A study examined the coverage of the scientific aspects of the atomic bomb in four representative newspapers (New York "Times," New York "Herald Tribune," Chicago "Daily Tribune," and Boston "Daily Globe") and in 14 general mass circulation magazines in the time period immediately following the dropping of the bomb. Among the conclusions of the…

Elijah P. Lovejoy, generally regarded as America's first martyr to freedom of the press, was killed by a racist mob in Alton, Illinois, in November 1837, after a brief but tumultuous career as an crusading antislavery newspaper editor and preacher. Born into a stern Maine Protestant family, he migrated to St. Louis, became a minister, and began…

Although much is known about how governments and major media organizations stand on some world press problems, some important actors in the debate--small- and medium-size newspapers in the United States--have been ignored. The editors of these newspapers are gatekeepers who, like their counterparts on large elite newspapers, play a fundamental…

A study examined the news coverage given by the "Industrial Worker" to the San Diego free speech fight of 1912, the last of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union's free speech fights on the West Coast. The "Worker," a publication of the IWW, devoted columns of coverage to that conflict in the form of reports, letters,…

After a unique court decision forbidding prior restraint in public high school publications in three states, a study was devised based on the responses to individual questionnaires sent to principals, faculty advisers, and student editors in each of the schools in the judicial district involved in the decision. Respondents answered questions…

The purpose of this study was to determine the attitudes of teenagers toward the First Amendment, to compare the attitudes of Florida teenagers with those of non-Florida teenagers, and to compare the attitudes of journalism students with teenagers not in journalism classes. A total of 430 students from Florida high schools and 457 from high…

This curriculum unit for high school government or civic classes was developed as a requirement of a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship seminar in Indonesia. It deals with aspects of political control that the government exercises over citizen rights. The unit compares the situation in the United States, where the Bill of Rights guarantees the freedom of…

Section A of the Media and Law section of the proceedings contains the following nine papers: "RICO and the First Amendment: Racketeering Laws Threaten Free Expression" (Matthew D. Bunker and others); "Press Coverage of the Federal Appellate Courts: Technology and a Shared Notion of Newsworthiness" (Rebekah V. Bromley);…

This paper suggests that the upcoming transfer of Hong Kong from Great Britain to the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1997, offers a unique opportunity to observe how changing configurations in the political environment influence mass media. The article investigates how the Hong Kong press, which spans the entire left-center-right ideological…

The Portuguese press is now guaranteed free access to official sources of information, professional confidentiality, freedom of publication and of competition, and the independence of the professional journalist; yet its ability to influence public opinion is limited by a traditional expectation of governmental repression and by present financial…

While the government of South Africa has outwardly promoted democracy since 1983, it nonetheless has placed its press under tight constraint to discourage dissent concerning political issues and enhance the government's credibility. Not only are journalists within the country restricted, but foreign correspondents as well. Moreover, although there…

This bibliography lists and annotates almost 400 information reports, opinion papers, and summary papers dealing with freedom of information. Topics covered include the nature of press freedom and increased press efforts toward more open access to information; the press situation in many foreign countries, including France, Sweden, Communist…

Over the years the Supreme Court has given academic freedom a special First Amendment status. This study reviewed a selected group of recent cases at public universities, focusing particularly on several where rulings were based either on a professor's public comments or in-class verbiage, in an attempt to assess the current status of academic…

This volume is a reproduction of summaries by the American Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation (ANPAF) designed to put to the test of public response some of the various components which go into making a newspaper, including headline and type size, the use of captions, and story location. The main purpose is to supply data which editors…

The study was designed to investigate judicial decisions of state and federal courts concerning editorial freedom of the college and university student press to determine emerging legal rules, precedents, and trends in judicial decisions and to analyze the extent of editorial freedom and administrative control of the student press as perceived by…