Legal Issues Facing Journalists

Digital Media Law issues

Opinion is protected?
Opinions can't be verified. Some opinions are based on verifiable facts. Is it on the news pages or the opinion pages? Blogs are the types of platform support statement of opinion. The question to ask: Can it be proven false?

The broken window theory if you see a lot of comments that are bad then you're going to encourage bad conversations

Legal Questions- legal needs survey... things to think about, like hiring an accountant.
Creating a business:
    Have you thought about creating a formal business? Need legal help doing so?
    Rights and responsibilities for people who work together? (like co-bloggers)
    Do you have media liability insurance?
    Naming your business and trademarking these names/logo?
Getting online
    Terms/conditions for site?
    Privacy policy?
    Questions about copyright infringement?
    Written agreement for contractors IP
Third party sites
    If you're going to use other peoples' photos/content doesn't mean you can do anything with it.
    LInk for questions?
Creative commons licenses-- it's either copyright or lot but there is a lot of middle ground
    Do you publish UGC? moderating, copyright, etc.
    How do you handle content from other sources?

Volunteer lawyers for the arts
Three categories of assistance: Pro bono, reduced fee journalists neg. with lawyer, full fees for those who can support it.

Basic Knowledge for journalists who want to start their own companies: defamation, copyright and libel
A process approach-- before you need a lawyer.

Should I extract and excerpt from another site? it depends but stick to less than 200 characters.