontlines of U.S. efforts to make the Internet safer for children and families by implementing a three-pronged strategy to persuade the public, the technology industry and the legal community to share the responsibility to prevent the exploitation of kids online. This strategy has been adopted by industry and government alike under her leadership of EIE. She has testified numerous times before Congress, and most recently won the 2013 Women In Technology Award for Social Impact and the 2014 Professional Women in Advocacy Excellence In Advocacy Award for “Veteran Practitioner”.
Under her leadership, EIE created the Internet Safety 101SM Program parental curriculum with U.S. Department of Justice. She is the Executive Producer, and host of the Internet Safety 101SM DVD series, which earned 3 Telly Awards, and was reformatted into the Internet Safety 101SM Television Series for PBS, which won an Emmy Award. In addition, Mrs. Hughes earned an Emmy nomination in the program host category.
Most recently, EIE launched its "National Porn Free Wi-Fi" campaign" in the fall of 2014, with nearly 50,000 petitions and 75 partner organizations encouraging McDonald's and Starbucks to lead Corporate America in filtering pornography and child pornography on public Wi-Fi. In the first quarter of 2016, McDonald’s implemented their filtered Wi-Fi policy in the majority of their 14,000 stores, nationally. Starbucks immediately announced that it plans to follow suit nationally and to implement a global policy as well. Additionally, Mrs. Hughes urged both party's presidential nominees to take The Children’s Internet Safety Presidential Pledge, and both showed support for the pledge, which states that, if elected President, each would pledge to defend the innocence and dignity of America’s children by enforcing the existing federal laws and advancing public policies designed to 1) prevent the sexual exploitation of children online and 2) to make the Internet safer for all. EIE is a non-partisan, non-profit organization and does not endorse or oppose candidates for office. EIE looks forward to working with the Trump administration on implanting the Pledge goals and with first lady Melania Trump in her efforts to end the epidemic of cyberbullying.
Donna Rice Hughes, Enough Is Enough®®'s CEO & President has been an Internet safety pioneer, author, and speaker since1994. As a media commentator, she has given over 4500 interviews on Internet safety related issues. She is also the Emmy-award winning Producer and Emmy nominated Host of the EIE's Internet Safety 101®SM TV series. She has testified numerous times before Congress, and has served as a Child Online Protection Act (COPA) Commissioner and other national and state government task forces. She is the author of Kids Online: Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace (BakerBooks,1998).
Enough Is Enough®® is a national bi-partisan non-profit organization who has led the fight to make the Internet safer for children and families since 1994. EIE's efforts are focused on combating Internet p*rnography, child p*rnography, sexual predation, and cyberbullying by incorporating a three-pronged prevention strategy with shared responsibilities between the public, Corporate America, and the legal community. For more information, please go to EIE's websites: www,enough.org and www.internetsafety101.org.
To arrange an interview with Donna Rice Hughes, contact Kevin McVicker at Shirley & Banister Public Affairs at
(703) 739-5920 or