Author: William H. Freivogel

Limbaugh copyright complaint was actually Fair Use

By Media

For a time late last month, Rush Limbaugh succeeded in abusing copyright law to get YouTube to take down a Daily Kos video stringing together the insulting remarks he made about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student who became a featured player in the contraception controversy a few months back.

The video stitched together short excerpts of Limbaugh calling Fluke a slut and a prostitute who should videotape herself having sex. Limbaugh apologized (sort of) after he began to lose advertisers. But when Daily Kos helpfully put together a greatest hits of Limbaugh’s comments, Limbaugh used copyright law to demand that YouTube take down the video.

Shallow media coverage leads to misperceptions in Southern Illinois

By Media

John Jackson, a veteran political scientist at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, recently told a room of newspaper editors that the media are partly to blame for the misperception held by most residents of Southern Illinois that they don’t get their fair share from the government.

Almost eight of ten residents of the 18 southern counties in Illinois told Simon pollsters that they got less than their fair share in state spending. Jackson says that clearly false belief results partly from shallow media coverage.

Missouri takes another shot at Whistleblowers

By Media

Last week the Missouri House passed a bill that the sponsor calls the Whistleblower Protection Act. The law actually removes protections from whistleblowers rather than enacting them. This is the latest version of a bill commonly called the Enterprise Rent-A-Car bill because the Clayton, Mo. firm has been lobbying to weaken whistleblower protections for the past six years. Earlier versions of the bill have passed but been vetoed by Gov. Jay Nixon.

Enterprise has made weakening whistleblower protections a top legislative priority ever since the firm lost a whistleblower lawsuit filed by its fired corporate comptroller, Thomas P. Dunn. Dunn testified that he was fired after taking the position that Enterprise was not following the accounting principles required of a public company. At the time of the dispute, around the time of the Enron debacle, Enterprise was planning to go public, although it later decided against that course. To go public, it needed Dunn to attest to the company’s adherence to generally accepted accounting principles.

Hacking sources crosses the line

By Media

British journalists seem to have been reading too many of Stieg Larsson’s books about the Girl with the Dragon Tatoo in which investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist gets his best information from computer hacking. Sky News, part-owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, admitted to The Guardian newspaper that it authorized a journalist to hack into emails to…

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Judge rules eavesdropping law unconstitutional

By Media

A Cook County judge became the second state judge in Illinois to rule that the state’s tough eavesdropping law is unconstitutional. The judge said the law, which makes it a felony to record audio without the consent of all parties, criminalizes potentially innocent conduct.

The Gateway Journalism Review followed this story for over a year. Here are some of the previous stories posted on the issue: