Freedom of the Press: Views from the Front Line

OUR PANELISTS 

MODERATOR RICHARD TOFEL

Principal, Gallatin Advisory LLC

AB '79, JD/MPP '83

Substack; Website; LinkedIn; X

Dick Tofel was the founding general manager (and first employee) of ProPublica from 2007-2012, and its president from 2013 until September 2021. As president, he had responsibility for all of ProPublica’s non-journalism operations, including communications, legal, development, finance and budgeting, and human resources.

During the period of Tofel’s business leadership, ProPublica published stories that won seven Pulitzer Prizes, seven National Magazine Awards, five Peabody Awards, three Emmy Awards and eleven George Polk Awards, among other honors. Also during this time, ProPublica grew from an initial staff of just over 20 to more than 160, and raised more than $225 million from other than its founding funders.

Tofel is the author of the Second Rough Draft newsletter on Substack. He is also an Instructor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he led a faculty seminar on “The Pandemic, the Press, and Public Health” and teaches a course on “Engaging with the US Press.”

He serves on the board/advisory board of the Alliance for Trust in Media, the American Journalism Project, the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas, Austin, the Center for News, Technology & Innovation, The Dial, First Amendment Watch’s SLAPP Back Initiative, Frontline, Kubist, New York Focus, Outrider Foundation, Retro Report, the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Center for Media and Democracy in Israel. He also serves as a member of the Communications Coalition of the National Academy of Medicine Commission on Investment Imperatives for a Healthy Nation.

Tofel is a recipient (with Paul Steiger) of the 2021 Kiplinger Award for Contributions to Journalism from the National Press Foundation, and earlier received the 2020 Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service in Newsletter Journalism for the ProPublica Newsletter “Not Shutting Up,” and the 2019 Newmark Journalism Award from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.

He is the author of “Engaging with the Press: A Guide for Perplexed Readers and Sources” (2024) “Elements of Nonprofit News Management” (2022); “Not Shutting Up: A Year of Reflections on Journalism” (2020); “‘A Federal Offense of the Highest Order’: The True Story of How the Joint Chiefs Spied on Nixon, And How He Covered It Up” (2019); “Speaking Truth in Power: Lessons for Our Sorry Politics from Our Inspiring History” (2018); “Home Run Revolution: Babe Ruth in His Time, 1919-1920” (2015); “Non-Profit Journalism: Issues Around Impact” (2013); “Why American Newspapers Gave Away the Future” (2012); “Eight Weeks in Washington, 1861: Abraham Lincoln and the Hazards of Transition” (2011); “Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street Journal, and the Invention of Modern Journalism” (2009); “Sounding the Trumpet: The Making of John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address” (2005); “Vanishing Point: The Disappearance of Judge Crater, and the New York He Left Behind” (2004); and “A Legend in the Making: The New York Yankees in 1939” (2002).

Tofel is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School (masters in public policy).

BRUCE BROWN

President of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

MA H'92

Website

Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, joined the organization in 2012. Before that, he was a journalist and served as partner in the Washington office of Baker & Hostetler.

He is a former lecturer at the University of Virginia Law School, where he co-directed its First Amendment Clinic, and a former adjunct faculty member in Georgetown University’s master’s program in professional studies in journalism.

Brown has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, USA Today, and The National Law Journal, among other publications.

Prior to joining Baker & Hostetler, Brown worked as a federal court reporter for Legal Times and as a newsroom assistant to David Broder at The Washington Post.

Brown received a J.D. from Yale Law School, a master’s in English Literature from Harvard University, where he was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities, and a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Stanford University.

Admitted to practice in Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts.

FRANCIA GARCÍA HERNÁNDEZ

Neighborhood & Lead Immigration Reporter,

Block Club Chicago

Instagram; LinkedIn; X

Francia Garcia Hernandez is an award-winning journalist based in Chicago who hails from Mexico City, where she was born and raised. As a reporter for Block Club Chicago, she covers the city’s primarily Latino Mexican American neighborhoods of the southwest side. She is also Block Chicago’s lead immigration reporter and during Operation Midway Blitz became one of the primary reporters known to be in the crossfire of the administration’s assault on Chicago.

DAVID MCCRAW

Deputy General Counsel, New York Times

HLS '89

David McCraw serves as Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of The New York Times, where he is the paper’s lead newsroom lawyer. During his 24 years at The Times, he has advised journalists on libel, national security, access to courts, and press freedom issues, playing a central role in many of the newsroom's most consequential investigations. He is the author of Truth in Our Times: Inside the Fight for Press Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts, a first person account of the legal battles that helped shape The Times’s coverage of the changing political landscape.

David is one of the nation’s most prolific litigators of Freedom of Information Act cases, having been the lead attorney on dozens of federal lawsuits seeking information on everything from lethal drone strikes away from the field of battle to Jeffrey Epstein's final days in prison. In addition, David oversees international security for Times journalists working in high risk environments and has served as crisis response manager when journalists have been detained or kidnapped abroad. In 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalism presented him with the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award for his work on international press freedom.

David teaches press law at Harvard Law School. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Cornell University, and Albany Law School.