Private Actors, Public Rights: Surrogate Litigation and Press Rights in a Post-Newspaper Age
34 Pages Posted: 7 Jun 2011
Date Written: May 21, 2009
Abstract
By lavishing attention on the implications of diminished news-gathering for an informed society, and striking about for new business models, we have glossed over a more threatening dimension of the news-gathering crisis: the looming erosion of the legal landscape upon which newspapers and other media entities have relied to conduct effective news-gathering.
Those rights are gradually disappearing. The era in which a single industry could single-handedly shoulder the costs of litigation required to preserve and enforce necessary First Amendment and statutory entitlements is gone. Law school clinics are perfectly positioned to address the void in private actors' enforcement of crucial, publicly held press rights.
Keywords: media, first amendment, news-gathering, news, access, clinics, non-profit, media law, foia, citizen-journalism, journalism
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