Law and Ethics for Today's Journalist: A Concise Guide - Hardcover

"Mathewson's Law and Ethics for Today's Journalist is long overdue--featuring concise, practical coverage of media law and ethics that journalism instructors have been searching for. No longer will I have to adapt texts created mainly for law students to suit a class of journalists in training. The landmark First Amendment cases are here, as are the big ideas and ethical dilemmas reporters are bound to face on the ground. The research is thorough, the writing is clear, and students will learn plenty." -- Dick Lehr, Boston University

"Law and Ethics for Today's Journalist covers the essential areas of journalism law including libel, privacy, and access while retaining a sense of broader media law context. With universities moving toward merged law and ethics courses, Mathewson effectively tackles the challenge of creating a text that adequately serves both areas by paring down and sharpening the content to the most relevant information." -- Jason A. Martin, DePaul University

"Mathewson's book is well-written and concise, making its discussions of important journalism cases accessible to the average journalism student. Its focus on practical legal and ethical advice for the working journalist also makes it an excellent choice for any professor teaching a combined ethics and law class to journalism students." -- Derigan Silver, University of Denver

"Mathewson provides an excellent summary of legal issues that can affect working journalists ... Written from a working journalist's perspective, the book offers a pragmatic approach to the legal conundrums reporters and editors might face while pursuing stories. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates, professionals, general readers." -- Choice

Joe Mathewson teaches courses in the ethics and law of journalism in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. As a former Supreme Court correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, he is author of The Supreme Court and the Press: The Indispensable Conflict (2011, Northwestern University Press). He’s a contributor to chicagohistoryjournal.com, having written pieces on Chicago-based Supreme Court cases involving prominent lawyers. In Chicago, Mathewson covered business for The Wall Street Journal, was a WBBM-TV reporter, and served as press secretary to Illinois Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie. He authored a book on Chicago politics, Up Against Daley (1974), as well as op-eds and Sunday magazine articles for the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times. He has been a Cook County commissioner, a director of several community banks, an officer of a minority-owned broker-dealer, and a securities arbitrator for the National Association of Securities Dealers. Mathewson has degrees from Dartmouth and the University of Chicago Law School, and did graduate work in European politics and economies at the Bologna (Italy) Center of John Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He has served ten years as a trustee of Dartmouth College.