Media Law and Lit

As we have talked in class this year about the First Amendment, we have gone over all the different aspects of it, and why they are each individually important.  This week, we have gone over the Eight Values of Free Expression, which are all detailed in the link below, and all cover different aspects of why free expression is essential to a functioning society.  The one that stuck out to me most, and the one I believe is most important, is the idea of Promote Tolerance.  I believe the freedom of speech is the bedrock on which the American Experiment was laid, and without it we would not have lasted as long as we have.  The idea of Promote Tolerance is the idea that the First Amendment protects all speech that doesn't incite action, even speech that we don't like.  The idea of the government making rules on regulating what we can and can't say seems blatantly wrong to me, and to virtually all Americans, but the rest of the world is beginning to disagree with that.  More an

  Over this past weekend, one of the most anticipated movies of the year, Joker , arrived in theaters.  Met with a staggeringly good reception by its audiences, as it is currently sitting at a 9/10 and 90% on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes respectively, as well as early calls for leading star Joaquin Phoenix to receive an Oscar for his work, it seems like Joker should be the media's favorite thing to talk about for a few weeks.  Now, while it is seemingly one of the main points the media has been talking about, it has not been for the reason many would assume.  While there are some articles analyzing the movie and the work    the cast and crew put into it, the majority of the articles put out on the movie are ones that speak of the danger it poses to society.  How a movie in and of itself poses a threat to society, I haven't the slightest clue, but the media seems to think it knows something that the audience who went to see the movie doesn't.  In mine, and every other movi

  For class this past week, we were divided up into groups and each presented on a form of technology that has changed or helped progress communication.  I chose the Personal Computer.  As I researched all the history of the personal computer, I was reminded how far we've come in the advancement of technology over the past half a century.  People from my generation, myself included, take the fact that we have access to computers and the internet whenever we want it for granted, and doing this research presentation really reminded me of that.  Without going into a full history of the PC, it started out as a glorified calculator.  The idea of a machine   that could send messages, play games, or even just have a color screen was foreign to early PC developers.  It came in pieces that you had to assemble yourself, and when it was complete, it looked like a pile of thrown together parts when compared to todays computers.  But, in a day and age when computers normally took up an

Media is a good thing.  It has brought people together, changed technology for the better, and created new ways for people to learn and express themselves.  While I believe media is great, and technology needs to continue to be pushed in order for innovation to rise, I am beginning to see a trend of media being used to create division, instead of being used to bring people   together.  While I'm sure this has been going on for longer, the start of this trend of using media and new technology, specifically social media, to look for ways to attack one another, began when Trump became president.  Weather you are for or against him, it is hard to deny two things: 1, he has very little control over his mouth, and 2, that people started believing more and more that in order to have a discussion with someone, you have to have the same beliefs.  With the seemingly 24 coverage of the president, on CNN and Fox especially, it seems as if people enjoy arguing just for the sake of it.