Legal eagle Eve Burton, known for her First Amendment defense of journalists, was honored on Tuesday with a Freedom of the Press Award.
Burton, who is the top legal counsel at Hearst, called on Silicon Valley tech firms to work closely with their more seasoned East Coast lawyers to protect the First Amendment, writes The Post’s Keith J. Kelly.
“Our West Coast colleagues at Google, Microsoft and Apple as well as AOL are not immune from the difficulties in balancing civil liberties under the First Amendment from other pressures, as recent history has shown,” Burton said.
“Our technology colleagues did not grow up in the same puddles as we did,” said Burton in her keynote address. “We have learned what it means to be wet and sinking in that water. We won cases, developed the law.”
NBC News special correspondent Tom Brokaw received the Fred Graham Distinguished Service Award at the same gala at the Pierre Hotel.