Freedom of the Press
- LAST REVIEWED: 23 February 2011
- LAST MODIFIED: 23 February 2011
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0076
- LAST REVIEWED: 23 February 2011
- LAST MODIFIED: 23 February 2011
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756841-0076
Introduction
Freedom of the press refers to the freedom to criticize government without suffering official interference or punishment, before or after publication. “Freedom of the press,” “freedom of speech,” and “freedom of expression” are terms often used together in the United States, with “the press” primarily connoting print and electronic media. This bibliography concentrates on freedom of the press as defined by some major American and English writers and in decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. Because of the advent of electronic media and of the internet and of other “new media” or “social media” during the 20th and early 21st centuries, the term “freedom of the press” is used to cover mediated communication in general. The clearest indicator of press freedom is that opponents of government or of government leaders, laws, or policies can publish effective criticisms without suffering government retaliation in the form of fines, imprisonment, or even death. That definition does not include communications that may break laws of general applicability, such as the law of fraud, nor violation of a contract. It also does not cover extralegal controls such a communicator’s sense of the community’s range of permissible expression, or public pressures (including mob action) against the press in times of crisis. The legal definition of “freedom of the press” in the United States begins with the forty-five words of the First Amendment to the Constitution, adopted 15 December 1791: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” The absolute words of prohibition against congressional statutes tampering with speech or press freedom were, however, overridden early in the nation’s history by Congress in 1798, just seven years after the adoption of the First Amendment. Congress then passed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which, among other things, made it a crime to criticize the federal government or government leaders. These short-lived enactments, which fueled bitter partisan controversy in the new nation, are discussed in the Historical Context section. Freedom of the press is not static: it rises in times of peace and diminishes in times of war or national crisis, when most needed by society.
Books of Search
Books of search are used to find legal materials. The general citing protocol is that it is bad form to quote from a legal encyclopedia as an authority. Books of search guide researchers into a subject area. One place to start is in a textbook on legal research. For example, Barkan, et al. 2009a and Barkan, et al. 2009b are textbooks offering overviews of legal materials, paper and electronic, with information on how to use them. Legal encyclopedias available in law school libraries are updated by the periodic insertion of “pocket parts” placed in the back cover of each volume. Legal encyclopedias available in law school or government libraries provide valuable summaries of topic areas, with citations for scholars to use as they begin to explore a subject. The leading encyclopedias are American jurisprudence 2d and Corpus juris secundum.
Barkan, Steven M., Roy M. Mersky, and Donald J. Dunn. 2009a. Fundamentals of legal research. 9th ed. New York: Foundation.
This book, long the standard reference on legal research, has been revised to cover methods ranging from traditional paper sources to use of the internet and other electronic resources such as WestLaw. It thoroughly covers the organization of state and federal court reports, statutes, and tax research, and also provides helpful approaches to administrative law and constitutional law. It contains an introduction to legal research in the United Kingdom.
Barkan, Steven M., Roy M. Mersky, and Donald J. Dunn. 2009b. Legal research illustrated. 9th ed. New York: Foundation.
This is an abridgement of the more extensive volume listed in this section. It does not have the original volume’s extensive list of legal abbreviations, nor does it contain information on legal research in US territories.
Corpus juris secundum. 1936–.
Conventionally abbreviated C.J.S. Terms itself “A contemporary statement of American law as derived from reported cases and legislation.” C.J.S. has more than four hundred broad topics.
West Group. 1962–. American jurisprudence 2d: A modern comparative text statement of American law, state and federal. St. Paul, MN: West Group.
A legal encyclopedia, conventionally abbreviated Am.Jur.2d, which provides information on legal topics, including discussions of authorities and controlling cases. Published by Lawyers Cooperative Publishing of Rochester, NY, until the mid-1990s.
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Article
- Accounting Communication
- Acculturation Processes and Communication
- Action Assembly Theory
- Action-Implicative Discourse Analysis
- Activist Media
- Adherence and Communication
- Adolescence and the Media
- Advertisements, Televised Political
- Advertising
- Advertising, Children and
- Advertising, International
- Advocacy Journalism
- Agenda Setting
- Annenberg, Walter H.
- Apologies and Accounts
- Applied Communication Research Methods
- Argumentation
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advertising
- Attitude-Behavior Consistency
- Audience Fragmentation
- Audience Studies
- Authoritarian Societies, Journalism in
- Bakhtin, Mikhail
- Bandwagon Effect
- Baudrillard, Jean
- Blockchain and Communication
- Blogs
- Bourdieu, Pierre
- Brand Equity
- British and Irish Magazine, History of the
- Broadcasting, Public Service
- Capture, Media
- Castells, Manuel
- Celebrity and Public Persona
- Censorship
- Civic Duty
- Civil Rights Movement and the Media, The
- CNN
- Co-Cultural Theory and Communication
- Codes and Cultural Discourse Analysis
- Cognitive Dissonance
- Collective Memory, Communication and
- Comedic News
- Communication Apprehension
- Communication Campaigns
- Communication, Definitions and Concepts of
- Communication History
- Communication Law
- Communication Management
- Communication Networks
- Communication, Philosophy of
- Community Attachment
- Community Journalism
- Community Structure Approach
- Computational Journalism
- Computer-Mediated Communication
- Content Analysis
- Corporate Social Responsibility and Communication
- Crisis Communication
- Critical and Cultural Studies
- Critical Race Theory and Communication
- Cross-tools and Cross-media Effects
- Cultivation
- Cultural and Creative Industries
- Cultural Imperialism Theories
- Cultural Mapping
- Cultural Persuadables
- Cultural Pluralism and Communication
- Cyberpolitics
- 3D Media
- Death, Dying, and Communication
- Debates, Televised
- Deliberation
- Developmental Communication
- Diffusion of Innovations
- Digital Divide
- Digital Gender Diversity
- Digital Intimacies
- Digital Literacy
- Diplomacy, Public
- Distributed Work, Comunication and
- Documentary and Communication
- E-democracy/E-participation
- E-Government
- Elaboration Likelihood Model
- Electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM)
- Embedded Coverage
- Entertainment
- Entertainment-Education
- Environmental Communication
- Ethnic Media
- Ethnography of Communication
- Experiments
- Families, Multicultural
- Family Communication
- Federal Communications Commission
- Feminist and Queer Game Studies
- Feminist Data Studies
- Feminist Journalism
- Feminist Theory
- Focus Groups
- Food Studies and Communication
- Freedom of the Press
- Friendships, Intercultural
- Gatekeeping
- Gender and the Media
- Global Englishes
- Global Media, History of
- Global Media Organizations
- Glocalization
- Goffman, Erving
- Habermas, Jürgen
- Habituation and Communication
- Health Communication
- Hegemony
- Hermeneutic Communication Studies
- Heuristics
- Homelessness and Communication
- Hook-Up and Dating Apps
- Hostile Media Effect
- Identification with Media Characters
- Identity, Cultural
- Image Repair Theory
- Implicit Measurement
- Impression Management
- Indexing
- Infographics
- Information and Communication Technology for Development
- Information Management
- Information Overload
- Information Processing
- Infotainment
- Innis, Harold
- Instructional Communication
- Integrated Marketing Communications
- Interactivity
- Intercultural Capital
- Intercultural Communication
- Intercultural Communication, Tourism and
- Intercultural Communication, Worldview in
- Intercultural Competence
- Intercultural Conflict Mediation
- Intercultural Dialogue
- Intercultural New Media
- Intergenerational Communication
- Intergroup Communication
- International Communications
- Interpersonal Communication
- Interpersonal LGBTQ Communication
- Interpretation/Reception
- Interpretive Communities
- Journalism
- Journalism, Accuracy in
- Journalism, Alternative
- Journalism and Trauma
- Journalism, Citizen
- Journalism, Citizen, History of
- Journalism Ethics
- Journalism, Interpretive
- Journalism, Peace
- Journalism, Tabloid
- Journalists, Violence against
- Knowledge Gap
- Language Ecology
- Lazarsfeld, Paul
- Leadership and Communication
- LGBTQ+ Family Communication
- LGBTQ+ People and Media Industries
- Mass Communication
- McLuhan, Marshall
- Media Activism
- Media Aesthetics
- Media and Time
- Media Bias
- Media Convergence
- Media Credibility
- Media Dependency
- Media Ecology
- Media Economics
- Media Economics, Theories of
- Media, Educational
- Media Effects
- Media Ethics
- Media Events
- Media Exposure Measurement
- Media, Gays and Lesbians in the
- Media Literacy
- Media Logic and Mediatization
- Media Management
- Media Policy and Governance
- Media Regulation
- Media, Social
- Media Sociology
- Media Streaming
- Media Systems Theory
- Merton, Robert K.
- Message Characteristics and Persuasion
- Misinformation and Political Communication
- Mobile Communication Studies
- Muckraking
- Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Approaches to
- Multinational Organizations, Communication and Culture in
- Murdoch, Rupert
- Narrative
- Narrative Engagement
- Narrative Persuasion
- Net Neutrality
- News, Fake
- News Framing
- News Media Coverage of Women
- NGOs, Communication and
- Online Campaigning
- Open Access
- Organizational Change and Organizational Change Communicat...
- Organizational Communication
- Organizational Communication, Aging and
- Parasocial Theory in Communication
- Participation, Civic/Political
- Participatory Action Research
- Patient-Provider Communication
- Peacebuilding and Communication
- Perceived Realism
- Personalized Communication
- Persuasion and Social Influence
- Persuasion, Resisting
- Photojournalism
- Political Advertising
- Political Communication, Normative Analysis of
- Political Economy
- Political Knowledge
- Political Marketing
- Political Scandals
- Political Socialization
- Polls, Opinion
- Priming
- Privacy
- Product Placement
- Propaganda
- Proxemics
- Public Interest Communication
- Public Opinion
- Public Relations
- Public Sphere
- Queer Intercultural Communication
- Queer Migration and Digital Media
- Race and Communication
- Racism and Communication
- Radio Studies
- Reality Television
- Reasoned Action Frameworks
- Religion and the Media
- Reporting, Investigative
- Rhetoric and Communication
- Rhetoric and Intercultural Communication
- Rhetoric and Social Movements
- Rhetoric, Religious
- Rhetoric, Visual
- Risk Communication
- Rumor and Communication
- Schramm, Wilbur
- Science Communication
- Scripps, E. W.
- Selective Exposure
- Semiotics
- Sense-Making/Sensemaking
- Sesame Street
- Sex in the Media
- Small-Group Communication
- Social Capital
- Social Change
- Social Cognition
- Social Construction
- Social Identity Theory and Communication
- Social Interaction
- Social Movements
- Social Network Analysis
- Social Protest
- Sports Communication
- Stereotypes
- Strategic Communication
- Superdiversity
- Surveillance and Communication
- Symbolic Interactionism in Communication
- Synchrony in Intercultural Communication
- Tabloidization
- Telecommunications History/Policy
- Television
- Television, Cable
- Textual Analysis and Communication
- Third Culture Kids
- Third-Person Effect
- Time Warner
- Transgender Media Studies
- Transmedia Storytelling
- Two-Step Flow
- UNESCO
- United Nations and Communication
- Urban Communication
- Uses and Gratifications
- Video
- Video Deficit
- Video Games and Communication
- Violence in the Media
- Virtual Reality and Communication
- Visual Communication
- Web 2.0
- Web3 and Communication
- Web Archiving
- Webcare
- Whistleblowing
- Whiteness Theory in Intercultural Communication
- WikiLeaks
- Youth and Media
- Zines and Communication