October 3, 2011
Title
For Your Eyes Only
1. Situation
You’ve been into magic and entertaining all your life in fact you enoy it so muchh that you want to make a career of it. You find out ther is going to be a major convention where professional magicians from all over the world will be coming to Bowling Green searching for the “Next Magician.” The winner will get their own reality show and $1, 000. You realize this is going to be highly competitive so you work for months perfecting. You want to practice in front of a small group in Olscamp, and everthing goes as planned. Until you turn on the 11 o’clock news and see futage of your entire show playing.
You think to yourself is this legal?
2. Legal Background
In the case of plaintiff Hugo Zacchini who was an entertainer known for performing the “human cannonball” act where he was shot from a cannon into a net about 200ft away. The plaintiff would perform this act at a carnival on several dates, one in which the defendant a reporter from Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co. attended one of the fairs and began tapping with a small camera. The plaintiff asked the defendent to stop recording, the defendent under the instructions of his producer instead tapped the entire show. The show was shown in full on the 11 o’clock news with commentary included.
Plaintiff took defendent to court stating that the video was not inteded to be shown to the masses and that it was a family act and had been commericalized once shown on the news.
The supreme court ruled in favor of Zacchini, stating that the TV station is protected when reporting news that is legitimate to the public’s interest. Reporting news for publicity to benefit the TV station and or to injure the individual is however not protected.
For more information on this case visit http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=433&invol=562
3. Questions
1. Is this case an example of freedom of press? If so if you were the judge delivering the dissenting opinion what would have been your arguement?
2. Give an example when taping someone and then putting it on the news would have been acceptable.
3. In this case what are the apparent amendment rights and explain how they are protected.
6 thoughts on “Privacy….”
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October 4th, 2011 at 8:06 pm
This case does deal with the freedom of the press. Since the performer was performing his act in public the reporter had the right to shoot it. However, I do not think it is right if the reporter shot the entire act. That would be similar to shooting a movie in the movie theatre.
An example of taping someone and putting it on the new and being acceptable is doing an interview and airing the interview with permission.
In this case the First Amendment, freedom of press is protected because it gives the right to “seek the truth and report it”.
October 7th, 2011 at 2:22 am
1. This case does concern freedom of the press. Since the performer’s act was public, however, the reporter had the right to record it. My dissenting opinion would detail the fact that reporters cover public performances quite often, which is perfectly ethical, and just because this performance is short, it should not be an exception to the rule.
2. Taping someone and putting it on the news can be acceptable in several ways. In this instance, the reporter could have taped the human cannonball in an interview and aired him speaking about his act, rather than the act itself, with his permission. He could have included a very brief clip of the cannonball act, but not the entire thing. It would have been ethical and still provided a story for the news station.
3. The amendment right addressed in this case is the freedom of the press, which includes protecting the rights of broadcast journalism.
October 7th, 2011 at 6:33 am
In concurrence with the above comments, because the act was performed in public, the reporter has the right to broadcast the performance. This follows under the “seek the truth and report it” ethical guideline. The judge could state clearly that the magician should have known that by submitting his performance to public spectacle and scrutiny he was opening himself to this coverage.
Though the courts did rule in favor of Zachinni, subsequent case settlements have deemed such coverage to be acceptable as long it is being presented in a news fashion and not used as part of a for-profit product, which would raise appropriation issues.
The reporter’s first ammendment rights may allow him/her to run the story depicting the magician’s act, but I think it extremely unfair and unethical to run the entire act, because it betrays the cleverness of the act and diminishes its appeal. This sort of behavior would run counter to the “minimze harm” guideline and displaying the show in its entirety is not proportionately necessary to the newsworthiness of the story. A brief clip supplememnted with crowd response interviews would suffice just fine.
October 9th, 2011 at 9:38 pm
I feel that this case deals with freedom of the press, the reporter had the right to record the act, however I feel that since he was asked not to record it he should have not recorded it any further than what he already had.
I feel that taping someone in a public place like a park doing something like sledding in the winter would be acceptable because I have actually witnessed that one the news.
Freedom of the press is the right covered in this case.
October 14th, 2011 at 1:06 pm
This does not fall under freedom of press. I, personally, would be pretty upset if my entire show was aired. There would then be no surprise to what I was going to do, which would undoubtedly hurt my chances in the competition.
This would be acceptable if maybe it was only one of the acts, or part of one. Shooting something like a clip of a sporting event, or the part of a speech, would also be allowed.
However, in this case, the First Amendment still may apply, depending on the opinion of the judge. In respects to this case, the judge did side with Zacchini.
October 17th, 2011 at 12:03 am
I completely agree with Alissa and Troy. If the act is used as a supplement to a news story, it would be acceptable to provide footage of the magic show as background for a story, or an interview with the magician. I can’t think of a case where it would be informative or newsworthy to provide footage of the entire act on a news station. I do have a question about posting the video. If someone were to post the full footage of the magic show to youtube with no intention of making a profit, would it be acceptable? Obviously, there would be copyright issues, but would the case still be a freedom of the press issue?