COMMUNICATION MEDIA LAWS AND ETHICS

COMMUNICATION MEDIA LAWS AND ETHICS

Communication Media Laws and Ethics encompass all legal issues affecting the media and telecommunications industries. These issues include free speech issues, defamation, copyright, and censorship. There are additional privacy concerns, as well as whether or not content can be printed, aired over the radio, or published online.

Communication Media Laws and Ethics used to primarily affect journalists and publishers. However, since the introduction of the Internet and desktop publishing, ordinary people are just as likely to encounter legal issues.

IMPORTANT KEY TERMS TO KNOW ABOUT COMMUNICATION MEDIA LAWS AND ETHICS

•         Freedom of Expression - Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right includes the freedom to express oneself, as well as the freedom to receive and transmit information and ideas without interference from the government and without regard for national borders.
•          Media - All forms of communication, usually related to news platforms; the plural of medium, which is a single form of communication, such as print.
•          Copyright - The exclusive legal right to reproduce, distribute, perform, display, and create derivative works from one's own original work of authorship.
•          Censorship – Censorship occurs when some people succeed in imposing their own particular political or moral standards on others, they suppress "offensive" words, images, or ideas. Both the government and private pressure groups can engage in censorship.
•         Libel – A type of defamation that is expressed in print, writing, images, signs, effigies, or any other physical form of communication that harms a person's reputation, exposes a person to public hatred, scorn, or ridicule, or harms a person's business or profession.
•          Prior Restraint - Before speech is ever expressed, the government reviews and suppresses it; this is typically unconstitutional.
•          Telecommunication - Any type of wired or electronic communication, particularly a phone or Internet connection.
•          Obscenity – A offensive word or expression. Obscenity laws are concerned with prohibiting filthy, or unpleasant words or pictures.

DIFFERENT TESTS TO DETERMINE OBSCENITY

1.      1.  Hicklin Test or “Isolated Pages” Test (1868)

    Obscenity present “if the tendency is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are most open to such immoral influences and into whose hands it may fall.”.

This means the judges are allowed to remove suspect passages from contexts and observe in light of the effects they might have on the most susceptible individuals.

 This test is established by the English case Regina v. Hicklin.

2.      2.  Roth Test (1957)

    This test is based on the following rule: "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeal to prurient interests."

The Court held that such a definition of obscenity provided adequate fair warning and satisfies Due Process demands.

3.     3.  Memoirs v. Massachusetts (1966)

The dominant theme of the work as a whole must pique people's interests.

A court must determine that the content is clearly objectionable because it violates current community standards in sexual matters.

There must be no redeeming social value in the material.

4.     4. Miller Test

The average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.

The work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law.

The work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.