Books
Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy, The Right to Privacy (New York: Vintage, 1997) The authors - one of whom is the daughter of President John F. Kennedy - survey the major privacy court decisions, including those in which plaintiffs claimed that their privacy was invaded by government, by business, and by other people, as well as by the news media.
Mike Godwin, Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003) Godwin is a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization concerned with civil liberties on the Internet. He outlines the cases that show how contemporary laws have to adapt to the Internet, which he considers a hybrid of print, broadcast, and interpersonal media.
Anthony Lewis, Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment (New York: Vintage, 1992) Lewis, a columnist for The New York Times, bases this landmark study on interviews, scholarly research, and the private papers of Justice William J. Brennan Jr. What results is an engrossing story about the New York Times v. Sullivan case and a primer on the history of First Amendment law.
Don R. Pember and Clay Calvert, Mass Media Law, 16th ed. (paperback) (New York: McGraw Hill, 2008) a comprehensive analysis of media law that is updated annually.
Films , Videos, and DVDs
Absence of Malice (1981 rated PG-13) Stars Sally Field as a reporter who libels a shady businessman (Paul Newman) and then finds she may have brought about the downfall of an innocent man.
The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996, rated R) Woody Harrelson stars as the notorious publisher of Hustler magazine, with Courtney Love as his wife. Flynt constantly fought censorship of his magazine on First Amendment grounds.
Sneakers (1992, rated PG-13) Robert Redford as a computer hacker blackmailed into stealing a universal decoder for encryption systems. An interesting look at 1992 era technology, it also captures the government's and the legal community's concerns about the security of computer systems.
