The Right to Know: A Guide to Public Access and Media Law is available now!

CFAC, in collaboration with the California Newspaper Publishers' Association, has publish a new The Right to Know: A Guide to Public Access and Media Law. The Guide replaces CFAC's Legal Notebook, last updated in 1999.

Authors for the new Guide to Public Access and Media Law are First Amendment specialists James Chadwick, a partner at the law firm of Sheppard Mullin, and Roger Myers, partner at Holme, Roberts & Owen. The handbook will offer comprehensive and up-to-date summary and analysis of the Brown Act, the Public Records Act and other California access laws, the federal FOIA, applicable First Amendment and state constitutional principles, as well as California's Shield Law and other legal protections for newsgathering, whether by reporters at daily newspapers or blogger-journalists.

The Guide to Public Access and Media Law will be updated regularly on CFAC's web site, where readers will also be able to find the full text of all court decisions, statutes or other authorities cited in the book. In addition, the Guide to Public Access and Media Law will be supplemented with video-podcasts, available on CFAC's web site, in which the book's authors and other experts will address key legal issues.

The price for the The Right to Know: A Guide to Public Access and Media Law will be $25 for CFAC members; $30 for nonmembers.