LibGuides: Journalism (JOUR): Court Cases About Journalism

U.S. Supreme Court Decisions

Crown v. Zenger (1735) -- One of the earliest cases tried in the United States, back when we were still a British colony. It established the right of newspapers to criticize government officials.

Near v. Minnesota (1931) -- Here, the Supreme Court ruled that the government may not prevent the press from printing a story (also called "prior restraint").

New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) -- This decision involved Martin Luther King, Jr. and accusations of libel.

New York Times v. United States (1971) -- The case of the "Pentagon Papers," in which the New York Times published documents revealing that the U.S. government had lied to the American people about our actions during the Vietnam War.

Books About Court Cases Involving Journalism

First Amendment & Civil Liability by O'Neil, Robert.
Call Number: KF 4772 .O54 2001 Online
ISBN: 9780253108456
Publication Date: 2001
Until very recently, publishers and producers have assumed that, with a few exceptions like libel, freedom of expression was absolute and safe from civil liability in the form of damage awards. In the late 1990s, these complacent assumptions were sharply challenged. In this book, noted First Amendment scholar Robert M. O'Neil looks at seven areas where free expression is now at risk of incurring civil liability: libel and slander (including a separate analysis of libel on the Internet), privacy (paparazzi and others who intrude), defective or dangerous "products," incitement (the claim of a link between speech and criminal acts, as in the Natural Born Killers case), advertising, news-gathering (for example, the Food Lion/ABC Primetime Live case,) and threats and incitement on the Internet (as in the anti-abortion Nuremberg website case.) O'Neil's clear exposition and analysis illuminate the issues for a broad range of readers concerned about a host of new threats to, and the limits of, free expression.