In our readings and in my studies of the history of media in this country, it has become apparent to me that not only is free speech in more danger now than ever due to governmental restrictions and corporate interests, but I am not sure there has ever been a time in American history where the true intention of the Founding Fathers have been realized in regards to the right of free speech. The forms of media that have grown around this dissemination of speech have each fostered their own methods of pleasing their customers and their investors, but since industrialization, citizens in this country have been much more interested in their leisure time than fulfilling their roles as participants in a working democracy. Television has done great things to help this immobilization effort, although it’s rein as the champion of media could well be coming to an end with the spread of the internet and world wide web.
It is doubtful to me that in an age when the telegraph had yet to be invented, our Founding Fathers could have imagined the ramifications of those words and the array of media outlets that would spring up within 250 years for those words to apply to. When America was fighting to gain our independence, printing shops run by British sympathizers were destroyed and owners harassed. The American public opinion has not changed much since that time, and with the exception of the penny press editors like Horace Greeley, the popular media in America has always catered itself to it’s clientele, with newspapers editors attempting to lead public opinion while mimicking it. Radio has similar biases, and as Bennett’s moon hoax and the War of the Worlds prove, both had a significant impact on their readers and listeners. Niether of these methods of information dissemination have had the impact or psychological control that television has.
In order to understand what free speech is, we must examine what it entails. Information can most easily be broken down into two categories, truth and falsity. It has been said that the conquering armies write the truth, and to some extent history has backed that claim, but truth, to me is both sides of the story. Truth, to me, is factual information from an unquestionable source. I believe this is also, for the most part, the American judicial systems take on this as well. Only after all the facts are known can the truth be ascertained. I believe that the free press was made to protect the rights of truth, and keep it from becoming the spoils of the conquering armies. The free press allows both sides to be told, and allows for the public to decide for itself what the truth is. It is intended to be a thorn in the side of the conquering army, the balance. Falsity is tolerated simply because it will always be proven false by the truth, that is inherent in a free press.
Look at the recent CBS debacle, within hours of the story, their entire news organization is forced into an offensive stance defending their sources and documents, eventually coming clean to the slight reprisal of the public. But, during the week or so while the publics attention was drawn, most people we satisfied to wait for the truth and not form opinions until the documents had been checked.
It is easy to simply blame the media for the loss of public interest in America’s political arena. Most governmental activities are rather mundane, and the ones that the networks choose to magnify are the stories that appeal to the better or worse judgement of their viewer, not necessarily those that the public needs to know. Stories that attract a large audience and cause the most emotional drama are brought to the fore, whether it is Gay Marrige, political hopefuls military record, or abortion, the media has a tendancy to concentrate on stories that polarize their audience, not create public civility. It is easy to fault the media with afflicting slanted and biased knowledge on a unassuming public, but the truth is that all media has tried to is properly represent the interests of the public, and the American public has a penchant toward sensationalism. The media has also done it’s best to represent the best interests of the public, while pandering to it’s purile tastes. The difficulty that we encounter is simply that, the media is a separate entity from culture, it is an observer of culture and therefore it represents the interests of the public without becoming involved in them. The news would be a dry cracker without the trust that we put into the people who deliver it, and their method of representing the news cannot be forever impartial. They are, after all human, and subject to the same inner emotional turmoil that all Americans are, whether it is patriotism or personal interest. Is it fair for us as a public to expect these women and men to be news spewing robots, devoid of feelings and ideals? I think the public has put too much on these people, entrusting them to bind to a moral code of public interest, but at the same time satisfy our hunger for entertainment. This is impossible, and I doubt that an entertainment media could ever truly cover the news properly, because news involves thought. News involves a personal processing of information before finally choosing an side or opinion, and most Americans are more likely to be thinking about the commercials during the news broadcast rather than vice versa. Comparing an age when newspapers arrived weeks after their publication and each bit of news was devoured and discussed, like when our country was founded, to the instantaneous accessability of modern day, our faith and trust in our newscasters seems to exist as another example of the American publics complacency and slothfulness.
While the government has strived to interprete what the founders meant by the first amendment, whether it comes to previous restraint, government regulation of airtime, rights to speech for schools, I feel like they are simply making another molding of interpretation. The fact that there has never been a means of communication that was accessable to all Americans and it is doubtful there was ever a time when every American wanted to be constantly involved in the news. Some stories, that touch everyones lives, Kennedy, Watergate, 9/11, often create a catylst for public opinion, but unless the story is big enough to encompass more than half the population, public self interest is never really engaged. The public is happy to assume that newscasters are opinion leaders and that it is the public’s duty to listen to the opinion makers and follow them. Somewhere, between the birth of our Country and the present day, the American public itself gave up it’s rights to free speech and the fundamental importance of public debate and opinion and decided to let other, more capapble people handle it, whether it is their political representatives or their media icons. The press, especially, has been raised to a level above the citizens, and in reality there is really no difference between the two. I don’t think that the press should have any more access to information than the public has because then the press becomes a sort of information filter, and the public loses some of it’s light. It is easy to look back through the last 100 years of constant media and see the regulation and opinion engineering that the public has allowed the media to get away with, from political engagements to the pursuit of the capitalistic American dream, the media of the 1900’s, even with governmental regulation, has had a disasterous effect on the lifestyles and intelligence of our citizens. Self-government and free speech can only be truly afforded to a people who understand the principles behind these concepts, and in a society where most people govern themselves by the commercial’s or characters they like, there is little to be said for self government.
Are our first Amendment rights being diluted? My question is, have they ever chrystalized in a way that we can point to and say “There…There is a perfect example of free speech and it’s importance.” The cases that we have read have only come to the judges because of grievances against certain speech, and the government has only ruled on speech that is possibly dangerous or false. There have been no attempts by either the Government or the citizens to promote the concepts of free speech and dissent in a way that is acceptable in society. This is also because of the shortsightedness of many Americans who are too involved with their 40 hour weeks and families to pay any attention to the world outside their life. This perhaps is the inevitable result of our prosperity, and our tendancies as humans to search for the easiest route to the answer. The ability of television and media to influence our lives comes as no surprise in retrospect, and since the inception of photography and television, it seems as though the public has become to be more aware of the repercussions of actions, and the government has had to become more accountable and honest with regards to information. The amount of information that we as citizens of not only this country, but the world have at our fingertips now is light years beyond that which can be offered by the networks, and the fact that we have the ability to tailor our consumption of media in whatever way suits our personal interests has created a new environment that free speech must protect. The difference is that most Americans have yet to fully take advantage of this service and further their involvment in issues that concern them. The internet is changing the face of information gathering and processing and the entire world will have to fall into line with regulations set in individual countries.
Recently, in japan, there have been a string of internet related suicides, where people have planned and carried out designs based on internet conversations. Would a newspaper offer this amount of free speech? Would a classified section accept an add for a person looking for other people to commit suicide with? Doubtful, and although it is an example that may have moral and ethical considerations, it is an example of how the internet has changed the playing field for free speech. While offering news and opinions from around the globe without media “filters”, the internet has become home to those alienated from corporate media and those who understand the power of information. As we begin to experiment with more restrictive forms of the internet,( the new project Internet 2, has been rumoured to involve thumbprint identification and P.A.T.R.I.O.T. 2 act protective measures) we begin to ask the question again, are we diluting free speech?
The internet offered a vast landscape of unaccountable name calling and plenty of space for unintelligent fightin words. It feels like the pubs of the early Americas, where ideas where discussed and formalities for speech were adopted. Where the concept of free speech arose from. And the internet differs from broadcast nedia, because not only do the American people own the airwaves, but the entire world, and the decisions that our government makes to regulate the internet effects other countries and their perceptions of free speech. Is it the unaccountability that promotes this type of speech? I think so, when you are able to say anything without fear of reprisal, then truly you are free to speak. For example, a common internet rumor is that President Bush has information regarding the whereabouts or even the possible capture of Osama Bin Ladin, but is waiting for the appropriate time in the election cycle to release this information. This may be a paranoid conspiracy theory, but once this theory is formulated and rumors begin, it is a justifieable question for the press to ask the President, based on the public interest. Would the press ask that question of the President, if only to get him on the record, or would the press shy away from such an explosive query? Would they fear the reprisal of a jilted administration? These are the questions that have forced me to believe that the internet is our only bastian remaining where every part of the American public can voice it’s opinion without fear, and if the truth spoken is loud enough, it will reverberate throughout the country. As we attempt to regulate it in a similar fashion to television and radio, people will be less likely to be comfortable voicing their opinions when they know there is accountability, they will mold them to better suit the climate of opinion and the limits that are set by regulation.
There are examples of what I believe are informative and educational programs on our airwaves, Washington Journal on c-span is a “talk” show where the days headlines are read and discussed by the general public, without the taint of partisanship, but shows like this are few and far between and the power that the celberity has to influence public opinion goes far beyond the public’s interest in influencing itself. Free Speech can only be realized when Americans believe and understand that it is an individual right, meant to apply to everyone in this country and also meant to provoke us into involving ourselves in the community. With media representatives doing the job for us, it is highly unlikely that the trend toward de-socialization will reverse. As long as we believe it is someone elses job to figure out what and who should be at the fore of our news consumption, we will continue to bandy around the issue of free speech as it only applies to other people, not to us. In our fragmented society, free speech can only be propagated by open and honest debate, and the more fearful we become of each other the less likely that exchange of ideas will be one without retribution. As we have seen, with the recent presidential debates, the truth, although it may be subjective and diverse, is best proven by the conviction of those who speak it, and that conviction will always find a home in popular support. Another good example of this is M.Moore’s Fahrenhiet 9/11, which has been scrutinized categorically, but touched off a debate on media accountability that has begun the slow crawl of the American public back to it’s responsibilities as citizens to keep informed and have facts to back up that information.
There will be a lot of rewriting to come, as media and information speed along into the future. The laws that were made in the thirties for radio regulation have very little bearing on the American public today, and as most laws are, they were meant to deal with a specific problem at a specific time. The government will continue to listen to the loudest voices in public opinion and conform to them, but it will surely blunder into unconstitutional territory once in a while, whether it is the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act or other laws designed to intimidate free speech, and that is when the American public needs to exercise it’s right to free speech and say the unpopular things, so that the governement can correct itself in accordance with public interest. Television and the great Anchor men will be replaced, and their replacements will be replaced, and information will still hunger for willing consumers, information will still exist no matter the communication method. We should realize and examine the flaws of our recent forms of dissemination and correct them so that the media does not control our lives, but the opposite. And of course, we must remain wary of possible government intercession.
-----Because they are focusing on public chat rooms, authorities are not violating constitutional rights to privacy when they keep an eye on the traffic, experts said. Law enforcement agents have trolled chat rooms for years in search of pedophiles, sometimes adopting profiles making it look like they are young teens.--------
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,65305,00.html
It is doubtful to me that in an age when the telegraph had yet to be invented, our Founding Fathers could have imagined the ramifications of those words and the array of media outlets that would spring up within 250 years for those words to apply to. When America was fighting to gain our independence, printing shops run by British sympathizers were destroyed and owners harassed. The American public opinion has not changed much since that time, and with the exception of the penny press editors like Horace Greeley, the popular media in America has always catered itself to it’s clientele, with newspapers editors attempting to lead public opinion while mimicking it. Radio has similar biases, and as Bennett’s moon hoax and the War of the Worlds prove, both had a significant impact on their readers and listeners. Niether of these methods of information dissemination have had the impact or psychological control that television has.
In order to understand what free speech is, we must examine what it entails. Information can most easily be broken down into two categories, truth and falsity. It has been said that the conquering armies write the truth, and to some extent history has backed that claim, but truth, to me is both sides of the story. Truth, to me, is factual information from an unquestionable source. I believe this is also, for the most part, the American judicial systems take on this as well. Only after all the facts are known can the truth be ascertained. I believe that the free press was made to protect the rights of truth, and keep it from becoming the spoils of the conquering armies. The free press allows both sides to be told, and allows for the public to decide for itself what the truth is. It is intended to be a thorn in the side of the conquering army, the balance. Falsity is tolerated simply because it will always be proven false by the truth, that is inherent in a free press.
Look at the recent CBS debacle, within hours of the story, their entire news organization is forced into an offensive stance defending their sources and documents, eventually coming clean to the slight reprisal of the public. But, during the week or so while the publics attention was drawn, most people we satisfied to wait for the truth and not form opinions until the documents had been checked.
It is easy to simply blame the media for the loss of public interest in America’s political arena. Most governmental activities are rather mundane, and the ones that the networks choose to magnify are the stories that appeal to the better or worse judgement of their viewer, not necessarily those that the public needs to know. Stories that attract a large audience and cause the most emotional drama are brought to the fore, whether it is Gay Marrige, political hopefuls military record, or abortion, the media has a tendancy to concentrate on stories that polarize their audience, not create public civility. It is easy to fault the media with afflicting slanted and biased knowledge on a unassuming public, but the truth is that all media has tried to is properly represent the interests of the public, and the American public has a penchant toward sensationalism. The media has also done it’s best to represent the best interests of the public, while pandering to it’s purile tastes. The difficulty that we encounter is simply that, the media is a separate entity from culture, it is an observer of culture and therefore it represents the interests of the public without becoming involved in them. The news would be a dry cracker without the trust that we put into the people who deliver it, and their method of representing the news cannot be forever impartial. They are, after all human, and subject to the same inner emotional turmoil that all Americans are, whether it is patriotism or personal interest. Is it fair for us as a public to expect these women and men to be news spewing robots, devoid of feelings and ideals? I think the public has put too much on these people, entrusting them to bind to a moral code of public interest, but at the same time satisfy our hunger for entertainment. This is impossible, and I doubt that an entertainment media could ever truly cover the news properly, because news involves thought. News involves a personal processing of information before finally choosing an side or opinion, and most Americans are more likely to be thinking about the commercials during the news broadcast rather than vice versa. Comparing an age when newspapers arrived weeks after their publication and each bit of news was devoured and discussed, like when our country was founded, to the instantaneous accessability of modern day, our faith and trust in our newscasters seems to exist as another example of the American publics complacency and slothfulness.
While the government has strived to interprete what the founders meant by the first amendment, whether it comes to previous restraint, government regulation of airtime, rights to speech for schools, I feel like they are simply making another molding of interpretation. The fact that there has never been a means of communication that was accessable to all Americans and it is doubtful there was ever a time when every American wanted to be constantly involved in the news. Some stories, that touch everyones lives, Kennedy, Watergate, 9/11, often create a catylst for public opinion, but unless the story is big enough to encompass more than half the population, public self interest is never really engaged. The public is happy to assume that newscasters are opinion leaders and that it is the public’s duty to listen to the opinion makers and follow them. Somewhere, between the birth of our Country and the present day, the American public itself gave up it’s rights to free speech and the fundamental importance of public debate and opinion and decided to let other, more capapble people handle it, whether it is their political representatives or their media icons. The press, especially, has been raised to a level above the citizens, and in reality there is really no difference between the two. I don’t think that the press should have any more access to information than the public has because then the press becomes a sort of information filter, and the public loses some of it’s light. It is easy to look back through the last 100 years of constant media and see the regulation and opinion engineering that the public has allowed the media to get away with, from political engagements to the pursuit of the capitalistic American dream, the media of the 1900’s, even with governmental regulation, has had a disasterous effect on the lifestyles and intelligence of our citizens. Self-government and free speech can only be truly afforded to a people who understand the principles behind these concepts, and in a society where most people govern themselves by the commercial’s or characters they like, there is little to be said for self government.
Are our first Amendment rights being diluted? My question is, have they ever chrystalized in a way that we can point to and say “There…There is a perfect example of free speech and it’s importance.” The cases that we have read have only come to the judges because of grievances against certain speech, and the government has only ruled on speech that is possibly dangerous or false. There have been no attempts by either the Government or the citizens to promote the concepts of free speech and dissent in a way that is acceptable in society. This is also because of the shortsightedness of many Americans who are too involved with their 40 hour weeks and families to pay any attention to the world outside their life. This perhaps is the inevitable result of our prosperity, and our tendancies as humans to search for the easiest route to the answer. The ability of television and media to influence our lives comes as no surprise in retrospect, and since the inception of photography and television, it seems as though the public has become to be more aware of the repercussions of actions, and the government has had to become more accountable and honest with regards to information. The amount of information that we as citizens of not only this country, but the world have at our fingertips now is light years beyond that which can be offered by the networks, and the fact that we have the ability to tailor our consumption of media in whatever way suits our personal interests has created a new environment that free speech must protect. The difference is that most Americans have yet to fully take advantage of this service and further their involvment in issues that concern them. The internet is changing the face of information gathering and processing and the entire world will have to fall into line with regulations set in individual countries.
Recently, in japan, there have been a string of internet related suicides, where people have planned and carried out designs based on internet conversations. Would a newspaper offer this amount of free speech? Would a classified section accept an add for a person looking for other people to commit suicide with? Doubtful, and although it is an example that may have moral and ethical considerations, it is an example of how the internet has changed the playing field for free speech. While offering news and opinions from around the globe without media “filters”, the internet has become home to those alienated from corporate media and those who understand the power of information. As we begin to experiment with more restrictive forms of the internet,( the new project Internet 2, has been rumoured to involve thumbprint identification and P.A.T.R.I.O.T. 2 act protective measures) we begin to ask the question again, are we diluting free speech?
The internet offered a vast landscape of unaccountable name calling and plenty of space for unintelligent fightin words. It feels like the pubs of the early Americas, where ideas where discussed and formalities for speech were adopted. Where the concept of free speech arose from. And the internet differs from broadcast nedia, because not only do the American people own the airwaves, but the entire world, and the decisions that our government makes to regulate the internet effects other countries and their perceptions of free speech. Is it the unaccountability that promotes this type of speech? I think so, when you are able to say anything without fear of reprisal, then truly you are free to speak. For example, a common internet rumor is that President Bush has information regarding the whereabouts or even the possible capture of Osama Bin Ladin, but is waiting for the appropriate time in the election cycle to release this information. This may be a paranoid conspiracy theory, but once this theory is formulated and rumors begin, it is a justifieable question for the press to ask the President, based on the public interest. Would the press ask that question of the President, if only to get him on the record, or would the press shy away from such an explosive query? Would they fear the reprisal of a jilted administration? These are the questions that have forced me to believe that the internet is our only bastian remaining where every part of the American public can voice it’s opinion without fear, and if the truth spoken is loud enough, it will reverberate throughout the country. As we attempt to regulate it in a similar fashion to television and radio, people will be less likely to be comfortable voicing their opinions when they know there is accountability, they will mold them to better suit the climate of opinion and the limits that are set by regulation.
There are examples of what I believe are informative and educational programs on our airwaves, Washington Journal on c-span is a “talk” show where the days headlines are read and discussed by the general public, without the taint of partisanship, but shows like this are few and far between and the power that the celberity has to influence public opinion goes far beyond the public’s interest in influencing itself. Free Speech can only be realized when Americans believe and understand that it is an individual right, meant to apply to everyone in this country and also meant to provoke us into involving ourselves in the community. With media representatives doing the job for us, it is highly unlikely that the trend toward de-socialization will reverse. As long as we believe it is someone elses job to figure out what and who should be at the fore of our news consumption, we will continue to bandy around the issue of free speech as it only applies to other people, not to us. In our fragmented society, free speech can only be propagated by open and honest debate, and the more fearful we become of each other the less likely that exchange of ideas will be one without retribution. As we have seen, with the recent presidential debates, the truth, although it may be subjective and diverse, is best proven by the conviction of those who speak it, and that conviction will always find a home in popular support. Another good example of this is M.Moore’s Fahrenhiet 9/11, which has been scrutinized categorically, but touched off a debate on media accountability that has begun the slow crawl of the American public back to it’s responsibilities as citizens to keep informed and have facts to back up that information.
There will be a lot of rewriting to come, as media and information speed along into the future. The laws that were made in the thirties for radio regulation have very little bearing on the American public today, and as most laws are, they were meant to deal with a specific problem at a specific time. The government will continue to listen to the loudest voices in public opinion and conform to them, but it will surely blunder into unconstitutional territory once in a while, whether it is the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act or other laws designed to intimidate free speech, and that is when the American public needs to exercise it’s right to free speech and say the unpopular things, so that the governement can correct itself in accordance with public interest. Television and the great Anchor men will be replaced, and their replacements will be replaced, and information will still hunger for willing consumers, information will still exist no matter the communication method. We should realize and examine the flaws of our recent forms of dissemination and correct them so that the media does not control our lives, but the opposite. And of course, we must remain wary of possible government intercession.
-----Because they are focusing on public chat rooms, authorities are not violating constitutional rights to privacy when they keep an eye on the traffic, experts said. Law enforcement agents have trolled chat rooms for years in search of pedophiles, sometimes adopting profiles making it look like they are young teens.--------
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,65305,00.html
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