Contemplating Media & the First Amendment
In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, day after day articles about “fake news”, “election interference”, and the public messages of political leaders on various social media platforms make “front screen news.” Facebook and Twitter typically receive the most credit for their close association to the prevalence and rampant spread of mis- and dis-... Continue Reading →
The Black Lives Matter movement has been successful at drawing attention, albeit not necessarily good attention. A study done by Joy Leopold and Myrtle Bell looked at various mainstream newspapers to see how they covered BLM protests. Insert the protest paradigm. To make their work easier and help push out articles faster, journalists classify articles... Continue Reading →
Long before he was occupying the White House, Donald Trump’s public image was largely defined by tabloids. His brazen and brash behavior made him an easy target for gossipy entertainment news outlets. His reality television show “The Apprentice” (2004-2017) aired and rose to popularity during a time that can be considered the golden age of... Continue Reading →
Last Wednesday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that Twitter was going to stop running all political advertisements. “This isn’t about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It’s worth stepping back in... Continue Reading →
Can you blow my whistle, baby? No, but seriously, what does it take to be a whistleblower in an organization? Confidence? Morality? No regard for what you may lose? Reading about whistleblowers this week had me wondering if I would ever blow the whistle on an organization I was in - and I’m not sure... Continue Reading →
On October 31st, 2019, Aaron Sorkin, writer of “The Social Network,” wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg for The New York Times on his hypocrisy and the irony of his Georgetown speech on protecting free speech. Recently, Zuckerberg has been defending his company’s posting of false advertisements regarding political candidates under the guise of... Continue Reading →
If you ask someone whether whistleblowers are good or bad, you are going to get very different responses based on who you ask. For example, if you were to ask someone from the government, they would probably say bad. But if you were to ask the editor of a major newspaper, their opinion would be... Continue Reading →
Hate speech. Recently there’s been discussion in the media, questioning the First Amendment and the fact that it allows for hate speech. According to an article in the Washington Times on Thursday, 51% of Americans think that the First Amendment should be rewritten and 48% think that hate speech should be illegal. Those are significant... Continue Reading →
This week's reading material covered an important (and extremely relevant) topic: whistleblowers, leakers, and more specifically––the differences between them. While both whistleblowers and leakers are similarly motivated to hold institutions accountable for their actions, the way they're portrayed throughout media and treated by society, varies unfairly. What separates a whistleblower from a leaker? According to... Continue Reading →
We live in a quickly advancing world. It's changing so fast that it is hard to keep up. Technology has made most of our lives so much easier, but for a big chunk of journalism, it has landed lots of people getting laid off. News companies, especially newspapers, are declining. They are declining so bad,... Continue Reading →
Free Press Free Speech 