Media Success In The Supreme Court

In the past 65 years, the United States Supreme Court has outlined, through its decisions, its conceptions of the roles and responsibilities of the U.S. media. Analyzing every Supreme Court media case from 1931 to 1996, this book explores the changes in how the Court has conceived of the media's freedom. Hindman focuses on the educational and political functions of the media, the ethical principles of truth telling, and the conflict between collectivist and individualist interpretations of the First Amendment. The author challenges accepted views in the field, arguing that despite the justices' rhetoric, the Court has treated media freedom as a social goal rather than a right.

A key intermediary between courts and the public are the journalists who monitor the actions of justices and report their decisions, pronouncements, and proclivities. Justices and Journalists: The Global Perspective is the first volume of its kind - a comparative analysis of the relationship between supreme courts and the press who cover them. Understanding this relationship is critical in a digital media age when government transparency is increasingly demanded by the public and judicial actions are the subject of press and public scrutiny. Richard Davis and David Taras take a comparative look at how justices in countries around the world relate to the media, the interactive points between the courts and the press, the roles of television and the digital media, and the future of the relationship.

The Court’s decisions are interpreted and disseminated via the media. During this process, the media paints an image of the Court and its business. Like any artist, the media has license regarding what to cover and the amount of attention devoted to any aspect of the Court and its business. Some cases receive tremendous attention, while others languish on the back pages or are ignored. These selection effects create a skewed picture of the Court and its work, and might affect public attitudes toward the Court. Indeed, studies of media coverage of other governmental institutions reveal that when, and how, their policy decisions are covered has implications for the public’s understanding of, compliance with, support for, and cynicism about the policy. This book uncovers and describes this coverage and compares it to the confirmation hearings, the Court’s actual work, even its members. Rorie Spill Solberg and Eric N. Waltenburg analyze media coverage of nominations and confirmation hearings, the justices’ "extra-curricular" activities and their retirements/deaths, and the Court’s opinions, and compare this coverage to analyses of confirmation transcripts and the Court’s full docket. Solberg and Waltenburg contend that media now cover the Court and its personnel more similarly to its coverage of other political institutions. Journalists still regurgitate a mythology supported by the justices, a "cult of the robe," wherein unbiased and apolitical judges mechanically base their decisions upon the law and the Constitution. Furthermore, they argue the media also focus on the "cult of personality," wherein the media emphasize certain attributes of the justices and their work to match the public’s preferences for subject matter and content. The media’s portrayal, then, may undercut the Court’s legitimacy and its reservoir of good will.

This book presents comprehensive summaries and clearly focused analyses of virtually all U.S. Supreme Court decisions on libel and privacy since 1964. The author goes beyond the obligatory outline and review of each case and presents the full arguments, often verbatim, of the justices. He presents each case in a broad based yet comprehensive summary allowing the reader to review and understand not just isolated and disjunctive points of law, but the case in its entirety. Covering such cases as the landmark Times v. Sullivan (1964) and the provocative and timely flag burning case of Texas v. Johnson (1989) this book is ideal for students of journalism, especially as a reference for courses in media law. Anyone interested in privacy and First Amendment issues will find The Supreme Court and the Mass Media a source of stimulating ideas. The case summaries are divided into six sections: historical background and legal context; immediate circumstances; narrative summary of the Court's opinion; ruling; narrative summary of concurring and dissenting opinions; significance of the case. The book places each case in its historical and legal context, often connecting particular issues to past and future decisions. More often than not the summaries of the decisions include the Court's own words allowing the reader an objective review.

The scope of this work is broad, including all free press and free speechcases from the early 19th century to the early 1980s. Summaries of approximately 300 US Supreme court decisions that bear upon the press, the Frist Amendment in particular, and the Constitution in general are included. Each entry includes the full name of the case, where the full decision may be found, a summary of the law established, summaries of both the majority opinion and the dissents, a list of prior decisions referred to in each case, and suggested further reading in scholarly as well as popular publications. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Justices and Journalists examines whether justices are becoming more publicity-conscious and why that might be happening. The book discusses the motives of justices 'going public' and details their recent increased number of television and print interviews and amount of press coverage of their speeches. The book describes the interactions justices have with the journalists who cover them. These interactions typically are not discussed publicly by justices or journalists. The book explains why justices care about press and public relations, how they employ external strategies to affect press portrayals of themselves and their institution, and how and why journalists participate in that interaction. Drawing on the papers of Supreme Court justices in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the book examines these interactions over the history of the Court. It includes a content analysis of print and broadcast media coverage of Supreme Court justices covering a 40-year period from 1968 to 2007.

There can be little doubt that the institutional press is an interest group to be reckoned with in the Supreme Court, its aversion to such a designation notwithstanding. Over the past century, and especially since 1964, the press has secured for itself the greatest legal protection available anywhere in the world. While some of that protection has come from Congress, by far the greatest share has come from the Supreme Court's expansive interpretation of the First Amendment's Press Clause. Although the role of the press in American politics has been studied extensively for nearly two centuries, the role of the press as a powerful interest group has yet to be examined in full. This quantitative study examines 100 U.S. Supreme Court decisions in which the mainstream media was a party litigant or amicus curiae. Among other findings, the study demonstrates that the press has been extremely successful in cases involving content regulation, but far less so in cases involving news gathering.