Law Commons^™

White Women In Peril On Broadcast And Cable Television News, Prof. Leonard M. Baynes

Prof. Leonard M. Baynes

Abstract White Women in Peril on Broadcast and Cable Television News By Leonard M. Baynes It has been approximately forty years since the U.S. Supreme Court found the Fairness Doctrine constitutional and approximately twenty years since the Federal Communications Commission (the “FCC”) eliminated it. The Fairness Doctrine provided that the broadcasters were required to air important issues and to make sure that the other side of the issue was also covered. In 1969 in Red Lion, the U.S. States Supreme Court found the Fairness Doctrine constitutional under the First Amendment. In the late 1980s, the FCC decided that because of …

Public Awareness Of Human Rights: Distortions In The Mass Media, Eric Heinze, Rosa Freedman

Prof. Eric Heinze, Queen Mary University of London

This article examines distortions of human rights reporting in the mass media. We examine human rights coverage in four of the most influential newspapers, two from the US and two from the UK. The US papers are The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The British papers are The Financial Times and The Guardian.

Most current scholarship on international human rights draws its information from specialized sources, such as the published reports of intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations. Wholly absent has been any systematic study of the mass media. To date, no one has examined the dominant media agencies, …

The Terrorist Is A Star!: Regulating Media Coverage Of Publicity-Seeking Crimes, Michelle W. Ghetti

Michelle W. Ghetti

Publicity-seeking crimes, including terrorism, almost by definition depend on the media for their effectiveness. Violence or threats of violence have long been deemed “newsworthy” by the media and publicity-seeking criminals have put this fact to full use. By attacking highly visible targets in a dramatic manner, publicity-seeking criminals guarantee themselves saturation news coverage. They make a shocking appeal to traditional news values by making full use of the news industry’s attraction to the dramatic, conflict-laden, and potentially tragic event. The media furthers the criminals’ objectives by publicizing an incident that was staged for the very purpose of obtaining media coverage. …

Ebay And The Blackberry®: A Media Coverage Case Study, Lisa A. Dolak, Blaine T. Bettinger

Lisa A Dolak

Patent owners, potential infringers, and the courts will continue to work through the implications of the Supreme Court’s 2006 decision in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. for some time. We look back, however, at media coverage relating to injunctions, “trolls,” and the U.S. patent system generally, in the months preceding the Court’s decision. We show that although eBay featured prominently in news and editorial coverage while it was pending at the Court, it could not compete in the media with another patent case pending at the same time: the case that threatened to darken the Blackberry®. Further, we note that …

The United States Patent System In The Media Mirror, Lisa A. Dolak, Blaine T. Bettinger

Lisa A Dolak

The last several years have witnessed a flurry of transformative patent reform activity. The Supreme Court has issued key rulings affecting the availability of injunctive and declaratory relief, revised the law of obviousness, and limited the extraterritorial reach of the patent act. Now Congress stands poised to ratify the most significant and far-reaching overhaul of the patent system in at least 45 years.

In this study, we analyzed major newspaper coverage of the patent system from January 1, 2005 through June 30, 2007 to systematically assess how the press portrayed the U.S. patent system. Our examination revealed a negative overall …

Basque In The Foral Community Of Navarre (Cfn), Xabier Irujo, Iñigo Urrutia

Iñigo URRUTIA

The status of the Basque language in Navarre is characterized by the enforcement of a system of linguistic zones that modulates citizens’ linguistic rights depending on where geographically they wish to exercise such rights. In this chapter, the authors describe the legal situation of the Basque language and analyze the development of the linguistic policy in Navarre over the last few years, characterized as it is by its progressively restricted treatment with respect to its own language, which has brought about rebukes from European instances.

A Libel Law Analysis Of Media Abuses In Reporting On The Duke Lacrosse Fabricated Rape Charges, David A. Elder

David A. Elder

No abstract provided.

Demarcating The Right To Gather News: A Sequential Interpretation Of The First Amendment, Erik Ugland

Erik Ugland

The recent spate of cases in which reporters have been subpoenaed, fined, jailed, or otherwise disciplined has laid bare the divisions among the courts over the existence and scope of the “reporter’s privilege.” The cases have also exposed the doctrinal, historical, and theoretical infirmities of the broader legal framework that governs newsgathering. Resolving these conflicts has grown more urgent with the democratization of media and the emergence of bloggers and other news providers who have challenged traditional conceptions of “journalists” and “the press.” To settle these controversies, this Article moves past the courts’ desultory analyses, focuses on core principles, and …