Journalists need to stay current on legal issues, lawyers say
By Morgan Finke, Loras College
There is this tendency to only cover the prosecution’s point of view in a criminal court case, attorney Jeff Stein told a legal seminar at the IBNA convention.
The importance of understanding the law and applying it to news stories is always growing in today’s society.
“You cannot possibly cover a topic unless you know about it. It’s important to keep up to cover the story accurately,” Stein, who is also the IBNA executive secretary, said.
Certain speech is restricted
Several specific areas were discussed by Stein and George Davison, Jr. who is also a lawyer and broadcast journalist. They talked about profanity, coverage of Supreme Court decisions and defamation in broadcast news.
There are words that should not be used on air in radio and television.
The lines of what the “rules” are and what constitutes profanity or defamation can be somewhat hard to distinguish, Davison said. In this era of free speech and freedom of expression in outlets such as cable, public access and the World Wide Web, it is hard to discern what is allowed and what is not, he said.
As journalists it is important that when covering court decisions, blanket statements are not made without in-depth research about what exactly has been decided, Davison said.
To create non-biased news stories is and should always be the goal of journalists, Davison said, and the ability to remain knowledgeable about the law is vital to that goal.
“First thing is read the opinion carefully, under deadline that’s hard to do, but you have to if you want to accurately report on an issue.” Davison said.
Contact Morgan Finke at: Morgan.Finke@loras.edu |
