Tag Archives | Students

Hazelwood: Some Remaining Questions

By on November 12, 2012 in First Amendment, Internet

As our great keynote speaker, panelists, and audience members discussed the 25-year history of Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier last week, it became clear that there still is scholarly work that needs to be done in this important area of law.  Here are a few of the interesting questions raised at the conference:

What are the connections between school culture, student free expression, and civic engagement?

Are public school journalism programs being cut due to overall budget cuts?

What are the academic backgrounds of school media advisers, and do they matter?  Is a media adviser with a background in the humanities more likely to support student free expression than an adviser with a background in math or science? One audience member asked whether social studies teachers, who should care about civic engagement, should work with student journalists. Another person observed that teachers too often don’t work outside their subject-specific silos.

How are charter schools regulating the expressive activities of their students?  One of our panelists observed that charter schools are public schools that want to operate like private schools.  She said there are many examples of censorship by charter schools and of charter schools with no student media at all.  California has enacted a statute to prevent charter schools from denying their students’ constitutional rights.

What has been the impact of the nation’s political polarization on student free expression?

What, if anything, is left of Tinker?

What is online student speech, and what is offline student speech?  (Or, more eloquently, where is the schoolhouse gate?) How do and should courts differentiate between the two?

Keynote speaker Erwin Chemerinsky said the Supreme Court treats schools as authoritarian institutions – like prisons.  To what extent is the Court correct?  What does that mean for student free expression?

If you have other questions to share, please post a comment.  Thanks for the great conference, everyone!

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Film Screening of Miss Representation

By on November 8, 2012 in Journalism

This coming Monday, November 12, the Center is partnering with the UNC Conference on Race, Class, Gender & Ethnicity, Women in Law, Domestic Violence Action Project, Child Action, Law Students for Reproductive Justice, and the Lambda Law Students Association to present a screening of Miss Representation.  The film, written, directed and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.  The showing is part of a week-long documentary film festival, showcasing award-winning films about contemporary legal issues that implicate women’s rights.

Check out our events page for more information on the screening.

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Clearing the Haze Over Hazelwood: Student Speech Rights in the Digital Age

By on November 7, 2012 in First Amendment

Tomorrow, with our friends at the Student Press Law Center, First Amendment Law Review and North Carolina Scholastic Media Association, the center will kick off a two-day conference focused on student speech rights and their role in youth civic engagement.  The event, which is entitled “One Generation Under Hazelwood: A 25-Year Retrospective,” will examine the impact of Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, the Supreme Court’s only ruling addressing the rights of high school journalists.

The team that organized the conference (Tabitha Messick, Whitney Nebolisa, Monica Hill, and Frank LoMonte) have done an amazing job bringing together the leading scholars and thinkers on the subject of student speech rights, including Erwin Chemerinsky, who will be the keynote speaker. You can see the schedule for the two days here.  But don’t fret if you can’t make it in person, UNC’s IT folks will be live streaming the sessions and the Twitter hashtag is #Hazelwood25, if you want to follow along.

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A UNC Student’s Summer Experience in Media Law

By on October 31, 2012 in Defamation, Journalism

Tabitha Messick Childs, a 3L at the UNC School of Law (and my former research assistant), spent her summer at the Berkman Center’s Digital Media Law Project.  At my urging, she wrote the following summary of her experience. Our hope is that it will be useful to other students considering summer jobs in media law.

From Tabitha:

My 2L summer at the Digital Media Law Project  (DMLP) at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society (based at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA) was simply amazing. I’ve known about the Berkman Center for years, and have frequently used the resources at DMLP (formerly the Citizen Media Law Project). I would have never imagined that I would have the opportunity to work there.

I came to law school with an interest in media law, Internet policy and privacy issues. I am a 2007 graduate of UNC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.  I chose to enroll at UNC School of Law because of its media law curriculum and because of the Center for Media Law & Policy.

In the spring of my 2L year, I applied to the Berkman Center knowing it was a “dream job,” and I was honored to get an interview and offer. The summer experience exceeded all expectations I had. I was challenged, I met amazing people, and it gave me invaluable legal experience as I pursue a career path involving media law.

The atmosphere at Berkman was incredibly inspiring. There was never a “typical” day, but I liked it that way. Berkman is home to many projects, and with an intern class of 47, every day was a new adventure. It was very collaborative; interns worked in shared workspace, so each day I gained insight from the person sitting beside me and across from me.

There were two other DMLP interns, Natalie and Kristin, who are now my lifelong friends. My supervisors, Jeff and Andy, were incredibly brilliant, always helpful, and I gained practical insight and analyzing skills by working alongside them. I usually learned more by simply listening to their discussions about current issues than being in a classroom! It was great to be surrounded and supported by this group. The DMLP door was always open, and we stayed in constant contact about projects I was working on.

Speaking of projects, I worked hands on with many digital media law and First Amendment issues. Each week, DMLP had a meeting and delegated many different tasks and deadlines to interns. I was always busy and working on many different projects simultaneously! But the work was stimulating, interesting and challenging. For example, I researched, drafted and edited new sections of DMLP’s state-by-state legal guide, including defamation and right of publicity issues.

I was also honored to be able to conduct legal research for the Guide to Reporting at the 2012 RNC & DNC. I researched issues relating to the 4th Amendment and cell phone and camera searches, and the public forum doctrine.

I also assisted in the expansion of the Online Media Legal Network (OMLN). I was delegated with finding lawyers in South Carolina where OMLN still lacked legal representation. I researched and reached out to lawyers in South Carolina, and am happy to report OMLN now has legal representation there.

One of my favorite projects to work on was the legal threats database. There I researched, drafted and edited recent threats to online speech, including recent lawsuits like the “Facebook likes” case. I read through pleadings, briefs and motions and wrote an objective account of the potential threats.

The other interns and I contributed a lot as DMLP staff to the greater DMLP community, but it was the blog posts that felt like my own (and my name was attached!). This process was a fun and important part of the internship. I spent a lot of time thinking about, analyzing and drafting my blog posts. I wrote on defamation by omission, electronic service of process, and trademark issues related to the United States Olympic Committee’s exclusive use of the word “Olympics.”

But it wasn’t all just work!! We went to conferences and court hearings, as well book talks and weekly “intern hours” with the entire intern class. I participated in the broader Berkman community by taking part in a group intern summer-long project on Internet censorship. Working on the group project was fun because it made me understand the underlying dynamic at Berkman and what makes it so special: always working and learning from other people and across diverse projects.  I learned so much and met many colleagues and friends from these experiences.

Leaving Berkman was bittersweet. I still feel a part of a big community, but it was hard to leave such a dynamic atmosphere. I am honored to be a part of the community and will forever be a 2012 “Berktern.”

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Media law dissertation best in nation

By on May 25, 2012 in First Amendment

A recent Ph.D. graduate of the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication has won the 2012 Nafziger-White-Salwen Dissertation Award for the best dissertation in the field of mass communication.

The winner is Dr. Dean Smith, an affiliated scholar of the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy. The dissertation award is given by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) and will be presented during the association’s national convention in August.

The title of Smith’s dissertation is “Legislating the First Amendment: Statutory Shield Laws as Non-Judicial Precedents.” The work will be published as a book next year by LBF Scholarly Publishing.

Smith’s dissertation adviser was Dr. Cathy Packer, co-director of the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy.

In the fall, Smith will join the faculty at N.C. State University as a teaching visiting professor of journalism in the English Department. He also will teach as an adjunct professor at High Point University.

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