On Tuesday evening, March 14, veteran legal counsel Frank LoMonte will present a Future of the First Amendment lecture at Augusta University’s Summerville Campus at 6 p.m.
Held in the Roscoe Williams Ballroom of the university’s Jaguar Student Activities Center, the lecture will be open and free to the public, and will feature a Q&A towards the end.
LoMonte, an attorney for Atlanta’s CNN, will focus on “lessons from the pandemic,” and how different technologies and current events will affect the First Amendment.
We’re at a really precarious time for America’s information safety net,” LoMonte said. “Local newspapers are closing or hollowing-out their staffs through layoffs. Government agencies are getting more and more secretive, putting up barriers to keep journalists from getting interviews with the officials who have first-hand expertise.”
Wanting to gain public interest, LoMonte also emphasized how freedom of speech affects everyone – not just reporters, and should be cared and protected by all.
“I want everyone to see the freedom of access to information as their own personal cause, not a cause that belongs to news reporters, because news reporters can’t win the battle against government secrecy alone,” he said.
In addition to working as a journalist for Augusta’s Morris Media, LoMonte has also received his JD from the University of Georgia Law School, as well as an undergraduate degree from Georgia State University.
However, before he was a part of CNN, LoMonte also served as an executive director of the Student Press Law Center from 2008 until 2017, and was the director of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida.
Dr. David Bulla, chair of the Communication Department of AU’s Pampling College, said LoMonte is a great public speaker with a wealth of experience in media law; he hopes audiences will glean important information about free speech, and how it affects society.
“Frank has been an advocate for the First Amendment for several decades,” Bulla said. “As executive director of the Student Press Law Center, he helped start the New Voices initiative, which has improved press from for student journalists at the high school level in a number of states,” he said. “As director of the Brechner Center at UF, he turned his attention to the free flow of information—something we take for granted but despite the overwhelming amount of data available today, powers that often block the public from vital information.”
Bulla said he especially hopes college students takeaway a deeper understanding of their part of protecting and advocating for their First Amendment rights.
“I think that college students need to realize two things; one, don’t take these protections of the First Amendment and the legal decisions that bully it for granted. Because a democracy can take them away just as easily as a monarchy, or a dictatorship or a totalitarian government,” he said. “Now Russia, with the war, you can’t even criticize the military, or the military strategies … so, we’re pretty lucky that we have this protection.”
The second thing Bulla hopes they gain from the lecture is knowledge of how to get legal and public information, and the right to pursue such documents for all citizens.
“The protection is in those first 45 words of the First Amendment, but words are not enough,” said Bulla. “Just by people like you who are practicing journalism, practicing law, practicing politics, practicing being a DJ, being an anchor on a TV show, being a movie star or even being a lyricist for a band are practicing action in an informal, but practical way.”
The Summerville Campus is located at 2500 Walton Way, Augusta, 30904.
For more information about the event, visit: https://calendar.augusta.edu/event/future-of-the-first-amendment-lecture-featuring-frank-lomonte-presented-by-pamplin-college-of-arts-humanities-and-social-sciences-and-augusta-university-libraries/
