University of Pennsylvania Expert on Media Law to Present UB Law School's Annual Mitchell Lecture

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- C. Edwin Baker, a well-known and widely published expert on media law, will be the keynote speaker at the University at Buffalo Law School's annual Mitchell Lecture.

The lecture program, which is free and open to the public, will be held from 9 a.m. to noon on April 4 in Slee Concert Hall on the UB North (Amherst) Campus.

Baker, author of the new book "Media, Markets and Democracy," will speak on "What Good is the Media? Shaping the Press for Democracy." His address will be followed by remarks by three distinguished commentators and a roundtable discussion.

"Media, Markets, and Democracy" explores how different views of democracy lead to varying approaches to promoting freedom of the press. He develops a theory of "complex democracy" that would foster a media aimed at multiple, and sometimes conflicting, goals.

Baker, Nicholas F. Gallicchio Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, teaches constitutional law and mass media law. He is the author of books on print advertising and on freedom of speech, as well as numerous articles in law journals and the popular media, including such outlets as The Nation, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times. He holds a juris doctor degree from Yale Law School and has worked as a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Commentators for the event will be Cheryl A. Leanza, deputy director of the Media Access Project, a public-interest law firm that works to promote open access and non-discrimination in telecommunications media; Nicholas Johnson, a visiting professor of law at the University of Iowa and former Federal Communications Commission member, and Marc Raboy, a communications professor at the University of Montreal whose newest book is "Global Media Policy in the New Millennium."

The James McCormick Mitchell Lecture was endowed in 1950 in honor of its namesake, an 1897 graduate of the UB Law School, and has been delivered annually since 1951.

For more information, contact Martha McCluskey, UB professor of law, at 645-2326 or by email at mcclusk@buffalo.edu.