This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,234) on Friday, April 29, 2022. A popular myth that animates much of our political life is that the U.S. Supreme Court decides an issue. The justices, in their collective wisdom or ignorance, may make a ruling, but they rarely if ever decide an issue. • Read More »
Chances are, there’s a group in your community that wants to dictate what books you and your children can read. They often do this by telling public libraries what they should not put on the shelves. Most libraries resist this kind of pressure, and the American Library Association keeps track of these challenges. Here is • Read More »
This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,5xx) on Friday, July 3, 2020. An international cabal of industrialists and watercolorists has met in secret (not sure when, probably at night; not sure where, probably Switzerland) and decided that July will be International Watercolor Month. I will continue my investigations and report my • Read More »
You can shield yourself from ideas that make you uncomfortable or that you disagree with. You may be able, to some extent, to limit the exposure that the young people in your care have to those ideas. But you cannot shield your community from the things you disagree with. That’s called censorship, and in any practical • Read More »
Tags: banned books, Banned Books Week, censorship
That’s what school officials in Duluth, Minnesota (and a few other places, unfortunately) would have you believe. The school system in Duluth is the latest to remove To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the required reading list for ninth graders. The reason they give: the language used in these books • Read More »
Tags: Anne Frank, Duluth, Harper Lee, Mark Twain, Stephen King, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird
Moore discovered a gold mine for his artwork in 1979 when he produced “The Goal Line Stand,” a photo-realistic oil painting of the moments when Alabama prevented Penn State from scoring in the Sugar Bowl.
Tags: art, Bear Bryant, Bear Bryant museum, Daniel Moore, First Amendment, Goal Line Stand, painting, Penn State, sports, Sugar Bowl, University of Alabama, watercolor
More than 50 years ago, the Alabama-Georgia matchup resulted, not in a national championship, but in a legal ruling that expanded the First Amendment protections we now enjoy.
Tags: actual malice, Bear Bryant, Ed Krzemienski, First Amendment, football, Frank Graham Jr., George Burnett, Joe Namath, libel, public figure, Randy Roberts, Rising Tide, Roger Kahn, Saturday Evening Post, The Story of a College Football Fix, Wally Butts
J.K. Rowling has a point of view: Intolerance of alternative viewpoints is spreading to places that make me, a moderate and a liberal, most uncomfortable. Only last year, we saw an online petition to ban Donald Trump from entry to the U.K. It garnered half a million signatures. Just a moment. I find almost • Read More »
Tags: Donald Trump, Farnham Street, First Amendment, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, J.K. Rowling, offensive speech, The First Amendment
March: Women’s History Month Plans for a gigantic suffrage parade along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in 1913 began as soon as Alice Paul and Lucy Burns convince the National American Woman Suffrage Association to put them in charge of its Congressional Committee in late November 1912. Paul and Burns, who had been friends since • Read More »
Tags: Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Seeing Suffrage, suffrage, Washington, Woodrow Wilson
The nation seems to be in a state of perpetual war, and during times of crisis, individual freedoms are always in danger. Professor Dwight Teeter of the University of Tennessee discusses the state and strength of First Amendment freedoms today.
Tags: Dwight Teeter, First Amendment, video
University of Tennessee professor Dwight Teeter discusses the case of Luther Baldwin, a New Jersey man who was prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Baldwin became a symbol of Federalist intolerance during the 1800 presidential election.
This video is part of the Tennessee Journalism Series and was produced and edited by Jim Stovall.
Tags: Alien and Sedition Acts, First Amendment, James Madison, John Adams, Library of Congress, Luther Baldwin
In this two-and-a-half minute video, Dr. Dwight Teeter explains some of the political maneuvering that occurred to get the an amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech into the hotly-debated Constitution in the late 1780s. The freedoms protected by the amendment — religion, speech, press, assembly and petition — were not foremost in the minds of the Founding Fathers. Discussion questions are included with this video.
Tags: Anti-Federalists, Dwight Teeter, First Amendment, Founding Fathers, James Madison
Americans waited nearly two years before the news media printed a combat photograph that showed a dead U.S. serviceman. The reasons for that wait were that such producing such photos are too shocking for the friends and families of the deceased and that the public’s morale and support for the war might be diminished.
The story of the Life magazine photo is an interesting one and demonstrates the controversy surrounding photographing the deceased, particularly those who have died in combat.
Below is a set of photographs of soldiers killed in battle during the Civil War.
Tags: First Amendment, George Strock, Life magazine, photographs of dead soldiers, picturing dead soldiers, picturing the deceased, public's right to know, World War II
Journalists write for a living. They use words precisely and efficiently. They present accurate, verified information in a way that a mass audience will understand it by reading or hearing it only once.
Tags: First Amendment, journalism, Tennessee Journalism Series, writing
Designed by the people who helped create and maintain the Interscholastic Online News Network (ISONN), Going Online presents brief, practical lessons in the journalism of today and tomorrow. It shows teaches and students how they can practice journalism on a daily or hourly basis, something they were unable to do before the advent of the World Wide Web.
Tags: going online, teaching journalism, Tennessee Journalism Series
Feature Writing presents the basic concepts and techniques of feature writing for students who want to explore this vital part of journalism. It is brief and designed to be highly accessible to the beginning student.
Tags: feature writing, First Amendment
Many of the things that happened first during the Penny Press era have become the staples of today’s journalism: the dominance of non-partisan news; the emphasis on speed; new areas of reporting, including sports reporting; an expansion of readership to include working classes. The list could go on. Much that is on that list began with James Gordon Bennett.
Tags: Dwight Teeter, Penny Press
The Tennessee Journalism Series is a set of texts and instructional material developed by the faculty of the University of Tennessee School of Journalism and Electronic Media for journalism and instructors around the world. The idea behind the series is “multimedia first.” That is, these books are built for the iPad and contain a variety of multimedia elements: text, audio, video, photo galleries, interactive images, and interactive reviews and quizzes.
Tags: books, journalism, textbooks
The First Amendment is one of the most important legal and social documents in American history. Its meaning remains the center of much controversy, debate and litigation even after 200 years.
Tags: Dwight Teeter, The First Amendment
Reporting is hard work. It is frustrating and difficult. Reporters are constantly called upon to use their wit and imagination, to think of where information is and who has it — and then to persuade those who have it to give it up. Reporters do not have subpoena power. They cannot compel sources to part with their information.
Tags: journalism, media reporting, news, reporting