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Faculty member poses outdoors.

Patrick File

Graduate Director, Associate Professor of Media Law He, him

Summary

Patrick File’s research, public engagement, and teaching focus on helping us better understand how we define and regulate journalism at the intersection of law, technology, and professional practices. In the classroom, Patrick strives to help his students develop a critical curiosity about the evolving and dynamic legal, social, and historical background of today’s media environment.

Patrick's research in media law and history is published in journals like Communication Law & Policy, American Journalism, and the Journal of Media Law and Ethics. His book, published in January 2019 by the University of Massachusetts Press, is titled “Bad News Travels Fast: The Telegraph, Libel, and Press Freedom in the Progressive Era.”

Prior to his academic career, Patrick won national awards as a student journalist, worked for his hometown newspaper in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, and reported for publications in Iowa and upstate New York. He interned with the Student Press Law Center, in Washington D.C., and spent two years in South Korea as an ESL instructor. 

Courses taught

  • JOUR 401/601: The First Amendment and Society
  • JOUR 409/609: How to Use Public Records Laws for Accountability Reporting
  • JOUR 720: The Future of Media (Graduate Seminar)

Recent work

  • File, P. C. (Under Review). “Pictures and Press Freedom: How the News Industry Legalized Photographic Copyright Infringement, 1890-1910.”
  • File, P. C. (Under Review). “Picturing Privacy: Journalism’s Strategic Legal Discourse about Photography, 1890-1920.”
  • Pason, A. and File, P. C. (2021). “Protesting with guns and conflating the First and Second Amendments: The case of the Bundys.” First Amendment Studies 55(2).
  • File, P. C. (2019). Bad news travels fast: The telegraph, libel, and press freedom in the progressive age. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 
  • File, P. C. and Wigren, L. (2019). “SLAPP-ing back: Are government lawsuits against records requesters strategic lawsuits against public participation?” The Journal of Civic Information, 1(2), 1-16.
  • File, P. C. (2019). “Journalism, public, policy: An institutional view of the press’s legal discourse at the end of the nineteenth century.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 96(3), 830-847. 

Selected service

  • Reynolds School First Amendment Forum, annual event organizer
  • Kappa Tau Alpha journalism and mass communication honor society, Reynolds School chapter adviser
  • Journal of Civic Information, editorial board
  • Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), Law & Policy and History divisions
  • Communication Law & Policy, American Journalism, Journalism History, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Manuscript reviewer
  • Βι¶ΉΣ³»­ Open Government Coalition, founding president, board member, 2020-2024

Education

  • Ph.D., University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication
  • Master's Degree, University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication