Fake News Eats the World: Protecting Speech, Evaluating Truth & Validating Our Decisions

Stuart Karle is a partner and general counsel of North Base Media, a boutique firm that invests in media in emerging markets and technology that supports journalism. NBM has invested in journalism-focused companies in Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and South America. He was the Chief Operating Officer of Reuters News from 2011 through 2013, and for many years was the principal lawyer at Dow Jones & Company working on news-related issues for all Dow Jones publications, print and electronic and the general counsel of The Wall Street Journal. He is also an adjunct professor teaching media law at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 2009.

Thomas J. Cafferty, who leads the highly respected Media Law Team at Gibbons, has played a significant role in shaping New Jersey’s laws regarding government transparency and public access – those governing electronic devices in the courtroom and access to judicial and government records. He has extensive experience litigating and counseling on First Amendment and media issues and handles some of the most complex and significant matters relating to these issues in New Jersey.

Charles Glasser spent twelve years as the Global Media Counsel for Bloomberg News, where he was responsible for pre-publication review, ethics issues, and training more than 2,200 reporters in more than 120 bureaus around the world on legal issues and journalistic fundamentals, particularly focusing on investigative and business news. He also managed media litigation globally and is acknowledged as an expert in international media law. He is the author and editor of “The International Libel and Privacy Handbook” (Fourth Edition, 2016-17, Lexis/Nexis) and is a regular panelist and contributor for several media law and journalism organizations including The Media Law Resource Center, The Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Media Law Defence Institute (UK). He also writes for and appears regularly for Reuters, The Washington Examiner, Talking BizNews, i24 TV and others.

Prior to studying law, Mr. Glasser was a journalist from 1979 to 1992, covering spot news, combat correspondence and enterprise reporting for daily newspapers and wire services, filing stories from El Salvador, Cuba, Haiti, Miami, Nicaragua, Great Britain and India. He later studied law at the New York University School of Law, worked with U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan at NYU’s Brennan Center, and started his legal career at NBC News, working on Dateline and NBC Nightly News.

His personal interests include restoration of vintage Jaguar automobiles and he is an accomplished blues and jazz guitarist. He is also involved in The Prem Rawat Foundation’s “Food for People” program, a 501(c)3 charity that builds fresh-water wells and has established food centers across India and sub-Saharan Africa.

Aaron Sharockman is the executive director of PolitiFact. Aaron oversees PolitiFact’s administration, third-party partnerships and strategic planning. He also helps coordinate some of PolitiFact’s special coverage, including live fact-checking of political debates, the tracking of campaign of promises and PolitiFact’s fact-checking partnership with Facebook. Aaron has been with PolitiFact since 2010 and served most recently as the editor of PunditFact, a website dedicated to checking claims by pundits, columnists, bloggers and the hosts and guests of talk shows.

Aaron is a 2016-17 Reynolds Fellow at the University of Missouri and co-teaches a class on political fact-checking at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Aaron graduated from Indiana University.

Victoria "Tori" Smith Ekstrand teaches media law courses in the school. Before coming to Carolina, she was an associate professor in the Bowling Green State University Department of Journalism and Public Relations and an affiliate faculty member of BGSU’s American Cultural Studies department.

Ekstrand’s research explores conflicts between copyright law and the First Amendment, particularly as they arise in journalism and social media. Her work is often grounded in critical legal theory, in which she examines the impact of law and policy on culture and media production. In this vein, she has begun investigating online accessibility for the disabled as a First Amendment issue. She has also written about legal protections for anonymous speech online.

Ekstrand is an expert on the hot news doctrine, a part of unfair competition law that protects the facts of news for a short period. Her revised book on the subject, Hot News in the Age of Big Data: A Legal History of the Hot News Doctrine and Implications for the Digital Age (LFB Scholarly), looks at the history of the doctrine and its impact on protections for discrete bits of information in the age of Big Data. It will be published in 2016.

She has published articles in Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal and Communication Law & Policy. She has worked with the Ohio State Bar Association on the publication of their Media Law Handbook. In 2008, she was awarded BGSU’s Outstanding Young Scholar Award, and in 2009, she was named a Scholar in Residence at BGSU’s Institute for Culture & Society. She is currently serving as Communications Director for the UNC Center for Media Law & Policy.

Before teaching, Ekstrand worked for The Associated Press in their New York headquarters for nearly a decade. She served as AP’s director of Corporate Communications, responsible for marketing, public relations and events for the worldwide news agency.