MC 3080 Lecture : Media Law Notes 3 Fall 2013
Document Summary
No way to petition the crown or redress the govt. That was all considered seditious libel: telling the truth didn"t help, in fact it made it worse. Today, truth can act as a defense: 1735 ny, governor william cosby puppet of crown. Controlling all courts and making all decisions, also giving himself huge pay raises. Ppl of albany decided they"d do something about it, so they formed the. Weekly journal: got john peter zenger to print it and criticize cosby, accused of seditious libel. Z"s lawyer said z shouldn"t be convicted, because what z was printing was true. So z was found not guilty, even though the law wasn"t changed yet: but ppl heard about it through the colonies. The jury rose up against the law to find z not guilty: colonies really started talking about f. o. p. James madison and john adams: mad from virginia (friends with wash and jeff), adams from mass, dolly madison madison"s wife.
