Category 2: Sampling popular culture to portray societal conditions

When Jed Riffe examined an archeological controversy in Who Owns the Past?, he quoted magazines and a 60 Minutes program in reference to the historical moment of discovery of ancient remains.

He employed fair use because these quotes illustrated the reaction of the press at that historical moment.

In Money for Nothing, Kembrew McLeod argued that popular music stars were being chosen for their ability to cross-promote their work.

McLeod claimed fair use for advertisements, album covers and television programming because he was making a critique of the media products themselves, as examples of a cultural trend.

The Nova documentary "Cracking the Code of Life," about the search for the human genome sequence, quoted the film Gattaca.

The clip was included under fair use because the film illustrated popular attitudes toward the application of this scientific knowledge.

In Game Over, a documentary about the social effects of video games, Nina Huntemann quoted several video games to make the point that they have become even more realistic. The Media Education Foundation employed fair use, because these quotes provide a context for the filmmaker's critical analysis of this kind of media.

In the Frontline documentary "Merchants of Cool," director Barak Goodman quoted a teen horror movie, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, in a report on the marketing of popular culture to teens.

He invoked fair use because this horror film is used as a point of reference for a discussion on the effect of media, sex and violence on teens.