The importance of freedom of speech
Happy Fourth of July week — a time for parades, fireworks and thinking about the First Amendment.
The Galt Fourth of July Parade, held on July 1, was a first time event for me.
Talk about taking a trip to the past! I remembered taking my three children to parades, sitting on the curb, waving to everyone and them waiting for the thrown candy! This parade was locals and parade enthusiasts gathering for a morning of fun — and a few lumps in the throat seeing the flags and military vehicles. Next year I’ll take my great grandchildren to this special experience.
Fireworks are always special as people gather for the Lodi Lake celebration. We lived on Vine Street and went to Vinewood Park for the show. Wonder if the trees are too large to view the fireworks now.
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The First Amendment is especially sacred to me as a journalist. In the past and definitely now, too many journalists are killed for trying to speak the truth. On May 15 a Mexican journalist was gunned down in his native Sinaloa state because he bravely exposed the drug cartels in that area. He is one of several journalists killed throughout the world because they tell the truth about their regimes and what is happening.
Recently, headlines talked about free speech, especially on college campuses. This Week magazine titled their story “The Free Speech Wars,” which seem to be happening in many universities. One friend asked, “What is this snowflake business? Are young people so fragile they can’t listen to any side but the one they believe?”
This concept of “one-sided” speech may be puzzling for the older generation who remembers attending high school and college and hearing many sides to an argument. I was in debate in high school and rapidly learned whether I was on the positive or negative side of a question, there were always arguments against it.
Today young people seem afraid to hear another side. Yes, there are extremes on the right and left, but even those sides must be given the right to speak. Our perspective might be different from our friend’s but we have to respect that opinion.
When I taught Communication Law at Pacific my students often said they couldn’t figure out where my political views lay. This was on purpose, because I wanted to pique their interest and, if need the need arose, defend a side so outrageous they would begin to argue. Obviously, I wanted to demonstrate a citizen’s rights under the First Amendment — even if that viewpoint is radical.
Case in point was the Skokie Supreme Court decision in which the Nazi Party had a right to stage a gathering in the town. You can imagine how shocked the students were as I argued the Nazi side. With what is happening in collegiate institutions today throughout the U. S. I’m afraid I wouldn’t teach for long.
My journalism students also were told that a great journalist needs to be as objective as possible. However, in the seventies, eighties and beyond (including today) that rule seems to have disappeared. My students would never have passed if they wrote the stories often written as news but with a definite bias that we read today.
Quill, the Society of Professional Journalists magazine, examined this problem after the 2016 election.
“One way to think of the job journalism does is by telling a community about itself, and on those terms the American media failed spectacularly this election cycle. That Donald Trump’s victory came as such a surprise — a systematic shock, really — to both journalists and so many who read or watch them is a marker of just how bad a job we did. American political discourse in 2016 seemed to be running on two self-contained, never overlapping sets of information.”
Journalists were not fulfilling their First Amendment rights of looking at all sides.
The Quill article then discusses the news on Facebook and other online sites.
As my Facebook journeys only view my friend’s postings, I wasn’t aware of other “news” stories being posted. The article said, “... Facebook needs to start to care about the truthfulness of the news that its users share and take in.”
The new writers at some online sites aren’t true journalists. They write only from their own perspective. They don’t interview people with opposing views. However, even the “true” journalists rarely interviewed the average person during the 2016 election — an interesting and also chilling comment.
We don’t want to lose our freedom of speech. How will we ever get it back? Responsibility is the key starting with each of us not believing everything we read or hear but searching for truthful answers — if that is possible.
Happy Fourth of July Week!!