Karen Kaiser is Associate General Counsel at The Associated Press. She joined in early 2009, focusing on news-related matters with an emphasis on FOIA and state open-records access. Karen is responsible for drafting and negotiating appeals with federal agencies on FOIA denials, and has filed more than 100 FOIA appeals since joining AP. AP's FOIA efforts were highlighted in a
New York Times article, "Despite Budgets, Some Newsrooms Persist in Costly Fight for Records," Tim Arango, in February 15, 2010, B1, and AP's 2009 and 2010 FOIA efforts were honored with the Eugene Pulliam First Amendment Award in August, 2011,
http://www.spj.org/news.asp?ref=1070. Karen also counsels the AP newsroom globally on all editorial matters, such as subpoena defense, libel defense, and prepublication review.
Prior to joining AP, Karen worked at Tribune Company, where she was Senior Counsel for East Coast Media, responsible for editorial, litigation and transactional legal services for several daily newspapers, including
The Baltimore Sun, The Hartford Courant, The Morning Call, and Newsday, several broadcast stations, and their respective interactive units. In addition to providing litigation oversight, she counseled and assisted newsrooms with subpoena defense, access matters, FOIA appeals, and prepublication review. She also helped pass the Connecticut Reporter's Shield Law by co-drafting the legislation and testifying before Connecticut's joint judiciary committee; the legislation passed in 2006.
Prior to joining Tribune, Karen was an associate in the New York office of the law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel, where she worked on First Amendment matters, such as the Valerie Plame CIA Leak Investigation and the Wen Ho Lee case. She also has experience litigating securities cases. Before joining Cahill, Karen clerked for the Honorable Kevin Thomas Duffy in the Southern District of New York.
Karen is on the Governing Committee of the Forum on Communications Law of the American Bar Association. She also participates in the New York State Bar Association Committee on Media Law, and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York Committee on Communications and Media Law.
Karen holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Economics from The University of Pennsylvania, and a J.D. from Fordham Law School.