George Gerbner

George Gerbner (August 8, 1919 – December 24, 2005) was a professor of communication and the founder of cultivation theory.

He taught at Temple University, Villanova University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Gerbner was born on August 8, 1919, in Budapest, Hungary.

After winning first prize in Hungarian literature in a national competition of high-school students, he enrolled at the University of Budapest, where he graduated with a degree in literature and anthropology (1937–1938).

Being of Jewish descent, however, he fled to Paris in 1939 (after Kristallnacht) to avoid conscription into the Hungarian army, which was under a government allied with Nazi Germany.

Initially, Gerbner was unable to obtain a visa to enter the United States, where his half-brother László Benedek was a Hollywood filmmaker, instead having to travel first to Mexico, then Cuba.

He would finally be permitted to sail from Havana to New Orleans, where he was received by Benedek's friends.

Thereafter, Gerbner hitchhiked from New Orleans to California and enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he would receive a degree in psychology and sociology (1940–1941).

He would soon transfer to UC Berkeley to study journalism, where he would receive his bachelor's degree in journalism in 1942.

Upon graduating, he worked briefly for the San Francisco Chronicle as copy boy, reporter, copy editor, feature writer, daily columnist, and assistant financial editor.

Gerbner became a U.S. citizen in 1943.

As American enlistment regulations loosened the year prior, Gerbner joined the US Army in 1943.

(He was officially recognized as an “enemy alien” due to Hungary’s declaration of war on the US.) In the army, he would be trained as a paratrooper in Fort Benning, Georgia.

Later, he would be transferred to the Office of Strategic Services and eventually arrived in Italy, where he joined the OSS' Secret Intelligence Branch.

After Germany’s defeat in the war Gerbner was sent to Austria in October 1945 to investigate a mass encampment of Hungarian soldiers, among which was the pro-Nazi prime minister of Hungary, Döme Sztójay, whom Gerbner helped arrest and return to Budapest to be tried and executed as a war criminal.

While stationed in Budapest, Gerbner met Ilona Kutas, an actress, whom he married in 1946 and had two children with.

Gerbner received the Bronze Star for his service behind enemy lines and was honorably discharged as a First Lieutenant.

After World War II, Gerbner worked as a freelance writer and publicist.

Searching for employment upon his return to Los Angeles, he volunteered as a newspaper editor for the Independent Progressive Party and the Progressive Citizens of America in 1947.

Because of his association with PCA and IPP, as well as other leftist activities during the height of America's anti-Communist McCarthy Era, Gerbner caught the interest of California's House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

He would be called to testify before HUAC, who cited PCA as being a "communist created and controlled organization."

Shortly after, Gerbner was hired to teach journalism at John Muir College (now Pasadena City College), where he remained from 1948 to 1951.

He would then go on to conduct research at the University of Southern California's (USC) Department of Cinema (1951–52), while earning a master's (1951) and doctorate (1955) in communication & education at USC.

His dissertation, "Toward a General Theory of Communication" won USC's award for "best dissertation."

Along with his freelance work, Gerbner taught journalism at El Camino College (1952–56).

Through the years, he taught at Temple University, Villanova University, and spent the major part of his career at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communication.

He then became a professor and researcher at USC's School of Education (1954–56).

In 1956, he became a faculty member at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign's Institute of Communication Research (1956–64), where he had been recruited by Dallas Smythe, who met Gerbner as a visiting professor in USC’s Department of Cinema.

Gerbner remained at Illinois for the next eight years.

In 1964, Gerbner would become Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania (1964–89)—only five years after it was established at the University—and presided over the school's growth and influence in communication theory in academia.

Gerbner served as editor and executive editor of the School's Journal of Communication, which was the leading publication in the field.

Moreover, Gerbner also created the first world encyclopedia of communications—as the chair of the editorial board of the International Encyclopedia of Communication —and established The Washington Program, a communications project that brought communication researchers and practitioners together in the U.S. Capitol.

In 1968, Gerbner established and headed the Cultural Indicators Project (CIP) to document trends in television programming and how these changes affect viewers' perceptions of society.

In 1986, he was named chair of the Commission on the Social Sciences of the American Council of Learned Societies' (ACLS) Subcommission on Communications and Society.

Gerbner would retire from the deanship at Annenberg in 1989 after 25 years, becoming the U of Pennsylvania's longest-serving dean.

He continued to conduct research and teach undergraduate and graduate courses in analysis of mass media.

He had a total of two children and, as of 2001, five grandchildren.

Gerbner was diagnosed with cancer in late November, 2005, and died on December 24, 2005, at his apartment in Center City, Philadelphia.

Between 2010 and 2014, a conference on communication, conflict, and aggression was held periodically in Budapest in honor of the late Dr. Gerbner.

The conference was co-organized by Dr. Jolán Róka of Budapest Metropolitan University and Dr. Rebecca M. Chory, currently of Frostburg State University.