Regulating of Broadcasting Media
This is an excerpt from the paper...
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is in charge of regulating the American broadcasting media such as radio and television. One thing that the FCC seeks to insure is that the First Amendment rights to free speech of broadcasters do not impinge upon the Fourth Amendment rights to privacy of individual citizens. In this regard, it may be noted that radio and television broadcasters do not have the same freedom of speech that newspapers and the other print media have. From the very beginnings of commercial radio broadcasting at the turn of the twentieth century, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently ruled that there are inherent differences between the broadcasting and print media. In particular, it has been argued that "whereas newspapers and magazines were attempting serious discussion of the news, the medicine men and entertainers of radio, by contrast, were aiming to alleviate the boredom of the public and exploit its naivete" (Powe 12). Because of this opinion, broadcasting has never been given the same level of freedom which is enjoyed by the press. Although freedom of the press is explicitly provided in the Constitution's First Amendment, the federal government has taken upon itself the task of regulating the broadcast media in order to help protect the rights to privacy of the American people. This discrepancy has been caused by the view that broadcasting, as a new, electronic medium, is somehow more potentially intrusive into the private lives of indi
. . .
onstitution" (Goode 20). As a result of these interpretations, both the freedom of speech and the right to privacy as contained in the Bill of Rights have been reinforced in American law. In addition, the states are generally required to go along with federal rulings on exactly what is meant by those rights.
It is for this reason that the federal government, including the Federal Communications Commission, has the power to interpret the rights of broadcasters throughout the nation. Since the origins of broadcasting in the early twentieth century, both the government and the courts have considered broadcasting as a new, unknown medium in contrast to the old, familiar medium of the press. During the early 1900s, the Supreme Court used the wording of the Fourteenth Amendment to give greater freedom of speech to the print media. Thus, in the 1920s, the Supreme Court decided "that freedom of speech and of the press--which are protected by the First Amendment from abridgement by Congress-- are among the personal rights and liberties protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the states" (Faber and Faber 210). During that same period, however, the Supreme Court also took steps toward limiti
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Supreme Court, Fourteenth Amendment, Faber Faber, Ninth Amendment, Bill Rights, Fourth Amendment, Communications Commission, Fourteenth Amendments, Amendment Constitution, Constitution's Amendment, freedom speech, supreme court, fourteenth amendment, print media, federal government, bill rights, privacy individual, speech broadcasters, freedom speech broadcasters, radio television, freedom press, wording fourteenth amendment, precedence freedom speech, federal communications commission, motion picture newsreels,
Approximate Word count = 2045
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
More Essays on Regulating of Broadcasting Media
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
