JOIN OUR LAWYERS & THE MEDIA
TRAINING SEMINAR
Thursday, April 1, 2010 12:00 - 2:00 pm EST
Sponsored by the National Whistleblowers Legal Defense & Education Fund
Lawyers & the Media: Strategies that Work and Pitfalls to Avoid in Whistleblower Cases
Whistleblowers who come forward to expose wrongdoing are critical sources for journalists. All attorneys who represent whistleblowers and journalists who use them as sources must understand the laws in place to protect whistleblowers when their story reaches the public. Attorneys also need to know how to effectively present their client's cases to journalists. This seminar will cover the 1st amendment protections that attorneys need to know to protect their clients, and journalists need to protect whistleblower sources.
This session will pay special attention to the challenges
faced when working with national security employees.
This training will take place on April 1, 2010 at the National Whistleblowers Center and via telephone conference. For a full description of the seminar and faculty information, click here.To register for this seminar, click here .
If you have already registered, please click
here for seminar materials.
Lawyers & the Media: Strategies that Work and Pitfalls to Avoid in Whistleblower Cases
Presenters: Rich Bonin, John Solomon, Jim Popkin, Stephen M. Kohn
- 1st amendment protections for whistleblower sources, and special issues confronting national security whistleblowers.
- Effectively pitching and developing a story with a whistleblower source.
- How journalists and attorneys for whistleblowers can work together to effectuate the public's right to know.
Registration Fees:
$75 Attorney Referral Service Members (ARS)
Contact for Membership Code
$135 Non-ARS Members
Join the ARS today and receive the ARS member seminar rate
Contact Estelle S. Kohn for more information (202)-342-1903 /
ek@whistleblowers.org
$75 Journalists & Media
Contact directly for registration information
Register online for this seminar, or download and mail a registration form along with a check payable to the National Whistleblowers Legal Defense & Education Fund (NWLDEF) to 3238 P Street, NW, Washington, DC 20007, or for more information call Estelle Kohn or Meryl Grenadier at 202-342-1903.
If you have already registered, please click here for seminar materials.
Conference Faculty*
 RICH BONIN - Producer, 60 Minutes
For twenty-two years, Rich Bonin has been a
producer at CBS News' 60 MINUTES, where he's won awards for excellence
in journalism, including five Emmys. He has covered a wide range of
stories, from terrorism and war in the Middle East to exposes
about government and corporate abuse, among them: the FBI's botched anthrax investigation of
Stephen Hatfill; its pursuit of the wrong man in what turned out to be
the Robert Hanson espionage case; the first interview with Richard A.
Clarke, the Bush Administration's top counterterrorism adviser who blew
the whistle on how the White House mishandled pre-9/11 intelligence
on Al Qaeda; oil companies' campaign to silence whistleblower Chuck
Hamel; and in 2004 news that Ahmad
Chalabi, the controversial Iraqi figure who lobbied the Bush
Administration to invade Iraq, was spying for Iran.
Bonin is currently writing a biography of Chalabi that will be
published next year by Doubleday.
JOHN SOLOMON- Former Executive Editor Washington Times, Former Special Correspondent Washington Post, Packard Media Group LLC
John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist. As former Executive Editor of The Washington Times
(2008-09), he won numerous journalism awards, including the Robert F.
Kennedy Journalism Award in 2008 and the Society of Professional
Journalists 2009 National Public Service Award. He also produced the
first joint project with CBS’ "60 Minutes," which exposed how
the FBI crime lab practiced faulty bullet lead analyses for decades,
using the erroneous science to convict hundreds of people without
informing them of the problems. The series won the 2008 Robert F.
Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award for domestic television and the
Society of Professional Journalists' top award for investigative
reporting for TV. Before joining The Post, Mr. Solomon spent 20
years as a manager and reporter for The Associated Press, where he won
the Gramling Achievement Award for coordinating the wire service’s
worldwide investigative coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Solomon
was named in 2005 to oversee a seven-member investigative team
dedicated to producing high-impact stories that could play
simultaneously on TV, on the Web, on radio and in print. The team’s
work included exposing the Dubai Ports World deal, exposing the ethical
missteps of several leaders in Congress and uncovering the now-infamous
Hurricane Katrina videotape showing what President Bush had been told
before the deadly storm. Before creating the team, Mr. Solomon spent
six years overseeing the administration, personnel and finances of AP’s
150-member Washington bureau as assistant chief of bureau. In that
role, he also oversaw AP’s relationship with major newspaper members
throughout the Washington metropolitan area, including The Post, The
Washington Times, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report and the 99
Gannett newspapers, headquartered in McLean, Va.Today Mr. Solomon is with the Packard Media Group LLC.
JIM POPKIN, Former Senior Investigative Producer NBC News, Founder Seven Oaks Media Group
For 14 years, Jim Popkin served in several high-ranking positions at NBC News in Washington, DC. He was a Senior Investigative Producer, and oversaw a team of correspondents and producers that broke major stories for NBC News on politics, Wall Street scandals, defense, and intelligence and law-enforcement controversies. He also was an on-air correspondent, and his stories appeared on NBC’s TODAY show, the weekend Nightly News, CNBC and MSNBC. Popkin won four national Emmy awards for outstanding journalism, two Edward R. Murrow Awards and was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. The American Journalism Review profiled him as one of Washington’s “most enterprising journalists.” Prior to NBC News, Popkin was a writer and Senior Editor for U.S. News & World Report for six years. His articles and reports also have appeared in the Washington Post, USA TODAY, Washingtonian and on National Public Radio. Popkin received a B.A. from Northwestern University and a Masters of Studies in Law from the Yale Law School. Today, Popkin runs the Seven Oaks Media Group, a Washington-based communications firm. It provides strategic communications, crisis management, media placement and media training to corporations and institutions nationwide.
 STEPHEN M. KOHN – Executive Director, National Whistleblowers Center
Stephen M. Kohn is the Executive Director of the National Whistleblower
Center and the former Director of Corporate Litigation for the
Government Accountability Project. Mr. Kohn is one of the nation’s
leading advocates for corporate and government whistleblowers. His
record of winning whistleblower cases, at trial and on appeal, dates
back to 1984. Many of his court victories have become landmark
precedents in modern workplace law, establishing the employee’s right
to free speech under the First Amendment. A respected scholar as well
as a litigator, he has testified in Congress on behalf of
whistleblowers and worked with the Senate Judiciary staff to draft
corporate whistleblower protections under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Mr.
Kohn’s clients have appeared on numerous major news program, including 60 Minutes, Larry King Live, Prime Time Live, and network Nightly News
programming. He currently is co-counsel for UBS tax whistleblower
Bradley Birkenfeld. In addition he authored the first-ever book on
whistleblower law. Since then, Mr. Kohn has written five additional
publications on whistleblowing, including Whistleblower Law: A Guide to Legal Protections for Corporate Employees (Praeger, 2004).
*Conference faculty subject to change
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