Law Commons^™

You Said What? The Perils Of Content-Based Regulation Of Public Broadcast Underwriting Acknowledgments, Andrew D. Cotlar

Federal Communications Law Journal

Public broadcast stations in the United States are forbidden to air promotional announcements in exchange for payment from commercial entities. However, these stations must acknowledge any financial contribution from donors that support particular programs without promoting the goods and services offered by those donors. While the FCC has attempted to maintain the conceptual distinction between promotional and nonpromotional information, it has struggled to apply this distinction within the context of an evolution in advertising practice.

As a result, many noncommercial educational licensees find it difficult to apply the FCC's rules. A careful analysis of how the FCC underwriting determinations yields …

The Food And Drug Administration's Evolving Regulation Of Press Releases: Limits And Challenges, William W. Vodra, Nathan Cortez, David E. Korn

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has developed an informal framework for regulating press releases by drug and medical device companies. FDA asserted jurisdiction over press releases based on its authority over labeling and advertising, and over the past 20 years, the agency has both broadened and scaled back its claims to authority over press statements.

Despite a somewhat predictable framework for anticipating how FDA regulates press materials, the agency's approach appears to be in flux. FDA will not tolerate false or misleading statements in press materials, but there are legal and practical limits to its regulation in this area. …

Out Of Thin Air: Using First Amendment Public Forum Analysis To Redeem American Broadcasting Regulation, Anthony E. Varona

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

American television and radio broadcasters are uniquely privileged among Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensees. Exalted as public trustees by the 1934 Communications Act, broadcasters pay virtually nothing for the use of their channels of public radiofrequency spectrum, unlike many other FCC licensees who have paid billions of dollars for similar digital spectrum. Congress envisioned a social contract of sorts between broadcast licensees and the communities they served. In exchange for their free licenses, broadcast stations were charged with providing a platform for a free marketplace of ideas that would cultivate a democratically engaged and enlightened citizenry through the broadcasting of …

Market Triumphalism, Electoral Pathologies, And The Abiding Wisdom Of First Amendment Access Rights, Gregory P. Magarian

Scholarship@WashULaw

Forty years ago, Professor Jerome Barron made the classic case that the First Amendment requires not merely protection of speech against government interference but provision of access to the means of mass communication. The Supreme Court in the ensuing decades has largely rejected Barron's approach. In this article, Professor Magarian defends Barron's case for access rights against the two theoretical critiques that have underwritten its doctrinal rejection. The libertarian critique attacks the normative underpinnings of access rights, maintaining that the First Amendment insulates market-driven distributions of expressive opportunities. Professor Magarian demonstrates that politically progressive and conservative libertarian critics of access …