Supreme Court may loosen restrictions on broadcasters in Nicole Richie swearing case

There is some hope that when the U.S. Supreme Court this week  will decide that broadcasters should not be shackled with Federal Communications Commission fines for on-air indecency. The case on the docket concerns swear words used by Cher and Nicole Richie on an awards show broadcast on Fox television and a scene of a [...]

Georgia inmate sues Fox News for defamation in story on lawsuit contesting dearth of porn in prison cell

A Georgia inmate took his grievance to federal court charging Fox News with defaming him with coverage of his lawsuit against Georgia for denying him pornography in prison. The inmate claimed the coverage caused his school-age brother and sister embarrassment and ridicule and made light of his nervous and sexual disorders. -db From the The [...]

New Jersey: ACLU forces issue in obtaining record of back room king-making

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie invoked the executive privilege exception in denying the requests of Gawker reporter John Cook to correspondence, calendar entries and phone logs on a dinner with Fox News President Roger Ailes who encouraged Christie to run for president. Chistie eventually submitted a calendar entry about the dinner after the American Civil [...]

Palin’s official Alaskan e-mails set for public airing

MSNBC, Mother Jones and ProPublica are preparing to publish 0ver 24,000 pages of former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s e-mails from her time as Alaska governor. The e-mails will be in a searchable archive. Alaskan officials are withholding 2353 pages and redacted some records. In violation of the state’s open records laws, Palin also used a [...]

Fox to post political donations online

After donating over a $1 million to a business lobby and $1 million to the Republican Governors Association during the mid term national elections, News Corp. which owns Fox News, has pledged to publicly disclose their donations on their corporate web site. In the interim, News Corp. will also disclose political donations from January through [...]

Rabbis use Wall Street Journal ad to criticize Fox news for ‘inappropriate’ comments about Jews and the Holocaust

Washington Post January 26,2011 By Paul Farhi Jewish rabbis are asking Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch to sanction host Glenn Beck and news chief Roger Ailes for recent comments slamming liberal philanthropist George Soros and the frequent use of the word ‘Nazis’ to label those with opposing viewpoints. -db

Gillmor on Fox News: ‘Fair and balanced’ two lies in three words

Dan Gillmor weighs in on “Misinformation and the 2010 Election”, a survey from the University of Maryland that finds “the public knows most political ads are bogus, but people still believe things that are false.” Gillmor, in his Salon.com column writes: The report, from the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, won’t [...]

Copyright law: Poorly defined’ fair use’ argument spawns court action

Lawyers are getting lots of work interpreting ‘fair use” from filmmakers, artists and writers who want to pull something from another person’s work. -db Variety Commentary September 24, 2010 By Ted Johnson Hollywood is united in standing up to the proliferation of piracy, but there’s an area of copyright law that leaves the industry perpetually [...]

Dems accuse Fox News of bolstering Ohio candidate

The Democratic Governors Association filed an elections complaint in Ohio yesterday, alleging Fox News Network illegally helped the Republican gubernatorial nominee solicit funds during a television appearance. September 3, 2010 By The Associated Press COLUMBUS, Ohio — In an escalating battle with Fox’s news division, the association alleges that Fox allowed John Kasich to request [...]

State Department analyst indicted for disclosing secrets about North Korea to Fox News

The Obama administration has taken an aggressive stance toward individuals leaking secret information to the media. -db The New York Times August 27, 2010 By Scott Shane WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal grand jury in Washington has indicted a State Department analyst suspected of disclosing top-secret information about North Korea to Fox News, the third [...]

California Supreme Court upholds SLAPP ruling in case against Fox News

The Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of a suit brought by day laborers finding that they were not defamed in a Fox News story. -DB Metropolitan News-Enterprise August 27, 2009 A Fourth District Court of Appeal ruling upholding the dismissal of a suit charging Fox News Network with defaming immigrant day laborers in a story about [...]

Fox loses FOIA suit when judge rules regional banks not government agencies

A federal judge rules that Fox had no right to bail-out documents from the Federal Reserve Board since the documents were exempted under a provision protecting trade secrets and confidential information of non-government agencies. -DB Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press July 31, 2009 By Hannah Bergman A federal judge ruled against Fox News Thursday [...]