From Watergate and the Pentagon Papers to Iran-Contra and Abu Ghraib, journalists have used information from confidential sources to reveal illegal conduct by our government. It is vital to our democracy that we protect the people who are the sources for the exposes that are reported in newspapers, magazines and books and broadcast in news programs on television and radio. KATHLEEN M. CONKEY and NORMAN GREEN will discuss the importance of confidential sources to a free press.

Kathleen Conkey, a First Amendment and media lawyer, is Of Counsel to the media law boutique firm of Jacobs deBrauwere, LLP, in New York City. Prior to returning to private practice in 2007, she was Vice President and Senior Counsel in the Intellectual Property and Litigation department of MTV Networks, where she was primarily responsible for pre-broadcast review of the network’s many productions.

Norman Green won the NAACP Image Award for his hidden-camera investigation of racial profiling called “Driving While Black.” In 2006, he executive produced “New Year Baby,” about a family’s flight from the Khmer Rouge, which won the “Movies That Matter” Human Rights Watch Award and is currently airing on Independent Lens, as well as touring festivals around the world. Last year he directed “I’m From Rolling Stone,” a 10-part series for MTV Networks about aspiring journalists and in 2005 and 2006, he produced two documentaries for Viacom’s LGBTQ network, Logo: “The Elephant in the Room” following gay Republicans, and “Latino Beginnings” about gay Latinos.

ABFFE is the bookseller’s voice in the fight against censorship. The MLRC Institute is a not-for-profit educational organization focused on the media and the First Amendment. This presentation is part of a larger initiative sponsored by the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which has funded the MLRC Institute to create a Speakers Bureau to educate the public on the reporter’s privilege. More information about the Speakers Bureau and the MLRC Institute is available at www.medialaw.org.

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