Roy L. Moore, Ronald T. Farrar, Erik L. Collins.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1998,
499 pp., $57.50 Hardcover only.
Mass communication law professors often share the dilemma of persuading students that their course is relevant. Even before they walk into the first class, most advertising and public relations majors have concluded that First Amendment issues concern only their print and broadcast journalism counterparts. Only after nearly libeling a client's competitor in their first professional press release or ad copy do beginning practitioners realize the need for an understanding of media law.
By exploring particularly relevant areas of mass communication law, the authors of Advertisng Public Relations Law have succeeded in addressing crucial issues and concerns for both students and practitioners. While this pioneering effort to offer a specific legal textbook for public relations and advertising offers comprehensive legal history and analysis, the work suffers from a lack of practical examples and case studies.
The authors present lengthy, sometimes exhaustive treatments of such critical areas as commercial speech doctrine, government regulation, and intellectual property. They consider several relevant concerns, such as product liability, trade secrets or publicity rights - often ignored in general media law texts. But their scholarly analysis often fails to provide specific public relations/advertising examples and practical advice.
Future editions should be more carefully edited for style consistency, needless repetition and readability. Practitioners, professors, and students often appreciate discussion questions and case examples to help relate the law to hypothetical or actual professional situations. This book, which is supposedly intended for classroom use, lacks both.
While the authors have undertaken the laudable challenge of creating a legal text focused on advertising and public relations law, they should have decided who their audience is, rather than trying to cover everyone and everything.