Law and Ethics for Today's Journalist A Concise Guide

Law and Ethics for Today's Journalist offers aspiring and working journalists the practical understanding of law and ethics they must have to succeed at their craft. Instead of covering every nuance of media law for diverse communications majors, Mathewson focuses exclusively on what's relevant for journalists. Even though media law and media ethics are closely linked together in daily journalistic practice, they are usually covered in separate volumes. Mathewson brings them together in a clear and colourful way that practicing journalists will find more useful. Everything a journalist needs to know about legal protections, limitations, and risks inherent in workaday reporting is illustrated with highlights from major court opinions.

Mathewson advises journalists who must often make ethical decisions on the spot with no time for the elaborate, multi-faceted analysis. The book assigns to journalists the hard decisions on ethical questions such as whether to go undercover or otherwise misrepresent themselves in order to get a big story. The ethics chapter precedes the law chapters because ethical standards should underlie a journalist's work at all times. There may be occasions when ethics and law are not parallel, thus calling for the journalist to make a personal judgment. Law and Ethics for Today's Journalist is user-friendly, written in clear, direct, understandable language on issues that really matter to a working journalist. Supplementary reading of the actual court cases is recommended and links to most cases are provided in the text. The text includes a fine (but purposely not exhaustive) bibliography listing important and useful legal cases, including instructive appellate and trial court opinions, state as well as federal.

To the Reader: An Introduction

1. Courts and the Legal SystemSources of American Law
State and Federal Courts
Types of Law
Civil Law and Criminal Law
Anatomy of a Lawsuit
Court Opinions

2. Ethics, Root and BranchOpportunities Forfeited
Success Under a Cloud
Classical Ethics
Professional Codes of Conduct
Concealment and Confidentiality
Conflict of Interest

3. Prior RestraintSeditious Libel
Declarations of Press Freedom
Press Freedom Sustained
Prior Restraint Isn't Totally Gone

4. LibelSeditious Libel and Civil Libel
New York Times v. Sullivan
Public Figures, Too
Private Plaintiffs
Actual Malice Proved
The Wall Street Journal in Error
Proof of Libel
Defenses to Libel
Product Disparagement
Internet Libel

5. Invasion of PrivacyAmerican Origins
Five Privacy Torts
Intrusion upon Seclusion
Disclosure of Embarrassing Private Facts

6. Less Common Invasion of Privacy TortsFalse Light
Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress
Appropriation
Defenses to Invasion of Privacy Claims
Libel Plus Invasion of Privacy

7. Fair Trial v. Free PressPrejudicial Pretrial Publicity
Gag Orders
Closed Courtrooms
Access to Court Documents
Cameras in Court
Crime Coverage

8. Anonymous Sources and the Journalist's PrivilegeFederal Law
State Law

9. CopyrightThe Copyright Act
Fair Use
Digital Millenium Copyright Act
On Using Fair Use

10. Access to Government Documents and MeetingsFederal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) of 1966
Open Meetings
Access to Prisons

11. Broadcast RegulationOwnership Rules
Content Regulation
Cable and Internet Regulation

12. Citizens United v. Federal Election CommissionOpening Wedge
Citizens United and Hillary
PACs
Super PACs
Hard Money and Soft Money
527s
"Social Welfare" Organizations
Follow the Money

13. The Ethical JournalistPromises, Promises
No Government Discrimination
Today's Environment

Joe Mathewson teaches courses in the ethics and law of journalism in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. As a former Supreme Court correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, he is author of The Supreme Court and the Press: The Indispensable Conflict (2011, Northwestern University Press). He’s a contributor to chicagohistoryjournal.com, having written pieces on Chicago-based Supreme Court cases involving prominent lawyers. In Chicago, Mathewson covered business for The Wall Street Journal, was a WBBM-TV reporter, and served as press secretary to Illinois Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie. He authored a book on Chicago politics, Up Against Daley (1974), as well as op-eds and Sunday magazine articles for the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times. He has been a Cook County commissioner, a director of several community banks, an officer of a minority-owned broker-dealer, and a securities arbitrator for the National Association of Securities Dealers. Mathewson has degrees from Dartmouth and the University of Chicago Law School, and did graduate work in European politics and economies at the Bologna (Italy) Center of John Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He has served ten years as a trustee of Dartmouth College.