IJPM and Carnegie Legal Reporting Program host conversation, book signing with Pulitzer Prize winner Eric Lichtblau April 21

IJPM and Carnegie Legal Reporting Program host conversation, book signing with Pulitzer Prize winner Eric Lichtblau April 21 April 10, 2008Jaime Winne Alvarezjlwinne@syr.edu

The Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media at Syracuse University (IJPM) and the Carnegie Legal Reporting Program in SU’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications will host a conversation and book signing with Pulitzer Prize winner Eric Lichtblau on Monday, April 21, at 4 p.m. in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium in Newhouse 3. The event is free and open to the public. Parking is available in SU pay lots.

Lichtblau will discuss his newly published book, “Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice” (Pantheon, 2008), which includes new details on the pressure the Bush administration placed on The New York Times to prevent publication of Lichtblau and fellow Times journalist James Risen’s 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning revelations exposing secret surveillance programs in the war on terror. The SU Bookstore will have copies of his book available for purchase and signing at the event.

During the conversation, Lichtblau and SU professor Mark Obbie, director of the Carnegie Legal Reporting Program and IJPM associate director, will discuss what it is like to report on stories with intense political and legal pressure, some from the president himself, and what good the author thinks came from breaking these stories.

Lichtblau won a 2006 Pulitzer for national reporting for his coverage of domestic spying. He and Risen were cited by the Pulitzer jury “for their carefully sourced stories on secret domestic eavesdropping that stirred a national debate on the boundary line between fighting terrorism and protecting civil liberty.”

Lichtblau has covered the Department of Justice for the Washington bureau of The New York Times since 2002. He previously was a reporter for 15 years in the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times. His investigation of the domestic spying program also earned him the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. A native of the Syracuse area, Lichtblau graduated from Jamesville-DeWitt High School and Cornell University.

For more information on this event, contact Obbie at (315) 443-2848 or mjobbie@syr.edu.

Launched in September 2006, IJPM is an academic institute devoted to the interdisciplinary study of issues at the intersection of law, politics and the media. A collaborative effort of SU’s College of Law, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and Newhouse School, the institute sponsors lectures, conferences and symposia designed to foster discussion and debate among legal scholars, sitting judges and working journalists. For more information, visit http://jpm.syr.edu.

The Newhouse School launched the Carnegie Legal Reporting Program in 2006 to educate future journalists about covering the justice system. The program is supported by a grant from the Carnegie Journalism Initiative of the Carnegie Corp. of New York and collaborates frequently with IJPM on symposia and lectures. For more information, visit http://newhouse.syr.edu/legal.