What do telecom regulations, mere puffery, harassing tweets, and publication bans have in common?

Well, they’re fairly hard to co-ordinate into an overarching treatise called “Media Law” for one thing.

Perhaps that’s why there are 225 titles in Westlaw’s Canadian Encyclopedic Digest — from Aboriginal Law to Youth Criminal Justice — but Media Law is not a title unto itself. What once encompassed the laws applicable to journalists, publishers, broadcasters and telecoms, now surrounds us all.

Today, almost anyone’s life (and problems) can be carried out (or exposed) through some form of media, and almost everyone carries on their person the technological means to transgress any number of media laws.

Similarly, nearly all practice areas feed (on or into) the growing corpus of media law. Some interesting new readings in our collection include Media Law for Canadian Journalists (2018) — nearly half of which is about reporting on the justice system and restrictions on coverage of the courts.

Another is the sixth edition of Advertising and Marketing Law in Canada (2019), which now includes reference to “social media influencers” as if to drive home just how non-exclusive media law itself has become.