how would you argue that the media should or shouldn't reveal rape victims' names in certain cases? Choose a position and argue the point.

cite the articles you have used as reference.

These are more likely to be ethical arguments than legal arguments since the Supreme Court has settled the question of whether states can place a prior restraint on media use of the names.

Two of the leading cases in this area of the law have to do with whether a state can make it against the law to publish a rape victim's name.

Read a legal brief about Cox Broadcasting v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469 (1975)(Be sure to click on the two links in the left column -- "Syllabus" and "View Case" to get to the important material.)

Read about the case of Florida Star v. B.J.F., 491 U.S. 524 (1989)

Although most media have a policy not to reveal the names, a case involving a member of the Kennedy family brought the question before the public again.

Read"Jury Finds Smith Not Guilty of Rape"

After the verdict, Vanity Fair wrote:

From the beginning, the accuser was of considerably less interest than the accused. Had the tabloid newspaper The Globe and The New York Times not published her name, Patricia Bowman, as she is called, would have been totally unknown, no more than a bit player in this movie-of-the-week date-rape story, until her appearance on the witness stand in West Palm Beach, Florida, where, from behind the dot that shielded her face, she pointed her finger at the accused and said to his lawyer, "Your client raped me."

It was Smith who commanded the attention, William Kennedy Smith, Willie Smith, or Will Smith, as his lawyer renamed him for the trial, the grandson of the late ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy and his wife, Rose, the nephew of Senator Edward Moore Kennedy, the nephew of the slain president of the United States John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the nephew of the slain former attorney general of the United States Robert Francis Kennedy, the cousin of the Assistant District Attorney John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., the cousin of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, the cousin of Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II, the cousin of Rhode Island state representative Patrick Joseph Kennedy, the cousin of Maria Shriver, and the cousin of some twenty-five others of varying degrees of celebrity and recognizability.By comparison, Patricia Bowman, despite being the stepdaughter of the former chairman of the board of General Tire & Rubber Co. in Akron, Ohio, was a virtual nonentity.