The Future of Press Freedom: Democracy, Law, and the News in Changing Times

ABOUT THE EVENT:

Professor RonNell Andersen Jones discusses her recently published book, The Future of Press Freedom: Democracy, Law, and the News in Changing Times, co-edited with Sonja West, who is professor of law at the University of Georgia School of Law. The book is available in hardback and paperback and through the open access portal from Cambridge University Press.

This groundbreaking volume assembles an unparalleled roster of media experts and First Amendment luminaries to chart the future of press freedom in America’s changing media landscape. Current and former deans of top US law schools, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, former Supreme Court clerks, and renowned scholars of law and communications offer their collective wisdom on safeguarding journalism amidst unprecedented challenges. Their contributions provide an incisive analysis of emerging threats to press freedom, from technological and economic disruptions to eroding public trust, while proposing innovative legal and policy solutions. Blending rigorous scholarship with practical insights, this essential resource equips journalists, press advocates, policymakers, and engaged citizens with expert knowledge to defend press freedom.

PANELISTS:

RonNell Andersen Jones, University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law
Professor RonNell Andersen Jones is a University Distinguished Professor and the Lee E. Teitelbaum Chair in Law at the University of Utah. A former newspaper reporter and editor, Professor Andersen Jones is a First Amendment scholar who researches and writes on legal issues affecting the press and on the intersection between media and the courts, with an emphasis on the United States Supreme Court. Her work is particularly concerned with the role of the press in American democracy and the underdeveloped doctrines for identifying and safeguarding constitutionally protectable press functions in a changing media and political landscape. She is a widely cited national expert on newsgathering rights and commenter on the free-speech dynamics in social media discourse. Her scholarly work on questions of press access, the constitutional protections in media defamation suits, and the role of the press as a check on government has appeared in dozens of books and journals.

Christina Koningisor, UC Law San Francisco
Professor Christina Koningisor is an associate professor or law at the University of California College of Law San Francisco. She teaches and writes about constitutional law, administrative law, media law, and state and local government law. Her scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. Professor Koningisor is a graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University. She has previously served as a lawyer for the New York Times, a law clerk on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and a Fulbright fellow in Kuwait.

Helen Norton, University of Colorado Law School
Helen Norton is University Distinguished Professor and Rothgerber Chair in Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado School of Law. Her scholarly and teaching interests include constitutional law (especially First Amendment and equal protection law), and antidiscrimination law. Her work has been published by Cambridge University Press, Duke Law Journal, Northwestern University Law Review, Stanford Law Review Online, and the Supreme Court Review, among others.

Victor Pickard, University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communications
Victor Pickard is the C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the Annenberg School for Communication, Pickard has authored or edited six books, including the award-winning monographs Democracy Without Journalism? Confronting the Misinformation Society (Oxford University Press, 2020) and America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Other books include After Net Neutrality: A New Deal for the Digital Age (with David Berman; Yale University Press, 2019), Will the Last Reporter Please Turn out the Lights (with Robert McChesney; The New Press, 2011), The Future of Internet Policy(with Peter Decherney; Routledge, 2016), and Media Activism in the Digital Age (with Guobin Yang; Routledge, 2017).

Pickard’s research on media history, media activism, and journalism’s normative role in democratic societies has been published in more than 200 articles, essays, reviews, and book chapters in leading scholarly journals, anthologies, and popular magazines. He also has co-authored four major policy reports.

Sonja R. West, University of Georgia School of Law
Sonja West is the Otis Brumby Distinguished Professor in First Amendment Law  at the University of Georgia School of Law. She specializes in constitutional law, media law and the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to joining the School of Law faculty, West taught as the Hugo Black Faculty Fellow at the University of Alabama School of Law. She has also served as a judicial clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and Judge Dorothy W. Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Her other professional experience includes several years as an associate attorney for the Los Angeles law firms Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Davis Wright Tremaine, where she represented media clients on a variety of First Amendment and intellectual property issues at the trial and appellate levels.

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