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Journalism dean addresses First Amendment in Snowden book

By Public Affairs

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In a new book, After Snowden: Privacy, Secrecy and Security in the Information Age, Edward Wasserman, dean of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, has written about the need for First Amendment protections for journalists and reporters’ obligations to their sources.

Edward Snowden is a former defense contractor who released confidential information from the U.S. National Security Agency about global surveillance by the government. Today he is living in asylum in Russia.

Edward Wasserman, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley.

Edward Wasserman, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism.

In his 11,000-word chapter, Wasserman, an expert on the ethics, evolution and ownership of the news media, laments the media’s chronic failure to demand First Amendment protections.

Among the other authors of chapters in the book are Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, an investigative reporting center in Washington, D.C.; Barry Siegel, a professor of English at UC Irvine and a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent for the Los Angeles Times; and Hodding Carter III, a professor of public policy and leadership at the University of North Carolina and a longtime, award-winning reporter who served as assistant secretary of state for public affairs in the administration of President Jimmy Carter.