JANE E. KIRTLEY is the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. Prior to that, she was Executive Director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Arlington, Virginia and Washington, D.C., for 14 years. She was appointed Director of The Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law in May 2000, and was named to the affiliated faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School in March 2001. In 2004, she was a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Massachusetts, and in 2012, an Adjunct Professor of Law in the London Law Programme for the University of Notre Dame Law School. She teaches courses in media law and media ethics.
Prof. Kirtley speaks frequently on freedom of the press, freedom of information and media ethics issues, both in the United States and abroad, including Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, China, the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Japan, Latvia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Thailand and Turkey, as well as in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada. She has lectured, served on panels, and facilitated workshops on the First Amendment, freedom of information, information privacy, libel, journalist's privilege, access to courts, student press law and professional responsibility at a variety of universities and for countless journalism groups such as the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the Associated Collegiate Press, as well as for attorneys through organizations such as the Practising Law Institute; the American Bar Association's Forum on Communications Law and the Sections of Tort Trial and Insurance Practice (TIPS), Dispute Resolution and Environment & Energy Resources; the Sports Lawyers Association; the Canadian Media Lawyers Association (Ad IDEM) and many state bar associations.
Prof. Kirtley has written friend of the court briefs in media law and Freedom of Information Act cases, as well as many articles on media law and media ethics for scholarly journals and for the popular and professional press. She has also contributed chapters to several books. In 2010, her Media Law handbook was published by the U.S. Department of State, and has been translated into many languages, including Arabic, Azeri, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish and Urdu. She is publisher of the Silha Bulletin, a commentator for Nieman Watchdog, and wrote the "First Amendment Watch" column for American Journalism Review from 1995-2006.