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This systematic review of more than 300 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (JMCQ) articles on media law since 1924 documents what a vital scholarly outlet the journal has been and continues to be for research on freedom of the press and speech. While defamation law remains a popular topic, journalism and mass communication scholars have expanded their focus to a wider range of media law issues, including privacy, copyright, student speech, journalistic privilege, free press v. fair trial, advertising, and issues involving other media. JMCQ has been refreshingly open to international and comparative law, moving away from a U.S.-centric approach to media freedom. The review highlights a decline in the number of media law articles published in recent years, possibly due to competition from alternative journals, manuscript length limitations, and the APA-style requirement. Nevertheless, media law scholarship remains essential, offering invaluable insights into the evolving legal landscape of media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author shares his reflections on the ethical concerns of scholarly periodicals, including the "Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly" (JMCQ) journal, with regards to authorship transparency, research integrity and academic credit. Topics discussed include the increase in the number of JMCQ authors per research article, the disclosure of co-author contributions, and the implications of JMCQ joining the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

This article applies a qualitative framing analysis to the first three seasons of the television series Friday Night Lights, focusing particularly on its incorporation of heavy drinking into narrative representations of the player whose character is most consistently central to the game of football as fictionally mediated in small-town Texas over the course of those three seasons. The analysis suggests that over the course of that period Friday Night Lights embeds nuanced social meanings in its framing of alcohol use by that player and other characters so as to associate it with multiple potential outcomes. Yet among those outcomes, the most dominant framing works to, in effect, reverse a progression through which media representations historically evolved from a heroic model toward an antihero model, with heavy drinking central to that narrative process of meaning-making in such messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important concepts of modern commercial speech related to advertising, characterized as the "Powellian balance," resulted in a compromise between those who thought commercial expression should receive little or no First Amendment protection and those who argued that it receive the same expansive protection accorded to political expression. The private papers of Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. reveal the remarkable degree to which he maintained a deep commitment to balancing competing interests in shaping the commercial speech doctrine. The central argument of this monograph is that Powell's "middle way" can be employed to best promote today's vital and complex societal interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate between the majority and the dissenting justices in the Supreme Court's 2003 decision in McConnell v, Federal Election Commission refocused attention on one particularly intense dispute in First Amendment law that has been simmering among the Justices over the past quarter-century: corporate speech doctrine. Although the Court extended First Amendment protection to corporate political media spending in relation to referenda in 1978, subsequent cases have permitted regulation of such spending in order to prevent corruption of democratic processes in candidate elections. The Supreme Court's most recent case on corporate speech highlighted the potential for the Court to shift its jurisprudence back toward a laissez-faire doctrine that would more greatly advantage corporate participants in the marketplace of ideas and signaled the continuing relevance of scholarly and judicial debate on the subject. Dissenting justices have argued repeatedly and there is no basis in principle or in law why business corporations should be denied full First Amendment rights. This monograph argues that such a position contradicts a significant body of relevant case law, but more broadly how the reasoning that forms the constitutional basis for regulation of corporate political spending can compellingly be expressed through the procedural tenets of Alexander Meiklejohn's town-meeting model of the First Amendment. The monograph draws upon those tenets to advance a highly principled theory for considering corporate speech jurisprudence in a manner that most truly advances freedom of the political marketplace and democratic debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the application of the principles of Adam Smith as an ethical basis for the regulation of corporate speech. Details of the works of Smith; Protection of corporate free speech in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution; Discussion of the debate over corporate speech.