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Civil Rights & Responsibilities / Stones & Bones /volume 10 number 5, May 2008 LIVE FREE OR DIE I. 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; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. “The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to choose the latter.” –Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Col. Edward Carrington, 6 January 1787 “The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.” –James Madison, Despite popular misunderstanding, the right to freedom of the press guaranteed by the First Amendment is not very different from the right to freedom of speech. The origins of them are nearly alike. They are lumped together in what is known as the freedom of expression portion of the first amendment. And although different in their own respective ways, they can sometimes be so intertwined that one could almost mistake the two clauses as the same thing. But here’s the major difference: freedom of the press allows an individual to express themselves through publication and dissemination. It also does not afford members of the media any special rights or privileges not afforded to citizens in general, thus making it both for the individual and the institution, and the only part of the constitution to do so. The stipulations put forth in the First Amendment regarding freedom of speech and press protect not only from Congress itself, but all forms of government whether they be local, state, or federal. The fact that they are separated in the First Amendment is no accident. Although the press is not guaranteed any more or less freedom under this clause than the populace at large, without it the press could not do its job effectively. As described by the columnist Walter Lippmann, free press isn’t a privilege but a necessity of the organic variety in a great society. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously stated in a 1974 speech that the First amendment was more like the fourth branch of government put in place to keep the other three in check. The first multipage newspaper printed in the Americas (while they were still under colonial rule) was called Publick Occurences Both Forreign and Domestick. Printed out of Boston, its first appearance was in 1690. Previous to this there had been broadsides, or single-page newspapers. The written word was the most important form of communication during colonial days, especially over long distances, as it was the primary way of passing along information outside of talking face to face. During the American Revolution, freedom of the press was a part of liberty that leaders of the Revolution were seeking to preserve. The Virginia Declaration of Rights announced that "the freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments." Like—or unlike—today, depending on whom you ask, the newsmen of the time were wary of bashing the government. Editorials weren’t done. In many countries, people do not have the freedom to say anything openly, especially those countries where the government runs all the TV stations and newspapers. Political observer of the time Alexis de Toqueville noted that “only a newspaper can put the same thought at the same time before a thousand readers.” This is much the same today with the Associated Press and other news sources. Some consider freedom of speech the distinguisher between a free country and a dictatorship. In 1971, a case went to the Supreme Court regarding the Pentagon Papers. These were a series of classified documents detailing how the government made defense decisions. The New York Times managed to get their hands on a leaked copy of these and started printing them. The federal government had a temporary restraining order placed on the Times until the Supreme Court could decide whether the Times had the right under the first amendment to continue publishing the series based on these papers. The Times, of course, won, as the government was burdened with justifying why the Times should not continue. In 2003-2004 the countries ranked as having the best free press were (in no particular order) Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, New Zealand, Latvia, the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland and Slovakia. The countries at the bottom of the list, those with least amount of freedoms during the same period, were mainland People’s Republic of China, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, Nepal, Burma, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. “The Body of B. Franklin, Printer. Like the Cover of an old Book. It’s Contents torn out, And Stript of it’s Lettering and Gilding Lies here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be lost. For it will as he believ’d appear once more. In a new and more elegant Edition Corrected and Improved By the Author.” Benjamin Franklin’s Epitaph, written in 1728 at age twenty-two.
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