JMC 20001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Federal Election Commission, Seditious Libel, Entertainment Law
3 Dec 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Lecture #1: 12/3/2018
Media Law
Free Press v. Fair Trial
• O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson, Robert Blake, Martha Stewart public figures who were
charged with crimes
• First Amendment: freedom of the press
• Sixth Amendment: right to fair trial
Media and Law
• How free should our media be?
• Media law encompasses the areas of personal rights, intellectual property rights and news
gathering rights
• Seditious libel laws, laws in colonial America made it illegal to criticize the government
or its representatives
• Contempt. Willful disobedience of the court or legislative body
U.S. Legal System
• Constitutional Law: the Constitution – developed in the United States. Great Britain did
not have a written constitution, although much of the U.S. legal system was borrowed
from GB
• Each State in the U.S. has its own constitution
• Constitutions are written to allow flexibility as social conditions change
• Statutory Law: today, statues, adopted by legislative bodies, are the dominant form of
lawmaking
• Administrative Law: rules and regulations of government agencies:
o Federal communications
o Commission
o Federal trade commission
o Federal elections commission
• Common Law: referred to as “judge-made up law”
o Judges rulings become precedents for future cases
o Judge finds a method of news-gathering is illegal. Upheld on appeal, goes on
books as law
o Privacy laws created as a result of judges’ subjected views of individuals rights to
be left alone
Law and Press
Libel and Slander
• Libel: a published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation; a written
defamation.
• Slander: the action or crime of making a false spoken statement damaging to a person's
reputation.
• A publication or broadcast that injures someone’s reputation, lowers that person’s self-
esteem in the community
