Expert journalists discuss the illegality of Rupert Murdoch's tabloid and news reporting, and ask whether news at any price has a place in the field of journalism. Since 2007, the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program has hosted a “by invitation only” symposium each spring in honor of the Reva and David Logan Foundation, which endowed the program. The only symposium of its kind in the country, it routinely brings together a veritable “who’s who” of top journalists, law enforcement and government officials to address the critical issues confronting this specialized field. The symposium also unites media executives involved in both non-profit and commercial outlets, as well as media attorneys, academics, major foundations, and philanthropists who support journalism in the public interest."
Bio
Ken Auletta
Ken Auletta has written Annals of Communications columns and profiles for The New Yorker magazine since 1992. He is the author of eleven books, including five national bestsellers: Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way; Greed And Glory On Wall Street: The Fall of The House of Lehman; The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Super Highway; World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies; and andGoogled: The End of The World As We Know It. Starting in 1974, he was the chief political correspondent for the New York Post, then staff writer and weekly columnist for the Village Voice and contributing editor of New YorkMagazine. He started writing for The New Yorker in 1977. Between 1977 and 1993, he wrote a weekly political column for the New York Daily News
Neil Docherty
Neil Docherty was a print reporter in Britain, working for The Sunday Times in London and other papers before defecting to television. He is a senior editor/producer of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's investigative show The Fifth Estate and since 1994, a regular contributor to PBS Frontline. His recent Frontline films have won numerous awards, including two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Batons, a George Polk Award, and a Peabody Award. In 2004 he was awarded a Gordon Sinclair Gemini Award as Canada's best broadcast journalist. He is the director-producer of Murdoch's Scandal, which is featured at this year's symposium. He was producer in residence at the U.C. Berkeley's Graduate school of Journalism in 1997-98.
Danno Hanks
A licensed private investigator, Danno Hanks has worked for tabloid journalism outlets from A Current Affair to The News of the World and The Mail on Sunday, as well as Fox News over the last fifteen years. He came to journalism after a career in the underworld where he specialized in wiretapping and phone systems for large scale bookmaking operations. One of those operations was chronicled in a 60 Minutes segment where he and his late partner, Fred Valis, introduced themselves as "Vermin and Pestilence," who worked for Mafia criminal operations, while they supplemented their income as paid informants for the FBI. Hanks is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club. He describes in part what he did for the British tabloids and others on the website of the PBS Frontline documentary Murdoch's Scandal.
Mark Lewis
Mark Lewis is an English Solicitor-Advocate (attorney) who has been representing both claimants and defendants in all issues relating to reputation, privacy and the media since he qualified in 1990. He is perhaps best known internationally for his representation of the family of the murdered schoolgirl, Milly Dowler against Newscorp's English subsidiary News Group Newspapers Ltd. He has also been the solicitor for countless others in the "phone hacking scandal" and negotiated the $1 million-dollar settlement of damages and costs that started it all off. Besides media law, Lewis also undertakes work relating to uncovering "dark arts and dirty tricks" by various companies and their employees. Only by four companies have threatened him with claims in the last 20 years. None have succeeded.
Matthew Purdy
Matthew Purdy was named Investigations Editor of The New York Times in December 2003. Previously, Purdy wrote written the "Our Towns" column in the Metro Section. He joined The Times in December 1993 and has worked as a reporter, a columnist and an editor. Before joining The Times, worked at The Philadelphia Inquirer for 12 years. He covered local government and was a Washington correspondent for the paper for five years. In 1989, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for a series of stories about abuses in the federal government's kidney dialysis program. Purdy was born in Elizabeth, N.J., and graduated from Northwestern University in 1978, where he majored in philosophy and English literature.
Jack Shafer
Jack Shafer writes a column about the press and politics for Reuters, which he joined in September 2011. Previously, he worked at Slate for 15 years, first as deputy editor and then as the site's “Press Box” columnist. Before Slate, Shafer spent 11 years editing two alternative weeklies--SF Weekly and Washington City Paper--where he estimates he rewrote, massaged, or merely pressed the button on 500 features. Shafer's first salaried job in journalism was at Inquiry magazine, where he was the managing editor. His work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Times Book Review, the Columbia Journalism Review, the New Republic, BookForum, the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. He has been writing about the press for about 25 years.
