The Aims of Public Scholarship in Media Law and Ethics

This essay urges scholars in media law and ethics to reevaluate the extent and utility of their public-scholar efforts and to consider ways that they can transfer research-based knowledge to public audiences while also playing a more deliberate role in holding media and government institutions accountable. It suggests that the devolution of standards in mass communication, the increasing encroachments on media autonomy, and the broader collapse of power into fewer hands make this a particularly urgent moment for scholars to reengage the public and to abandon their feckless neutrality on public issues. The overarching aim of public scholars ought to be to serve as bulwarks against the unrelenting and asocial exercise of institutional power, and this essay suggests that media law and ethics scholars, because of the normative emphasis within their fields, are uniquely situated to serve that goal

The Legitimacy and Moral Authority of the National News Council (USA)

As an institution designed to resolve disputes between the public and the American news media and to assess the ethical standards of the mainstream media, the National News Council (1973-84) was, at least in the USA, a ground-breaking institution. This study suggests, however, that the Council\u27s work was anything but revolutionary, and that it probably did more to entrench the received tenets of American journalism than to either validate or refashion them. By applying a conventional set of ethical standards in its resolution of disputes, by repeatedly emphasizing the First Amendment rights of the media respondents, by violating its by-laws and allowing the media members of the Council to dominate its membership, and by ruling in the vast majority of cases against the public complainants, the Council\u27s work provides grist for those who might question its legitimacy and its value as a model of authentic press-public collaboration

The Minnesota News Council: Principles, Precedent and Moral Authority

This study addresses the Minnesota News Council’s moral authority–that is, its ability to serve as a referent for the ethical or moral choices of others–and how its authority might be affected by perceptions of its legitimacy. After analyzing all of the Council’s 125 written determinations, we argue that the Council’s legitimacy and authority could be enlarged by clearer statements of ethical principles, explicit expressions of standards of conduct, and more consistent references to past determinations

The Fairness Doctrine Redux: Media Bias and the Rights of Broadcasters

Ugland, Erik. (2005). The Fairness Doctrine Redux: Media Bias and the Rights of Broadcasters. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/155930

Cable Television, New Technologies and the First Amendment After Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. F.C.C.

From the moment it emerged as an independently viable communications medium, the cable television industry has been forced to operate within the shadow of regulatory oversight. With passage of the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992,\u27 and judicial endorsement of much of that legislation in Turner BroadcastingSystem, Inc. v. F.C.C., cable\u27s future rests squarely in the hands of the federal government. Congress, with some help from the Supreme Court, has made it clear that any blueprints for the future of the nation\u27s communications infrastructure will have to pass through Washington. This article is divided into four parts. Part I explains the Turner decision and its major holdings. Part II looks at an important macro-level aspect of the decision-the Court\u27s search for a regulatory model for cable television. Parts III and IV focus more on the micro-level consequences of the Court\u27s decision

Who Is a Journalist and Why Does it Matter? Disentangling the Legal and Ethical Arguments

The contemporary debate about who is a journalist is occurring in two distinct domains: law and professional ethics. Although the debate in these domains is focused on separate problems, participants treat the central question as essentially the same. This article suggests that the debates in law and professional ethics have to be resolved independently and that debate within those domains needs to be more nuanced. In law, it must vary depending on whether the context involves constitutional law, statutory law, or the distribution of informal privileges by government officials. In professional ethics, the debate should not be oriented around a single definitional threshold but should identify tiers that take account of different communicators’ unique goals, tactics, and values

Newspaper Theft, Self-Preservation and the Dimensions of Censorship

One of the most common yet understudied means of suppressing free expression on college and university campuses is the theft of freely-distributed student publications, particularly newspapers. This study examines news accounts of nearly 300 newspaper theft incidents at colleges and universities between 1995 and 2008 in order to identify the manifestations and consequences of this peculiar form of censorship, and to augment existing research on censorship and tolerance by looking, not at what people say about free expression, but at what they do when they have the power of censorship in their own hands. Among the key findings is that men commit nearly 70% of newspaper thefts, which is inconsistent with much of the existing research on censorship and gender, and that those who censor college newspapers are far more concerned with their own self-preservation than with shaping public dialog on controversial social or political issues

Demarcating the Right to Gather News: A Sequential Interpretation of the First Amendment

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 law of newsgathering, which encompasses not only source relationships, but also rights of access to places and records, protections against civil and criminal liability for torts and crimes committed in the pursuit of news, and protections against government searches of newsrooms and phone records, among other things. 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 seeks to move past the courts’ desultory analyses, focus on core principles, and situate those assessments in the context of a particular approach to constitutional interpretation. This Article proposes a “sequential” interpretation of the First Amendment—an approach that assesses, in turn, the text of the Amendment, its history, its place in the broader constitutional structure, and its contemporary meaning in light of substantial social change. This approach draws upon conventional interpretive frameworks to show that there is abundant constitutional support to recognize most aspects of the right to gather news, including the reporter’s privilege, and that doing so does not require any interpretive contortions. However, recognizing some newsgathering rights depends on a more egalitarian definition of “journalist”—one that emphasizes the function served by newsgatherers, and not their social or professional status or credentials. And although there is a historical and constitutional foundation for many newsgathering protections, some access claims and liability defenses—particularly those that are dependent on an affirmative-rights construction of the First Amendment—are not constitutionally cognizable, despite their appeal as matters of policy