Communications Law and Ethics

Judge Roy Moore, the embattled Republican nominee for Alabama’s open U.S. Senate seat, must surely long for the good ole days, says Vincent R. Johnson,  a law professor at St. Mary’s University, in a Nov. 19 op-ed for the San Antonio Express-News. 

Until 1964, the American legal principles governing libel and slander were completely out of sync with the free speech and free press guarantees of the First Amendment.

First, a defamatory statement at that time was presumed to be false. The plaintiff did not have to prove falsity. Second, it made no difference how much care the speaker exercised. If the statement was false, strict liability was imposed. Third, certain statements were presumed to cause harm. Even if a plaintiff presented no evidence of actual losses, a jury could award a large amount of damages based simply on the nastiness of the utterance and the extent of its circulation.

All that changed with the 1964 New York Times v Sullivan case, Johnson notes.

US & International Media Concentration

Depending on your point of view, the new broadcast station ownership rules issued  Nov. 16, 2017  by the Federal Communications Commission  will either increase market diversity by ridding us of antiquated rules,  or,  it will decrease diversity by helping large media companies grow even larger.

The new rules are part of a standard four-year review of broadcast ownership rules. They follow a pattern of deregulation since the Reagan era.      Continue reading →

It may be time to think about breaking up the high-tech monopolies that dominate American telecommunication, says  Jonathan Taplin,  director emeritus of USC’s  Annenberg Innovation Lab in a New York Times article April 23, 2017.  Taplin is the author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy.”

Taplin notes that Google has an 88 percent market share in search advertising, Facebook owns 77 percent of mobile social traffic and Amazon has a 74 percent share in the e-book market. “In classic economic terms, all three are monopolies,” Taplin says.

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From Salon magazine

Say what you will about American politics, right or left, conservative or liberal; if there is one bedrock value in American life, it is the absolute devotion to freedom of religion, speech, press, petition and assembly — that is, the First Amendment, and with it, the ability to openly follow one’s own moral compass and to discuss important issues of the day from one’s own perspective.

No candidate for office can threaten this bedrock value without incurring the wrath of an aroused electorate.  Yet Donald Trump and followers insist that the “evil” media must be muzzled for their convenience, and that the Constitution is no impediment.

In recent months, Trump has repeatedly demonized the media, to the pointwhere reporters covering his rallies have been beaten and abused; he has

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