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in this issue
10 Questions to a Media Lawyer: Gillian Phillips
Gillian Phillips is Director of Editorial Legal Services at Guardian News & Media, London. How’d you get into media law? What was your first job? By default. I went up to Cambridge on a minor history scholarship, but during my second year I started worrying about what I would do with a history degree, so…
Of Criminal Courts, Gas Station Law, and Pig Slop: A Senior Media Lawyer’s Advice to a Newbie
By James Stewart When Jake Wunsch of MLRC asked me to write this piece, my first reaction was: “What could be better? Write about yourself and give people advice whether they have asked for it or not!” It’s funny where life takes you. After four years at West Point and a four-year Army commitment (one…
Viral Like Me
By Lance Koonce I had heard this story before: the one where someone’s tweet goes viral and is rapidly embedded in media stories around the globe. In fact, it’s a story that had been at the center of a court case I’d been handling for the past few years. But this time, it was my…
TOPICS : Copyright
This Side of the Pond: UK Media Law Developments
Serious Harm Requirement; Interpreting Social Media Posts; Public Interest and More By David Hooper More sharp-eyed observers will recollect that this column is normally captioned “The Other Side of the Pond.” However, having this weekend attended the inaugural MLB fixture of the Red Sox v. The Yankees, I feel the column perhaps needs to be…
TOPICS : Defamation, Privacy
How Many Public Facts Does It Take to Create A Privacy Interest?
Massachusetts SJC Grapples with Privacy Interests in Public Data Compilations By Jonathan M. Albano The Boston Globe, like many press organizations, often uses birth and marriage records for news reporting purposes, including identifying trends, ensuring that the state is properly performing its data collection efforts, and confirming the identity of persons named in articles (there…
Los Angeles Times Wins Access to USC Abuse Settlement Docs
By Karl Olson The Los Angeles Times, which won a Pulitzer Prize this year for its reporting on a sexual abuse scandal at the University of Southern California, won an important court victory May 21 when a federal judge unsealed key documents revealing what USC officials knew about the practices of a former school gynecologist…
TOPICS : Access / FOIA
Website Accessibility: Legal Requirements and Best Practices for Ensuring Compliance
By Christine N. Walz Increased litigation against website operators under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) highlights the on-going need for media entities with an Internet presence to consider whether their websites are accessible to persons with disabilities, especially those with visual and hearing impairments. The ADA and, in many cases, similar state laws prohibit…
TOPICS : Digital Media
Inheritance Feud Leads to Troubling Ruling on Defamatory Meaning
Accusing Law Professor of Unintentional Falsehood Is Defamatory Per Se By Steven Mandell A statement made about a law professor in the midst of a heated inheritance dispute was defamatory per se and could not be innocently construed. Black v. Wrigley et al., Case No. 17-cv-101 (N.D. Ill.). The defense argued that in this context…
TOPICS : Defamatory Meaning
Colorado Adopts Anti-Slapp Statute
New Law Based on California’s Protective Statute By Steven D. Zansberg On July 1, 2019, Colorado became the thirtieth state (including the District of Columbia) to have an anti-SLAPP statute. On June 3, 2019, House Bill 19-1324 was signed into law by Colorado’s Governor Jared Polis. The bill, modeled after (copied almost verbatim from) California’s…
TOPICS : Anti-SLAPP
New York Right of Privacy/Publicity Legislation Dead for 2019
By Ben Sheffner A sweeping bill that would have re-written New York’s venerable right of privacy/publicity statute, N.Y. Civil Rights Law §§50 & 51, failed to achieve passage in the final hours of the 2019 state legislative session, cheering the broad coalition of entertainment companies, news organizations, and First Amendment advocates that had opposed this…
TOPICS : Right of Publicity
Supreme Court Holds Public Access Channel Operator Not a State Actor
Decision Gives Comfort to Online Platforms By Jeff Hermes In June, the U.S. Supreme Court released its opinion in Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, No. 17-1702 (June 17, 2019) (“MCAC v. Halleck”). The case involved a First Amendment claim brought by a pair of filmmakers whose access to a New York City public access…
Roundtable: The Prosecution of Julian Assange
In the May issue of the MediaLawLetter, Executive Director George Freeman wrote about the Assange case and opined that “it’s a one-off, which hopefully will not change the calculus of prosecutorial discretion which this or future administrations will bring to the issue.” We invited some other experts to weigh in on the case and its…
TOPICS : Newsgathering
Guest Column: Mapping Out a Free Speech Strategy
By Jeff Hermes George has graciously ceded his usual space in this month’s issue to allow me to introduce to you a manuscript on which I’ve been working for quite a few years now. Entitled Free Speech from First Principles, the text collects my thoughts on how the particular reasons that a society values freedom…
MediaLawLetter June 2019
Download Publication MLRC Guest Column: Mapping Out a Free Speech StrategyJeff Hermes Of Criminal Courts, Gas Station Law, and Pig Slop: A Senior Media Lawyer’s Advice to a NewbieJames Stewart 10 Questions for Gillian Phillips of the Guardian NEWSGATHERING Roundtable on the Implications of the Espionage Act Prosecution of Julian AssangeSusan Buckley, James Goodale, Lynn…