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Full-Text Articles in Law
Betraying Truth: Ethics Abuse In Middle East Reporting, Kenneth Lasson
Betraying Truth: Ethics Abuse In Middle East Reporting, Kenneth Lasson
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This article presents a brief overview of press freedom under the First Amendment, attempts to create a working definition of media “objectivity,” examines various codes of professional ethics for journalists, and analyzes specific cases in which such standards have allegedly been abused or abandoned in Middle East reporting.
A House Divided: Earl Caldwell, The New York Times, And The Quest For A Testimonial Privilege, Eric Easton
A House Divided: Earl Caldwell, The New York Times, And The Quest For A Testimonial Privilege, Eric Easton
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In the 1972 case of Branzburg v. Hayes, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment does not protect journalists who refuse to reveal their confidential sources or news gathering product in response to a federal grand jury subpoena. That decision has remained vital for 35 years and has reverberated through a number of recent high-profile cases. Despite some form of protection in nearly every state court, reporters haled before a federal judge may have no recourse save prison. Devastating as Branzburg has been for the so-called journalist's privilege, its negative impact has been far broader. Branzburg is one of …
The Colonel's Finest Campaign: Robert R. Mccormick And Near V. Minnesota, Eric Easton
The Colonel's Finest Campaign: Robert R. Mccormick And Near V. Minnesota, Eric Easton
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Today, media corporations and their professional and trade associations, along with organizations like Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the American Civil Liberties Union, carefully monitor litigation that implicates First Amendment values and decide whether, when, and how to intervene. It was not always so. Litigation by an institutional press to avoid or create doctrinal precedent under the First Amendment really began with the appointment of Col. Robert R. McCormick to head the ANPA's Committee on Freedom of the Press in the spring of 1928 and his involvement in Near v. Minnesota beginning that fall. Because of McCormick's …
Public Importance: Balancing Proprietary Rights And The Right To Know, Eric Easton
Public Importance: Balancing Proprietary Rights And The Right To Know, Eric Easton
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Articulating a coherent, all-encompassing First Amendment doctrine for freedom of speech and of the press has so far eluded every scholar who has tried, not least because of the variety of analytical approaches and potentially dispositive factors in Supreme Court jurisprudence. For example, the same regulation might be enforceable in one medium, but not another; in one forum, but not another. Enforceability may depend on the regulator's purpose and drafting skill, or not, depending in turn on whether the speech deserves full protection, some protection, or no protection at all. Sometimes enforceability depends on the speaker's intent, or knowledge, or …
Denial On The Campuses Demonstrably False Ideas Should Not Necessarily Be Protected By Bill Of Rights, Kenneth Lasson
Denial On The Campuses Demonstrably False Ideas Should Not Necessarily Be Protected By Bill Of Rights, Kenneth Lasson
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At Hopkins and elsewhere, the issue of granting historical revisionists equal access to curricula and classrooms is difficult enough, but it is complicated acutely when student editors become entangled in the black and nefarious thickets of Holocaust denial masquerading as "scholarship." The Johns Hopkins News-Letter is only the most recent university paper to succumb to the blandishments of a group calling itself the "Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust," which promulgates claims that a plan to systematically rid Germany or Europe of Jews never existed, that no gas chambers ever operated and that the number of Jewish victims has …
The “Midnight Assassination Law” And Minnesota’S Anti-Death Penalty Movement, John Bessler
The “Midnight Assassination Law” And Minnesota’S Anti-Death Penalty Movement, John Bessler
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This article traces the history of Minnesota's anti-death penalty movement and the 1889 Minnesota law - dubbed by contemporaries as the "midnight assassination law" - requiring private, nighttime executions. That law, authored by Minnesota legislator John Day Smith, restricted the number of execution spectators, prohibited newspapers from printing any execution details, and provided that only the fact of the execution could be lawfully printed. Also commonly referred to as the "John Day Smith law," this Minnesota statute was challenged as being unconstitutional by Minnesota newspapers after those newspapers printed details of a botched hanging and were charged with violating the …
Televised Executions And The Constitution: Recognizing A First Amendment Right Of Access To State Executions, John Bessler
Televised Executions And The Constitution: Recognizing A First Amendment Right Of Access To State Executions, John Bessler
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This article examines the history of public and private executions and the passage of private execution laws. It concludes that existing laws restricting media access to executions – and requiring private executions that exclude television cameras – are unconstitutional. The author examines existing statutory schemes which curtail media access and prohibit the filming of executions, discusses legal challenges to such laws, and explores freedom of the press jurisprudence. In particular, the article analyzes First Amendment case law and right-of-access cases. The author also discusses the Eighth Amendment's relationship to First Amendment case law in the area of media coverage of …