First Amendment Bubble: How Privacy and Paparazzi Threaten a Free Press

In determining the news that's fit to print, U.S. courts have traditionally declined to second-guess professional journalists. But in an age when news, entertainment, and new media outlets are constantly pushing the envelope of acceptable content, the consensus over press freedoms is eroding. The First Amendment Bubble examines how unbridled media are endangering the constitutional privileges journalists gained in the past century.

For decades, judges have generally affirmed that individual privacy takes a back seat to the public's right to know. But the growth of the Internet and the resulting market pressures on traditional journalism have made it ever harder to distinguish public from private, news from titillation, journalists from provocateurs. Is a television program that outs criminals or a website that posts salacious videos entitled to First Amendment protections based on newsworthiness? U.S. courts are increasingly inclined to answer no, demonstrating new resolve in protecting individuals from invasive media scrutiny and enforcing their own sense of the proper boundaries of news.

This judicial backlash now extends beyond ethically dubious purveyors of infotainment, to mainstream journalists, who are seeing their ability to investigate crime and corruption curtailed. Yet many--heedless of judicial demands for accountability--continue to push for ever broader constitutional privileges. In so doing, Amy Gajda warns, they may be creating a First Amendment bubble that will rupture in the courts, with disastrous consequences for conventional news.

Author: Amy Gajda
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 01/05/2015
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.40w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780674368323

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2014
Library Journal 12/01/2014 pg. 117
Chronicle of Higher Education 01/23/2015 pg. 14
Choice 06/01/2015

About the Author
Gajda, Amy: - Amy Gajda, a former journalist, is Associate Professor of Law at Tulane University.