Biography
Jane E. Kirtley is the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. She is also Director of The Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law and is an affiliated faculty member at the University of Minnesota Law School.
Prof. Kirtley was a Fulbright Scholar teaching U.S. media law and media ethics at the University of Latvia’s Law Faculty in Riga during Spring 2016. She was a Pulitzer Prize juror in 2015, and served on the ABA’s Standing Committee on the Silver Gavel Awards for Media and the Arts from 2017 to 2020.
Prof. Kirtley has written friend of the court briefs in media law and Freedom of Information Act cases, as well as articles and chapters on media law and media ethics for scholarly journals and the popular and professional press. In 2010, her Media Law handbook was published by the U.S. Department of State and was translated into nine languages. She co-authored a textbook, Media Ethics Today; the second edition will be published in 2021.
Prior to coming to the University of Minnesota, Prof. Kirtley was Executive Director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press for 14 years. Before that, she was an attorney with Nixon, Hargrave, Devans and Doyle in Rochester, N.Y. and Washington, D.C. She is a member of the New York, District of Columbia, and Virginia bars. Prof. Kirtley also worked as a reporter for the Evansville (Indiana) Press and The Oak Ridger and Nashville Banner (Tennessee).
Prof. Kirtley’s J.D. is from Vanderbilt University Law School, where she was Executive Articles Editor of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law.