Jay Bender has built a national reputation as a lawyer for newspapers and broadcasters, and is regarded as South Carolina’s foremost authority on the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act. Bender represents the South Carolina Press Association, the South Carolina Broadcasters Association, and many of the members of those associations. Since beginning his media law practice in 1975 Bender has appeared in a multitude of trial and appellate courts, both federal and state, to advocate press-related cases. As a lobbyist for the South Carolina Press Association, Bender was instrumental in the adoption of amendments to strengthen the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act and the adoption of a reporter’s shield law. Bender has also published two books on South Carolina media law.
Bender holds the Reid H. Montgomery Freedom of Information Chair at the University of South Carolina where he is a visiting professor in the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies and a lecturer in the School of Law. Bender teaches courses in the law and ethics of mass communication in both schools and a course on constitutional limitations on commercial speech regulation in the law school. Bender’s students include undergraduates, law students and doctoral candidates.
In addition to his media law practice and his teaching Bender is a frequent speaker to press groups, lawyer organizations, judges and academic assemblies on access to courts, public records and meetings, and free speech issues. Bender is quoted regularly by reporters commenting on free speech and access controversies ranging from a police department’s refusal to provide a crime report to the arrest of protesters on the state capitol grounds.
Bender has prepared summaries of South Carolina media-related law for the Reporters Committee on Freedom of the Press and the Libel Defense Resource Center. He has also written on media law issues for the South Carolina Bar magazine, his most recent publication being “An Outbreak of Prior Restraint in the Palmetto State” in the March 2012 issue of South Carolina Lawyer. Bender’s provocative speech on free speech at the inaugural Columbia TEDx talks received a standing ovation.
Between 1975 and 2006 Bender was an attorney for the Catawba Indian Nation and participated in litigation and negotiations leading to the settlement of a land claim that arose in 1840.
Away from his professional career Bender has been active in community service having been a “radio reader” on the South Carolina Radio Network for the Blind for 30 years and a frequent platelet donor for the Red Cross. In 2010 Bender received an award for service to journalism and the community from the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications, and previously was honored as an outstanding alumnus of that school.
Bender has been a vintage motorcycle racer (a reference to both the rider and his mount), a whitewater kayaker, marathoner and mountain climber. Bender has ridden a motorcycle from Key West, Florida to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska and later to the “Four Corners” of the United States: Key West, Florida, San Ysidro, California, Blaine, Washington, and Madawaska, Maine. Bender’s more sedate hobby is collecting pueblo and Catawba pottery.
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