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Content related to the Center for Media Law and Policy’s activities and people.

The James R. Cleary Prize for Student Media Law and Policy Research 2019 Competition

By on January 12, 2020 in Center for Media Law and Policy

The UNC Center for Media Law and Policy is now accepting submissions for the James R. Cleary Prize.  The annual award competition, which highlights the best student-authored scholarly articles on media law and policy related topics, honors the legacy of James R. Cleary, an attorney who practiced for 56 years in Huntsville, Ala.  He was particularly interested in the communications field and media law issues.  Cleary’s daughter, Johanna Cleary, is a 2004 Ph.D. graduate of the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

You can read about last year’s winners, Austin Vining, a joint JD/Ph.D. student at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and College of Journalism and Communications, and Alexandra Baruch Bachman, from the University of North Carolina School of Law, here.

The prize competition is open to all college and university students. Up to three winners will be selected, with a first prize of $1,000, a second prize of $500, and a third prize of $250. The prizes will be awarded to the authors of published papers that most creatively and convincingly propose solutions to significant problems in the field of media law and policy, including First Amendment speech and press issues. All methodologies are welcome.

The new deadline for submission is April 15, 2020.

Rules

  1. The author of the submitted publication must have been enrolled in a graduate or undergraduate degree-granting program in the United States at the time the article was accepted for publication. This includes, but is not limited to, students enrolled in M.A. and Ph.D. programs, law school (including J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. candidates), and other professional schools (including M.B.A. candidates).
  2. The submitted paper must have been published in a law review or peer-reviewed journal during the 2019 calendar year.
  3. Each student may submit only one entry.
  4. Jointly authored papers are eligible, provided all authors meet the eligibility requirements for the competition. If a winning paper has more than one author, the prize will be split equally among the co-authors. No work with a faculty co-author will be considered.
  5. Each entry must be the original work of the listed author(s). The author(s) must perform all of the key tasks of identifying the topic, researching it, analyzing it, formulating positions and arguments, and writing and revising the paper.
  6. Papers will be evaluated based on a number of factors, including thoroughness of research and analysis, relevance to the competition topic, relevance to current legal and/ or public policy debates, originality of thought, and clarity of expression.
  7. The prize will be monetary. Winners will be required to submit a completed W-9, affidavit of eligibility, tax acknowledgment and liability release for tax purposes as a condition of receiving the cash prize.
  8. In the unlikely event that entries are of insufficient quality to merit an award, the Center for Media Law and Policy reserves the right not to award some or all of the prizes.

Submission Process

  • All entries must be received by 11:59 p.m. EST on March 15, 2020.
  • Entries must be sent via email to medialaw[at]unc.edu with the following in the subject line: “James R. Cleary Prize Submission: [Name of Author]”
  • Papers should be submitted in Portable Document Format (.pdf).
  • Entries MUST include a signed cover sheet that may be downloaded from the Center for Media Law Policy’s website here.

A review committee comprised of faculty and affiliates from the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy will review the submissions and determine the winning paper(s). The decisions of the committee are final. Winners will be notified and final results will appear on the Center’s website in late spring. Due to the large number of expected entries, the Center cannot contact all non-winning entrants.

For more information, please visit our Cleary Competition page. Submit your research to win this award!

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Center Student Spotlight: Ashley Fox

By on November 26, 2019 in Center for Media Law and Policy

Editor’s Note: Our media law graduate students are a huge part of the Center’s success. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be featuring the stories of current and past students as we lead up to the tenth anniversary of the UNC MA/JD program in 2020. Stay tuned for more details about that celebration.

by Ashley Fox

UNC MA/JD student (’21) and CITAP Fellow

This summer, I interned for the Office of Information Policy (OIP) at the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington D.C. OIP oversees federal agency compliance with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). To further this mission, the Office holds regular FOIA trainings for federal employees who are tasked with completing initial requests from the public, publishes and updates government-wide guidance on the FOIA, adjudicates administrative appeals for initial requests originating within the DOJ, and reviews annual reports from all federal agencies detailing their compliance with the FOIA. OIP is organized into four teams related to initial requests, appeals, litigation, and compliance.

During my internship, I primarily worked with the Appeals Team within OIP. There, I gained first-hand experience working within the administrative process by adjudicating administrative appeals on various FOIA issues, ranging from a DOJ component’s failure to respond to an initial request to a requester’s claim that FOIA exemptions were applied incorrectly. Moreover, I learned how some FOIA related disputes move beyond the administrative appeals process by conducting legal research for an ongoing FOIA litigation. Throughout these experiences, I really enjoyed seeing how attorneys within OIP carefully weigh the government’s desire to protect certain information against the public’s interest in disclosure while applying the language of the FOIA itself.

To support OIP’s goal of ensuring FOIA compliance by providing educational resources, I also attended multiple FOIA training sessions, assisted in publishing recent FOIA related court decisions on the office’s webpage, and assisted in updating OIP’s FOIA guidance to reflect changes in the law. Additionally, I reviewed proposed congressional legislation’s potential impacts on the FOIA and recommended comment from OIP to Congress when needed.

The summer internship program at OIP was wonderfully supportive. Each summer, OIP typically hires three to four legal interns through the DOJ’s larger Summer Law Intern Program (SLIP), which recruits law students for internships in various DOJ components. Although interns primarily work with one team within OIP, we had numerous opportunities to work with each team and collaborate with each other. The attorneys within OIP were enthusiastically invested in helping interns develop professionally, and they happily shared their own career journeys. I thoroughly enjoyed working with everyone within OIP, and I would highly recommend this internship to students interested in administrative law, access to information, and government transparency.

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Pedro X. Molina Speaking on The Art of Resistance

By on October 8, 2019 in Center for Media Law and Policy, First Amendment

In the midst of turbulent political times in the United States, it’s easy to forget that pressures on press freedom are everywhere these days. Tonight’s talk by Pedro X. Molina, which was co-sponsored by our Center, was a stark reminder of that.

In 2017 Pedro X. Molina was a prolific participant in the #FreeNseRamon campaign demanding freedom for fellow illustrator and political cartoonist, Ramón Nsé Esono Ebalé, who was imprisoned for his work criticizing his country’s government, Equatorial Guinea.

Pedro X. Molina, also known as ‘PxMolinA,’ is an internationally acclaimed political cartoonist, illustrator and journalist from Nicaragua. In December 2018, when the offices of news media outlet Confidencial were taken over by government forces and during a national crackdown on journalists and government critics, Molina fled his country. He and his colleagues continue to publish daily in Confidencial.com.ni, either from exile or from other locations in Nicaragua. In summer 2019, Molina won the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot Award in international journalism from Columbia’s School of Journalism. In 2018, Molina won the Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award from Cartoonists Rights Network International, as well as the Excellence in Journalism award from the Inter American Press Association.

Esono Ebalé’s work and Molina’s contributions to the #FreeNseRamon campaign are both featured in  ‘The Art of Resistance’ exhibition on display throughout the FedEx Global Education Center until December 13, 2019. Come hear/see Molina share his work in Nicaragua and his efforts to support freedom of expression everywhere.

Molina reminded those of us who attended his talk that fanaticism is rampant across the globe, and that citizens must advocate for human decency over ideology.

This event was sponsored by the Humanities for the Public Good Initiative, Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Global Relations, the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy, Institute for the Study of the Americas, Department of Romance Studies and UNC Global.

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What Germany May Teach Us About Platform Regulation

By on August 16, 2019 in Center for Media Law and Policy

I recently returned from three weeks as the Distinguished Visiting Professor in Media Studies at the University of Tübingen in Germany, where I taught a seminar on international platform regulation to a small group of German undergraduates.

In theory, I taught them. In reality, they taught me as much if not more about the current state of global platform regulation. And that’s not surprising, given how fast the discussions about regulation are moving and how immersed German students are in their online and offline communities.

The invitation to spend time with students at Tübingen’s Institute of Media Studies is part of the UNC Center for Media Law & Policy’s expanding efforts to understand and include global perspectives in media law at a time of rapid and increasing change. (It was also thanks to our growing relationship with UNC Global and their work to support the UNC – Tübingen partnership and to our terrific host, Dr. Guido Zurstiege.) Traditional libertarian perspectives that underlie the First Amendment and much of U.S. case law are on the defensive thanks to growing political polarization and online forces that are manipulating the speech environment.

As the United States debates whether to revise the part of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) known as Sec. 230, (the provision of federal law that was adopted in 1996 to incentivize good faith efforts by media platforms to address online harms and in return receive protections from liability), the European Union (EU) and Germany, in particular, are not waiting.

My conversations with students and scholars in Tübingen repeatedly focused on what holds the U.S. back from moving forward with Sec. 230 reform and what countries like Germany are already doing to demand more accountability from platforms like Facebook and Twitter. With Germany’s hate speech regulation history, it is not surprising to find the discussion there focused on “why” and “how” – not “if” and “when,” as it is here in the States.

To be sure, Tübingen students did express concerns about collateral censorship and the EU’s adoption of Article 13, a measure that will hold platforms more accountable for infringing content. But in terms of addressing the real and tangible harms of hate and radicalization online, there is no question: Germany and the EU have already moved quite aggressively.

Indeed, while I was in Germany and later, when I traveled to France to present at the World Journalism Educators Conference, both countries made a flurry of announcements.

In Germany, the Bundesamt für Justiz, Germany’s Federal Office of Justice, announced it would fine Facebook €2 million for allegedly failing to comply with how it reports the number of hate speech complaints it gets, part of the obligations set out in Germany’s NetzDG law. France followed Germany’s lead and passed landmark legislation to fight hate speech; it also now requires U.S. tech platforms to remove “hateful” content within 24 hours and create a new button for users to flag abuse.

The message was clear: Germany and others aren’t waiting for the U.S. to figure things out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Winners of the Inaugural James R. Cleary Prize Announced

By on August 2, 2019 in Center for Media Law and Policy

The UNC Center for Media Law and Policy is thrilled to announce the winners of the inaugural James R. Cleary Prize for students who wrote the best published scholarly articles on media law and policy related topics in 2018.

This year’s first place winner is Austin Vining, a joint JD/Ph.D. student at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and College of Journalism and Communications, for his Mississippi Law Review article “Trick or Treat?: Mississippi County Doesn’t Clown Around With Halloween Costumes.” The second place winner is Alexandra Baruch Bachman, who graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law in May 2019. Her article was titled “WTF? First Amendment Implications of Policing Profanity” and was published in the First Amendment Law Review. Vining will receive a $1,000 prize, and Baruch Bachman will receive a $500 prize.

The award honors the legacy of James R. Cleary, an attorney who practiced for 56 years in Huntsville, Ala.  He was particularly interested in the communications field and media law issues.  Cleary’s daughter, Johanna Cleary, is a 2004 Ph.D. graduate of the UNC School of Media and Journalism.

Vining has researched freedom of information laws, shield laws, defamation, fake news, anti-masking laws, and nonconsensual pornography. He teaches media law and is a graduate research fellow at the Brechner First Amendment Project. He is a member of the Florida Law Review, and he serves as Chair of the Board of Directors for the Independent Florida Alligator.

Previously, Vining was a journalist for the Oxford Eagle and the Vicksburg Post, both in Mississippi. He is a former legislative intern for U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu and a former legal intern for Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Vining has bachelor’s degrees in journalism and psychology from Louisiana Tech University, where he served as editor-in-chief of the student newspaper. He earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Mississippi, where he was a graduate assistant at the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association.

Baruch Bachman grew up in Setauket, New York, and completed her undergraduate degree in English and Foreign Language at the University of Delaware in December 2015. At the University of Delaware, she served as staff writer and editor-in-chief of the student publication, DEconstruction.

While at Carolina Law, Baruch Bachman served as a staff writer and notes editor for the First Amendment Law Review (FALR). She now resides in Charlotte, North Carolina.

You can read more about the Cleary Prize competition here. Please check the Center’s blog for an announcement of next year’s deadline.

Congratulations to both winners!

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