TV and Freedom of Speech
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The First Amendment to the Constitution is not a neat and tidy matter. Freedom of speech is actually a complicated business, particularly in the political arena, and freedom of speech often clashes with good taste and seemingly even with good sense. This is one of the reasons freedom of speech was included in the Bill of Rights, to assure that it would be protected from the desire of the majority to be free from hearing certain messages. Many First Amendment arguments involve issues such as pornography or commercial advertising, and these discussions usually begin with the idea that the Founding Fathers certainly meant for the first Amendment to apply to political speech even if other sorts of speech might be questionable. Yet, we allow political speech as well to be restricted, as can be seen in the present political season. Television is the primary medium for political communication today, and there should be no restrictions at all on political discourse on television.Such restrictions are being applied in a selective manner which generally sets station managers up as arbiters of taste, accuracy, and acceptability. The selectivity of their actions occurs not only because of what ads are allowed on the air and which are prevented from airing are decisions they take upon themselves, but also because some types of political advertising cannot be subject to these types of decisions. There are rules set forth by the FCC and Congress to prevent stations from exercising s
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nagers who rejected the ad stated that the ad would not be shown because it was "insensitive and inflammatory to Los Angeles' community." The manager further indicated that the decision not to air the ad should not be construed as a political statement and that the station had not taken a stand on Amendment F and that the station was running another "No on F" ad without the riot footage (Sahagun, 1992: B1, B2).
Yet, the effect of the station's action is to take a political stand by curtailing the rights of those who have paid for the ad and who have a political statement to make. It may be understandable that the station is sensitive on the matter of the riots and fears the response of the public, but still this is not a decision the station should be allowed to make. This is not really a clear-cut issue because opposing First Amendment rights are brought into conflict here. Wagman (1991) writes:
There appears to have been a clear-cut distinction in the minds of the framers of the Bill of Rights between free speech and freedom of the press. But, by and large, the legal development of both over the past two hundred years has been coordinate. Courts interpreting the First Amendment have often tended to treat the two freedoms
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1345
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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