James McLaughlin

Deputy General Counsel

The Washington Post

James McLaughlin is deputy general counsel of The Washington Post, where he is principally responsible for newsroom-related legal issues and litigation, including libel, privacy, the First Amendment, subpoenas, FOIA, access to judicial proceedings, and intellectual property. Since 2015, he also oversees the Post’s participation in legislative and lobbying activities as its director of government affairs. Before joining the Post in 2006, he was an associate at Covington & Burling (1999-2003) and Zuckerman Spaeder (2004-06), and the McCormick Tribune Legal Fellow at The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (2003-04). He is a graduate of Amherst College and Yale Law School (Senior Editor, The Yale Law Journal), and a former law clerk to the Honorable Anthony J. Scirica of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Participating Sessions

Rights from the Ground Up

The rights journalists exercise — to film in public, to request government records, to refuse to identify sources — belong to every citizen. But unlike professional journalists, whose rights are defended by the in-house counsel, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and a network of other press freedom organizations, ordinary citizens face the consequences of exercising those rights largely alone. As government conduct...