The Associated Press Antitrust Suit: A Philosophical Clash over Ownership of First Amendment Rights

Margaret A. Blanchard

Business History Review, 1987, vol. 61, issue 1, 43-85

Abstract: In this article Professor Blanchard examines the Associated Press antitrust suit of the early 1940s in terms of its protagonists, Chicago newspaper leaders Robert McCormick and Marshall Field. The analysis avoids traditional antitrust terms and instead examines the suit as part of an effort by the federal government to use the antitrust law to implement a public-interest interpretation of the First Amendment. Professor Blanchard also looks at McCormick's attempt to obtain special legislation from Congress to void the Supreme Court's decision in favor of Field. She concludes that, although the government's efforts to use the First Amendment to force the news agency to serve a broader public interest were successful, the Associated Press emerged from the suit stronger than before the legal action.

Date: 1987
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:buhirw:v:61:y:1987:i:01:p:43-85_05

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Business History Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().