Panel Event: The Future of Press Freedom
4 December
4pm UK Time

Across the world, there are threats to press freedom, including restrictive legislation, the development of AI, financial constraints, erosion of public trust and populist governments attempting to silence media outlets. Journalism has had to adapt to these challenges to try and find a way to survive. In the United States, the protection from the First Amendment has been challenged and, as our speakers state, ‘The American press is facing a perilous moment’.

In this panel event organised by the Centre for Freedom of the Media, our speakers discuss the current state of press freedom in the US, highlighting the evolving threats to the function of a press in a democratic society and what this means for the First Amendment protection. This panel event focuses on the recently edited volume by RonNell Andersen Jones and Sonja R. West: ‘The Future of Press Freedom: Democracy, Law, and the News in Changing Time’. We will examine the threats the press are facing and also address questions of how the press can continue to function in these challenging times that they are facing. 

Panellists

Professor RonNell Andersen Jones is the Teitelbaum Chair and a University Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law. She is an Affiliated Fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project.

A former newspaper reporter and editor, Professor Andersen Jones is a First Amendment scholar who teaches, researches, and writes on legal issues affecting the press. Her scholarship addresses issues of press freedom and its role in a healthy democracy. She is a widely cited national expert on defamation, reporter’s privilege, and newsgathering rights. Her scholarly work has appeared in numerous books and journals, including Northwestern Law Review, Michigan Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, and the Harvard Law Review Forum. She is also a regular public commentator on press freedom issues. Her op-eds have been published in several major news outlets, including CNN and The New York Times, and her research has been quoted in The New Yorker, the Washington Post, The Guardian, and other national and international publications. In 2023-24, she was Senior Visiting Research Scholar at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. In 2025, she was a visiting scholar at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at Oxford University. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute.

Professor Andersen Jones clerked for the Honorable William A. Fletcher on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the United States Supreme Court. Prior to entering academia, she was an attorney in the Issues & Appeals section of Jones Day, where her work focused on Supreme Court litigation.

Sonja R. West is the Brumby Distinguished Professor in First Amendment Law at the University of Georgia School of Law, a post shared with the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. 

Professor West’s scholarship examines the interpretation of the First Amendment’s Press Clause, legal protections for the press, and the role of the courts in protecting expressive freedoms. Her work has appeared in numerous top legal journals such as Harvard Law Review, California Law Review, UCLA Law Review, and Northwestern Law Review. In recognition of her scholarly impact, Professor West was twice awarded the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s Harry W. Stonecipher Award for Distinguished Research on Media Law and Policy and received the National Communication Association’s Franklyn S. Haiman Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Freedom of Expression.

A graduate of the University of Chicago School of Law, Professor West served as a law clerk for Judge Dorothy W. Nelson of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. She is a former reporter and spent several years practicing media and appellate law with the Los Angeles law firms Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.

Professor Christina Koningisor

Christina Koningisor is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of California School of Law, San Francisco, where she teaches courses on constitutional law, civil procedure, and information law.  Her scholarship focuses on First Amendment law, media law, and the law of information access and government transparency.  Her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in the Columbia Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and Yale Law Journal. She has previously served as a lawyer for the New York Times, a law clerk on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and a Fulbright fellow in Kuwait. She is a graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University.