335 PLAYING BY WHOSE RULES? MTSU LECTURE TACKLES GLOBAL ETHICS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 2, 2007
EDITORIAL CONTACT: Dr. Thomas Cooper, 615-904-8281 or twcooper@comcast.net

Attorney to Address International Media Behavior at April 10 Event

(MURFREESBORO)—With the Internet reducing the world to the size of your computer monitor and filling it with information both useful and potentially harmful, how can we determine who’s in charge of media? Are there any sort of global regulations, or is it every person for herself?
Tara Giunta, an international media compliance expert and Washington, D.C.-based partner in the corporate department of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP, will offer some guidelines in a special guest lecture Tuesday, April 10, at Middle Tennessee State University.
Giunta’s lecture, “Who Will Referee the Global Game: The Intersection of Culture, Gender, Law, and Ethics?”, is scheduled for 1 p.m. in Room 106 of the Paul W. Martin Sr. Honors Building on campus. Seating will be limited, so organizers are encouraging attendees to arrive early.
“Tara Giunta travels worldwide to determine how to translate between legal systems and ethical traditions in each culture and country,” said Dr. Thomas Cooper, ethicist-in-residence at MTSU. “Now that he world is reduced to sharing common communication technologies, and now that messages cross boundaries without ‘passports,’ how do we determine which laws and ethical mores apply to which messages?
“Tara is also a coordinator of the women’s executive retreat each year, so she provides an excellent understanding of the relationships among gender, leadership, culture, ethics and law.”
Giunta, who received her doctor of jurisprudence degree at Columbia School of Law, Catholic University, has conducted internal investigations in areas focusing on legal and ethical compliance. She’s spoken about media/telecom ethics at such events as the international Freedom of Information and Privacy Association Conference in Ireland and more broadly about ethical behavior from individual and corporate perspectives.
Giunta advises clients in the telecommunications and information technologies industries on compliance areas such as regulatory and licensing, foreign corrupt practices act, technology transfer and data protection. She represents companies before governmental agencies, including the International Telecommunication Union, the Federal Communications Commission or FCC, the U.S. Departments of Commerce and State, and Congress.
She is a member of the Federal Communications Bar Association, American Bar Association, District of Columbia Bar Association and the Women's Bar Association, Women in Technology, Women in Cable and Telecommunications, Northern Virginia Technology Council and High Tech Council of Maryland. Giunta also is a co-chair of the board of directors of Kidsave International, a nonprofit that works to eliminate institutionalization of orphaned children.
For more information about the lecture, e-mail Cooper at twcooper@comcast.net.
One of the largest programs in the nation, the MTSU College of Mass Communication offers degree concentrations in 14 major areas—ranging from journalism to digital media and media management to recording industry management—and is accredited by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

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NOTE: Media needing a color headshot of speaker Tara Giunta should contact the Office of News and Public Affairs via e-mail at gfann@mtsu.edu or by calling 615-898-5385. Thanks!