1st Amendement

9 Pages 2360 Words

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” ).# Throughout the history of the United States of America, the Constitution has always been put to the test. In the colonial years our forefathers originally created the first amendment to allow colonists to speak out against the British. In the 17th century, the press was accurate and informative with little competition among journalists. But however times have changed and competition is becoming fierce and today in the 21st century the circumstances are different and the stakes are higher. Due to this incredibly high amount of competition among journalists today, the information can be exaggerated or even shaped to fit the opinion of the writer or his/her company in order to capture a viewing audience. Noam Chomsky, an established political thinker and magazine editor, stated in an interview in 1990:
“If you follow mainstream media with great care and skepticism and approach it with the right understanding of how propaganda works, then you can learn a lot. The normal reader is fooled into believing the propaganda that they are being fed. The media shapes and selects the events and offer their biased opinions to the mass audiences.” “The media modifies information to fill what they believe the public’s interest is.”#

The media is everywhere you turn. You can find the media in many different forms such as television, radio, magazines, newspapers, and now on the information superhighway, the Internet. In the process of capturing ratings, who is the media hurting more? Is it the people who are accused of a crime, such as O.J. Simpson, or is it the American public’s own fault for believing everything they hear? In my view, some limitations greatly need to be placed upon the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution in regard to freedom of the press bec...