First Amendment: An Open Question

 

The First Amendment is the foundation of an open society. Two of the five protections guaranteed by the First Amendment -- freedom of speech and freedom of the press -- help ensure that we provide citizens with a "marketplace of ideas" free from censorship. Yet the right to free expression often comes into conflict with other rights, especially when it infringes on the safety or morality of others. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre, for example, is not protected by the First Amendment. Neither is child pornography or material that is considered obscene in nature. This is why the First Amendment is not just a static document that was written by our forefathers over 200 years ago. Because society and technology change and evolve, the First Amendment is continually challenged by cases that need to be interpreted by the courts.


Click here to access the link to the T-shirt story we discussed in class. Does it meet the Tinker standard of "substantial disruption"? Does the school have the right to forbid this 6th grade student from wearing an anti-abortion shirt? Or should he have a right to wear it under the First Amendment? You be the judge.

The First Amendment is often problematic because it leaves questions of exactly what is protected speech open to debate. Yet the many freedoms it guarantees far outweigh its flaws. Here is a good example that illustrates why. A Florida pastor recently stirred up tremendous controversy when he threatened to burn copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, to protest plans to build an Islamic center in New York City near where terrorists brought down the World Trade Center nine years ago. He later backed out of his threat. Under the Constitution, he does have the right to burn the Quran. But should he? Read this column for an interesting analysis of the incident.

The Only Thing Certain is Change

Welcome to a new school year! And welcome, young journalists, to Waldsmith's Dispatch, our journalism class blog. I began this blog in the fall of 2009 and it goes on hiatus when our semester-long class is over. I'm excited to get the blog up and running again because it works as a great tool to accompany and emphasize issues covered in class, as well a place to share your thoughts and comments.
Some of the posts will be "greatest hits" of earlier posts; others will be brand new. So here are some questions to ponder.

Are newspapers a dying breed? It would seem so. As we've discussed in class and as chapter 4 in your textbook points out, traditional newspapers are fighting to survive and scrambling to adjust to new technology to meet the needs of a new generation of readers who are more likely to get their news from an iPod or cell phone.

On the other hand, journalism itself isn't dying. Only its mode of delivery is changing and adapting. Click here to read a recent Time magazine article about the closing of The Ann Arbor News. It's not just the story of another newspaper closing its doors. What makes The Ann Arbor News story unique is that, unlike many other newspapers, The A2 News was not forced to stop its presses. Instead, it deliberately shut down so that it could launch a new online model. What do you think of its decision?

 
What about the trend of citizen journalism? These days, anyone can post anything on the Internet. As we saw in the For Neda documentary, ordinary citizens as well as journalists were able to use cell phones and social networking sites like Twitter to report news that would have otherwise been suppressed by the Iranian government. While the digital revolution has enabled us to have incredible opportunities and resources at our fingertips, it has also spawned problematic trends. How, for example, do we sift through it all? How will young people, in particular, know the difference between legitimate news sources and biased or unsupported propaganda? There's a lot of garbage out there.

Does the world still need professionally trained journalists? As Sarah Palin would say, you betcha. While it's wonderful that anyone can snap pictures of breaking news, for example, and post them on the web, it would be foolish or even dangerous to abandon journalism's watchdog role to the bloggers and citizen journalists of the world. Read these two articles from Time magazine to consider two different viewpoints.

 

Click here to read "It's all about us". Then click here to read "Enough about you".


Photos courtesy of Time. These images appear under the legal concept of Fair Use in copyright law. Fair use allows the reproduction of copyrighted material for certain purposes without obtaining permission and without paying a fee or royalty. Purposes permitting the application of fair use generally include review, news reporting, teaching, or scholarly research.