Media Law in the United States

Political Information and Opinion

Voters cannot make sound decisions on the issues before them without a free flow of information and opinion. Freedom of information is a fundamental aspect of American democracy and is vital to its proper working.

The American voter has a virtually limitless supply of information. Sources include newspapers, magazines, radio, television, books, pamphlets and mailed communications. The press of the United States provides daily coverage of all important local, state, national and international developments. Speeches and statements of government officials are published and broadcast, Senate and House debates are widely disseminated and the press conferences of major officials are covered in detail.

The mass media are committed — at least as an ideal — to impartial, unbiased reporting of the facts. To enable voters to make intelligent decisions, however, the media also analyze the meaning of developments and, in clearly identified columns or broadcasts, express editorial opinions supporting or opposing the decisions of public officials. The broad freedom of the American press has, at times, been criticized as weakening the power of the government to act for the public good.

But Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, had a ready reply to such criticism. In 1787 he declared: “The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Several of the largest American weekly magazines, such as Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report, are devoted exclusively to reporting and interpreting the news, and a number of radio stations similarly broadcast only news. Other publications and electronic media devote a substantial portion of their output to the news. Both the print and electronic media offer debates in public issues and interviews with persons who support or oppose specific actions. There are also special-interest publications devoted solely to the presentation of one or another side of various questions. During elections, the political parties make ample use of all the media to present their positions to the American people. (1)

Finding Actors and Actresses

You can look up the actors in a movie or to get a review of an actor’s or actress’ career using the All Movie Guide (free), the Baseline database on Lexis (ENTERT;TITLES) orMagill’s Survey of Cinema, which is available through Westlaw (MAGILLS). Or just put the actor’s or actress’ name into a good search engine and see what comes up.

To find out who represents a movie actor or actress, call the Screen Actor’s Guild’s “Representation Line” (323-549-6737 or 323-954-1600). They’ll give you the agent’s name and phone number. Alternatively, you can can look up this information in theAcademy Players Directory. Subscribers can search an online version of the Directory (www.acadpd.org/index.html).

Movies

To look up a plot summary, the date, the leading actors and possibly the historical context of relatively popular movies, use the All Movie Guide and/or the Internet Movie Database.

The Baseline Released Films database on Lexis (BUSREF;FILMS) provides information on box office grosses for top films back to 1985; credits for U.S. feature films back to 1911; bios of movie industry personnel; estimates of the value of movies, studios, film libraries and film companies; star salaries; etc.

Reviews of current movies and available videos are posted on the All Movie Guide andRotten Tomatoes .

The trade newspapers for the movie industry are Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Both publications are available on Lexis (NEWS;DLYVTY and NEWS;THR, respectively).

Top Academy Awards winners are listed in The New York Public Library Desk Reference.

Ticket sale data is available from BOXOFFICE magazine and ERC BoxOffice (Exhibitor Relations Company, Inc.).

Music

The leading music reference book is the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 2d, which is available in music libraries and large public libraries. A fee-based online version is posted at www.grovemusic.com.

Music industry news is posted on MusicStation. The top selling songs/albums are posted by Billboard.

You can often find out who wrote a song, performed it, or published it, or which songs were written or performed by a particular songwriter or recording artist, by searching databases on the ASCAP, BMI and/or Sesac websites. These are companies that collect royalties for artists when songs are played on the radio or in clubs.SoundExchange collects royalties when songs are played on internet music streaming stations, cable TV music stations and satellite radio.

You can license the right to use songs through the Harry Fox Agnecy (“hfa”).

Well-considered album reviews are posted on the Internet for free by the AMG All-Music Guide. A wide array of tour schedules are posted on Pollstar and Cosmo.com.

Note: We linked the resources to archive.org in an effort to decrease the number of broken links cited.

Resources

Notes and References

“An outline of American government” (1980), by Richard C. Schroeder

Media Law