The Law Practice of Christopher Schiller
Contact: chris@christopherschiller.com -- cell/L.A. 213.804.5905 -- phone/NY 518.489.1691

Course Description

Media Law

(Alternatively titled, "Communication Law and Ethics" or "Law and Ethics of Mass Media")
Taught at Sage College of Albany and Russell Sage College, in Troy, NY.
(First session - Spring Semester 2008)

Catalog Description (taken from SageAdvisor)

"This course is designed to consider critical issues of law and ethics that working journalists and public relations practitioners will face in the performance of their jobs. The course focuses on the issues of free speech, obscenity and pornography, libel, privacy, and intellectual property, and upon corollary ethical issues such as harm, truth-telling, fair play, social justice, and duty to community."

Course Purpose:

Establishing a foundation of the legal structure that governs a vast majority of interaction within mass communication fields, this course should open the students' minds to critical analysis of the decisions being confronted in the course of their actions. This analysis should look to ethical considerations as well as legal framework in order to guide decision making. If this course prepares the student to pause and take note of the legal and moral premises underlying common actions within mass media activities and provide tools and techniques in coming to acceptable resolutions of these issues, then the course has served its main purpose.

This course will not tell you how to think, act, or feel. The main goal of this course is to make sure that you DO think, act and feel when confronted with the legal and ethical challenges you will face in your future careers as media communicators. You will hopefully be armed with the tools you need to analyze situations and respond positively within a personally acceptable legal and ethical framework.

Familiarization with all the aspects of this course, whether they're common to your chosen field of pursuit or not, will lead to a well rounded and prepared mental attitude to confront the particular dilemmas you will surely face.