Scrambling for Protection: The New Media and the First Amendment (Pitt Series in Policy and Institutional Studies) - Hardcover

Garry, Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0822937980 ISBN 13: 9780822937982

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994

Synopsis

In our age of media revolutions, Patrick M. Garry offers guidelines for constitutionally redefining the press, and maintains that the First Amendment press clause must broaden the scope of its freedoms to include the communication activities of a much larger public.

About this title

About the Author

Patrick M. Garry is associate professor of law at the University of South Dakota. He is the author of numerous books, including An Entrenched Legacy: How the New Deal Constitutional Revolution Continues to Shape the Role of the Supreme Court.

Reviews

Garry convincingly argues that technology and democracy can go hand-in-hand as he describes how such innovative communication tools as the Internet will reshape the way Americans think of the press and explains why the First Amendment should protect electronic and print media equally. With electronic bulletin boards, he says, "everyone can become a publisher, reporter, or editorialist, and can easily engage in public debate." Americans who partake in these open deliberations will look more favorably upon the constitutional press clause than their countrymen do today, when, Garry demonstrates, polls indicate most Americans think the clause only protects a few aloof journalists. Citing Supreme Court decisions and other historical precedents, Garry also maintains that the participation-oriented electronic press deserves to be protected from regulatory infringement; indeed, he delves back into the eighteenth century to argue that the press as it was when the Bill of Rights was written resembled electronic bulletin boards more than contemporary newspapers do. Garry does much to make it look as if FCC regulations are now just about as obsolete as typewriters. Aaron Cohen

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822937980
• ISBN 13: 9780822937982
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208