The First Amendment and journalism are the structural foundations of the house of democracy.
Without those, the house crumbles to the ground and the people are left in a lurch as to what to do with the once remains of everything they knew. Democracy is a government for the people, by the people and of the people. It's completely dominated not by the few in power, but by the large majority in most cases.
The overlay of the house is journalism. Journalism is the information presented to the public in an honest manner, with regard to facts rather than opinion. But neither exists well without the framework: the First Amendment. As written in the Constitution, the First Amendment reads: "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 amendment is an important one. It's the one that gives people, more importantly journalists, the ability to speak out against the government. In a democracy, it's important that government knows what the people do like and don't like. Without the freedom of speech and press, neither could be printed without the risk of jail. It's what allows us to say "I don't like the tax break deal that Obama made with the Republicans." Airing grievances against the government is what gave this country a start when the Declaration of Independence was written in 1776.
Another important idea is the ability for discussion between people with differing opinions. It is where journalistic bias most likely derives from, but it doesn't always diminish the viewpoint or story that is being delivered. Being able to express a differing opinion and be heard is almost like airing grievances without saying that the government is doing something wrong, but rather something different than you thought. It promotes discussion between people and journalists alike whose mission it is to take the information and present both sides of the argument. It does lend itself to criticism because of how certain sides present themselves but it does promote the ideas to a larger audience.
The most important reasoning for the First Amendment is information for the masses, rather than misinformation. Though, as of late, many people feel that journalists are purposefully participating in giving misinformation to the general public. One must remember the differences between opinion and news, in which the opinions are the ones under fire rather than the news. Not to say I don't believe that opinion pieces shouldn't be rooted in fact, but we have to differentiate between the opinion and news in order to inform better. Democracy thrives on an informed public, which is why journalism is so important to the two.
For now, the house of democracy stands for as long as we respect, not abuse the structure.
Q&A
1. Journalism is the telling of information to the masses is an honest manner, relying on facts more than opinions.
2. There are four models of journalism: advocacy, traditional-elite, public/civic and citizen 2.0. Advocacy relates to the social issues, informing people of the side the journalist supports. Traditional-elite is the most thought of model of journalism. It reports without bias and is simply fact. Public/civic deals with local issues that big media wouldn't usually deal with. Citizen 2.0 enhances the traditional media by enabling people to update major news stories quicker than the media can produce the stories.
3. Democracy is government created by people, for people and run by people.
4. Election politics is the idea of a blanket notion of promises. The politician says what they think most voters want to hear in order to get elected rather than hearing the voters and what they want. Public politics is much more involved with the people and the issues they want to deal with in the course of political action.
5. Lippmann. v. Dewey was a debate on representative government. Lippmann's side was that no person could ever be fully informed on all the issues they needed to know for properly electing people. Dewey argued that it didn't matter how much information the public knew, but rather that they were getting informed at all. He said that journalists were important to the process because they were important to giving information to the public.
6. "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."
7. All of these are important because they not only affect my life now, but the future. It gives me the freedom to write this blog, to protest the religious preachers who populate the campus and not practice Catholicism, even though I was raised as such.
8. Diversity is important because it enables discussion between people. It allows for varying mindsets to discuss issues in different manners while being protected under the First Amendment. While Christian may be the dominant religion, it's important to have people who are Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist and all sorts of other religions. The same applies to the other freedoms given under the amendment.
9. A journalist's job is to give all viewpoints to an issue. It may be easy to give time to the majority group on an issue, but it's more important to give people the other side of the issue to broaden their horizons. No one's voice is more important than another and as a journalist, it's important not to forget that fact.
10. I can't honestly say if I've ever had a moment that had diversity making a difference in my life. While I do subscribe to the ideas of listening to people and allowing people to speak, I cannot willingly partake in many discussions like this because people often do not share my viewpoint and find that they are right and everyone else is wrong. It's simply not true and makes discussing ideas in a civilized manner almost impossible.
