School district personnel files were traditionally considered private. Since the advent of federal and state open record acts, the private nature of personnel records has come into question. All court cases since 1966, in which a member of the public wanted access to public employee information and a personal privacy exemption was raised as a…

This report addresses civil rights issues that derive from the First Amendment's guarantee of free exercise of religion and prohibition against the establishment of religion. The commission is acting under its legal mandate to study and collect information and to appraise the laws and policies of the federal government with respect to…

The author analyzes attitudes and court decisions about the Pledge of Allegiance. He suggests a more rational approach with an awareness that patriotism cannot be forced and that mere recitation cannot achieve allegiance. (Author/JR)

Holds that American colleges and universities confront two forces (government regulation and reduction in resources) that will destroy their integrity unless they are committed to defending their fundamental purpose--to advance the pursuit of truth and to reward those contributing to that end. (JT)

The nature of tenure rights is examined with reference to a number of court cases. It is observed that the trend to negotiate tenure will probably continue, and the prediction is made that the principle of exclusivity will apply to collective bargaining in higher education, thus limiting individual faculty contracts. (JT)

A study examined the changes taking place in the Soviet press and readers' attitude to the media in the age of glasnost. A survey, prepared in English and translated into Russian, was conducted among 96 fourth and final year journalism students at the Leningrad State University, U.S.S.R. to obtain information concerning demographics, readership…

This annotated bibliography covers the period from 1974 to 1981, with primary emphasis on documents and publications produced between 1978 and 1981. The majority of the publications cited are U.S. government documents; however, the last section includes relevant monographs, journal articles, and conference papers that were selected by the National…

The necessity for maintaining and extending the public space within which argumentation may appear, whether or not represented in the classroom, stems largely from pressures which have increasingly restricted that space. To function as public spaces, classrooms must enable students as citizens to confer in an unrestricted fashion about matters of…

This digest reviews earlier court decisions which led up to the Supreme Court's 1988 "Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier" decision and also discusses the "Hazelwood" case's implications for freedom of student expression. The digest cites various documents in the ERIC database which deal with student journalism, censorship,…

To determine the treatment of visual journalism by privacy law from the origins of privacy law in 1890 until 1978, an analysis was made of the mass media legal cases occurring between those years. The cases were subjectively divided into three categories: those that established or extended a freedom of the press or the right of a defendant to…

Most communication courses and research involving freedom of speech examine issues by reviewing the decisions of the United States Supreme Court and the federal appelate courts. However, the high visibility of the federal courts can lead to a misguided emphasis by students of the history of free speech. Research into the development of present…

To examine press freedom in the Republic of Korea (ROK, South Korea) and the role the ROK's press plays as the advantages of democracy and authoritarianism are being publicly debated, this paper looks back at where the ROK has been in terms of its social and political freedoms and where it is going in its attempts to break from its authoritarian…

A study analyzed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell's court opinions on First Amendment issues that affect the daily work of journalists. The results showed that he preferred compromises, guidelines, and tests to either/or solutions. Because Powell sought to balance all interests, he developed no firm theoretical position on the First…

The field of ethics and values studies in science and technology has experienced an expansion since the 1970s including increased numbers of organizations, publications, research studies, workshops, and conferences. As a consequence, scholarly and public attention focus more frequently on ethics and values issues. In an effort to pause and reflect…

The Falkland-Malvinas conflict is a classic example of how a government can manage news in wartime. The rules of the game as evinced by the British government and Ministry of Defense were simple and effective. They controlled access to the fighting, controlled all communications facilities, excluded all neutral correspondents and carefully…