Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Constitutional Choices

In Chapter two of Starr's book The Creation of Media he talks about the constitutions written during the Revolutionary era and how the help promote the use of the press. Even though their were many people against some of the issues of the Constitution we know that freedom of the press was kept in and is still highly valued today. With the addition of freedom of speech, including discussions about religion resulted in more amendments.

"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."


This became the standard and gave the press the freedom to explore and be
separate from the government and able to speak the truth. This was the beginning of what we know of the press today.

1 Comments:

At 12:35 PM, Blogger A. Mattson said...

A good, substantive post.

This amendment to constitution was added after the body of the constitution was written. Anti-federalists were afraid that a strong central state would seek to control the press and censor anti-government ideas. The First Amendment was written to prevent this. Was it effective? What about the Sedition act?

 

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