lifestyle

Eric Jackson is one of about 40 Panamanian journalists currently facing criminal defamation (calumnia e injuria) charges, and has been interrupting every other aspect of his life preparing to keep his undefeated won-lost record in such cases (2-0) intact. But then again, calumnia e injuria is actually two crimes and the truth is not a defense to "injuria" --- injuring somebody's reputation, even by publishing the truth.

Jackson has a double major BS in history and political science from Eastern Michigan University and a JD from Detroit College of Law. (Actually he has two JDs: a doctorate in jurisprudence and a juvenile delinquent record acquired as a teenager in the course of protests against the Vietnam War.) He has, since beginning with the "underground" press in the USA at age 17, and as a publicity director for political campaigns, a law review staff member, associate editor of an alternative monthly in Ann Arbor (Michigan), contributor to a number of various mainstream and non-corporate media and since 1994 as editor of The Panama News,  been practicing journalism in one way or another for 38 years. He practiced law in Michigan for 10 years.

Jackson will speak about Panama's evolving anti-press "gag" laws, past and present, and compare them to defamation laws in other places, the cultural context in which the Panamanian press operates and the current charges brought against him by one Mark Boswell alias Rex Freeman.