Bruce Brown Keynote: The Obama Administration and the Media

Date/Time
Date(s) - 09/24/2013
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

It’s been a summer of discontent.  The Associated Press and Fox News learn that they have been subject to secret snooping by the Justice Department, and New York Times reporter James Risen loses a key appeal in the federal courts in his effort to protect his sources.  The Obama Administration has been on a tear pursuing leak investigations.  These events lead to some stirrings of reform, as the Justice Department revises its media subpoena guidelines, and Congress returns to a possible federal shield statute.  But are there other ways out of this corrosive cycle?

Bruce D. Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, will explore the relationship between the Obama Administration and the media.

Brown became executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in September 2012 and is of counsel in the Washington, D.C., office of BakerHostetler, where he had been a partner in the firm’s media law practice.  He has argued press cases in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Prior to joining BakerHostetler, Brown was a federal court reporter for Legal Times and a newsroom assistant to David Broder at The Washington Post.

Brown co-directs the First Amendment Clinic at the University of Virginia Law School and is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University in its master’s program in journalism.  Brown received a J.D. from Yale Law School, a master’s degree in English literature from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Stanford University.

Read more about Brown here: http://www.rcfp.org/about-us/staff/bruce-d-brown-0.

Read more about the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press here: http://www.rcfp.org.