How were the privacy problems of photography discussed in journalists' legal discourse between 1890 and 1920, and how did that discourse influence the emerging law of privacy within their professional field, and the role of photography in journalism? New technologies and practices were incorporated into a drastically changing journalism field at the turn of the twentieth century, sparking debate about the boundaries between new forms of reporting and personal rights to privacy and publicity. This article adds nuance to that history by using the conceptual framework of institutionalism to analyze trade press discourse along the new frontier of photographic illustration in the news. It argues that an institutional lens can help us understand how a discourse full of contradictions shored up the emerging model of commercial news media along with a sexist conception of the law of privacy. Seeing how the press balanced professional and economic demands for depictions of everyday life against these social concerns can clarify our picture of how the law of privacy and publicity has developed amid the media marketplace of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the legal discourse surrounding two armed anti-government confrontations – at Bunkerville, Nevada, in 2014, and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016 – to understand how the public makes sense of the relationship between First and Second Amendment rights. Using the concept of non-judicial precedents and drawing on legal scholarship following District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), we find that public meaning-making mirrors concerns raised by legal scholars about using First Amendment logics to understand Second Amendment rights, conflating the two in meaning and practice. Discourse surrounding these armed confrontations focused on whether guns were needed to protect speech rights, the rhetoric of patriotism, and the contested constitutional primacy of speech versus guns. We argue that this case study demonstrates the need for communication scholars to problematize the logics that intertwine the First and Second Amendments, especially as the nation confronts the normalization of the use of guns in political protest, conflict, and insurrection.

This study analyzes discourse about journalists’ privilege and libel law from 1894 to 1897 to explain how the press articulated the public policy rationale for legal protection at a pivotal moment in journalism history. To illuminate the relationship between emerging professional values and ideas about law, it applies the analytical lens of institutionalism. The study argues that the public policy rationale that appeared in the legal discourse surrounding these key legal issues was both a function of principled professional identity–building and a means of “institutional maintenance” intended to protect the press’s social status.

Open government advocates have expressed alarm at recent lawsuits that government agencies have filed against people requesting public records. Such suits bear a resemblance to “SLAPP” suits, the label given to “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” intended to harass active citizens out of the public sphere. This article considers whether these recent lawsuits could be considered SLAPP suits in their states, and examines whether 31 anti-SLAPP laws around the country might apply to these types of circumstances. We categorize the laws based on their various definitions for public participation, finding that many laws could cover public records requests, and argue that although not all anti-SLAPP laws will offer a defense when a government entity sues a records requester, courts do not look charitably on government plaintiffs in these circumstances.

Studies of journalism history and law have contributed to an increasingly complete picture of the profession during the late nineteenth century, but these parallel lines of scholarship should be drawn together to deepen an understanding of the social role and legal status of journalism at a pivotal time. One key question is how the press claimed to adopt professional values such as independence and impartiality at the same time that it actively advocated for legal change on its own behalf. This study explains how the press navigated this apparent contradiction while confronting the issue of libel law reform in trade press coverage between 1895 and 1899. The article applies two related theoretical frameworksinstitutionalism and the civil sphereto analyze the structural and discursive factors in the advocacy of three trade publications. It argues that institutionalism and the civil sphere are complementary because they are responsive to each other's shortcomings, and therefore could illuminate new pathways for scholars seeking to develop a more robust and holistic legal historical perspective for the field.

In the 1980s and 1990s, a handful of legal historians overturned the conventional scholarly wisdom that nothing much happened in the development of the First Amendment between 1800 and the US Supre...

At the turn of the twentieth century, many judges and juries considered libel law to be a robust check against a reckless and sensational press. So how did the newspaper industry convince seventeen state legislatures between 1885 and 1915 to pass laws easing liability for accidental libel? This article analyzes a debate surrounding libel law reform to tell the story of how retraction statutes were conceived in press association meetings, enacted in spite of lawyers' reservations, and challenged in state supreme courts during a pivotal era in the professionalization of journalism. It offers a better understanding of the power of the institutional press to influence Americans' conception of the purpose of press freedom and the role of journalism in democratic society, and a clearer picture of the beginnings of a more press friendly era in libel law, from the wire service defense to the actual malice standard.

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. August 2013. Major: Mass Communication. Advisors: Jane E. Kirtley and Susanna Blumenthal. 1 computer file (PDF); v, 198 pages, appendix p. 188-198.

Could news organizations face civil liability for voluntarily unmasking their anonymous online commenters? This article examines that nascent legal question through a discussion of contract law applied to a study of seven news Web sites' policies and practices. The study finds that although the news organizations claim that they zealously guard user privacy and will resist unmasking commenters under almost any circumstances, most of them have user agreements that would likely immunize them from civil liability for almost any reason. Are users getting a plain deal?