In the old days, disagreeing with a powerful monarch could mean certain death. In 64 AD, Ancient Rome caught fire. Emperor Nero quickly blamed the Christians of Rome. He used this accusation to persecute the Romanian Christians horrifically. The right to voice an opinion in Rome belonged exclusively to Nero himself.
That right initially belonged to King George III until the American colonies declared independence in 1776. In 1789, the United States Constitution was ratified and took full effect. Ten amendments to the Constitution, called the Bill of Rights, were ratified within two years. The first of these amendments went like this:
"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."
The First Amendment protects five fundamental American rights: free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the freedom to petition the government.
Ultimately, the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, and the freedom of religion have crossed paths many times in recent years. The American people feel like they are left with a choice: allow freedom of speech and the freedom of the press or pursue freedom of religion. We're engaged in a war divided into two highly aggressive sides over a single paragraph. It almost seems ironic.
However, while the American media and American religious institutions are at odds nearly every day, the reality is that the First Amendment protects both...at least in the fundamental perspective of the First Amendment. While the media is protected in its ability to report the happenings of the day, its narrative and influence on public opinion give it even more power than originally intended. Has it possibly wandered outside its designed boundary lines? President Trump thinks so, as he is suing many major media outlets over their rhetoric towards him in the 2024 Presidential race.
Ultimately, this First Amendment argument boils down to those three major areas: free speech, religious freedom, and freedom of the press.
FREE SPEECH
The Constitution is very particular about freedom of speech. The United States is not Emperor Nero. The President of the United States is under oath to preserve, protect, and defend the freedom to express ourselves wholeheartedly. The same should be expected of the media, and the media never infringe on this...at least not in ways that technically violate the Constitution.
First of all, we need to understand what free speech is and what the media does. The freedom of speech is the right of Americans to express an idea openly. No law prohibits the right to speak your mind, and no law says everyone has to like what you say. The law does state that nobody can be punished for simply speaking their mind. There are disagreements about what people should and should be allowed to say publically in this world, but the idea is that the government shouldn't be allowed to regulate that.
However, there are ways to regulate speech without regulating public speech. For example, every business can fire you for saying something explicit or deeply offensive to someone else. You can't be racist, sexually inappropriate, or things like that. They have the ability to regulate private speech in order to protect the interests of the company. While that sort of regulation can be understandable for liabilities, it has opened the door to social influencing due to the emergence of social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter).
These online networking platforms have specific policies regarding the content that can and cannot be posted on their sites. You're not allowed to have anything that might be classified as explicit or disturbing to anyone who views them. It may come back to bite them in the future. For example, on December 31, 2017, famous YouTuber Logan Paul created a new low for content creators when he posted a video where he filmed a corpse in a Japanese forest commonly known for suicide. The policy is meant for situations like this, giving YouTube a legal reason to remove content matching the level of atrocity that Logan Paul reached with the highest level of stupidity we have seen from a content creator.
Unfortunately, the media does not consistently enforce these policies across the board. They allow the media free reign to report whatever they want, whether true or not. In 2019, the media reported that a bunch of Christian high school students from Kentucky, one of which was named Nicholas Sandmann, were on a school field trip to the March for Life. While there, Sandmann allegedly stood in the way of Nathan Phillips, a Native American man, as he was marching to the Lincoln Memorial while playing his drum. Sandmann's classmates were allegedly harassing Phillips and shouting slurs at him.
At least, that's what the media reported. By the next day, the families of the high school students had their personal information leaked online and were receiving death threats. Then, the truth came out. Extended and unedited footage of the incident showed that Phillips, instead of taking a clear path toward the Lincoln Memorial, walked up to Sandmann, banged a drum in his face, and then went on national television later that night and lied about what happened. He destroyed a young boy's future, and the news media let him get away with it. This was allowed to be broadcast all over social media.
Yet, just a year later, in 2020, a scandal involving then-former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, emerged. The question about what was on Hunter Biden's laptop was supposed to be broadcast across social media, but it wasn't. Social media companies blocked major news outlets that ran the story and private Americans who knew about the story from posting about it on their website. Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey were dragged into the Republican-controlled Senate and chastised for their actions.
The question of the matter is whether or not these organizations respect and support the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. To that end, I would say that they don't have to. They are private organizations that can make their own rules that operate within their own jurisdiction. This is not illegal. Americans can express themselves freely and willingly outside of corporate influence, and it's illegal to stop them. However, whether or not these companies always follow their own rules is a completely different story. The problem, therefore, is not with social media; rather, it lies with society's continued reliance on social media for transparency.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Religious institutions in the U.S. can be found on nearly every street corner. Whether it's a religious school, a religious church, or a religious business, they are everywhere, and they are allowed per the Constitution. Unfortunately, different religions have come under fire in recent years. We saw an example of this with the Covington Catholic High School students who were falsely accused of harassing a Native American. Catholics were being called "racist" and "hateful." They have a hard enough time finding their way through high school walls, but now we're going to assume the worst of them regardless?
To clarify, most Americans believe that religion brings more good than harm. That's why we still have the First Amendment and why religious people are still allowed to speak their minds openly. Yet most Americans also believe that religion should be left out of politics. They believe that because church and state are separate, religious beliefs should be left out of political ideologies altogether.
The point of the matter is that religion and the right to practice religion should actually factor into politics. Your political beliefs can and should be based on your religion, but governance should not be based on religion. There is a clear difference. Americans don't understand that. Instead, religion is supposed to be overruled by the state rather than vice versa.
It took a visit to the Supreme Court to allow a religious bakery to refuse to cater a same-sex wedding. That's the clearest illustration of the problem. The state tried to force the bakery to be unbiased toward its customers regardless of the religion it practiced. However, a religion cannot be unbiased or it must give up the practice. That is the whole point of a religion. It must refrain from involvement in things not in line with what the religion teaches. Thus, the separation of church and state is impossible from the public's general interpretation. The separation of church and state means that religious institutions have a right to refrain from involvement, and the public can ignore religion if it so chooses.
The media tends to ignore the freedom of religion quite a bit with some of their narratives, so I don't think it upholds this Constitutional idea.
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
The media has multiple ways of influencing public opinion. For starters, they are the controllers of information. The public counts on the media to tell us what is happening in the world daily. If the media becomes untrustworthy, transparency becomes a mere myth.
However, the media are consistently biased towards either side of the aisle. ABC and FOX will never see eye to eye, nor will their viewers. This could create a situation where the United States will never truly know what's really going on, but it only does so in certain instances. We all accepted the results of the 2024 Presidential Election a couple of weeks ago. Donald Trump won a four-year term and will serve as President until January 2029. That is something we all agree is fact. However, some ideas are assumed based on party lines, such as the United States' role in ongoing international conflicts.
As essential as transparency and common ground are to free speech, the problem with the media is really their attitude towards the other side's opinion. We see conservative political podcasts trashing liberal political figures on a daily basis, and we see liberal media personalities mocking and making fun of conservative politicians in the same way. The people who control the narrative aim to enhance the emotions of fear and anger in Americans to gain viewership and support for their side of the aisle. We saw this earlier in the same Nicholas Sandmann case. The media were chastising the Covington Catholic High School students to create sympathy towards their views and anger towards conservative views, regardless of the truth of the outcome.
Yet, freedom of the press has nothing to do with truth, though the media should strive to report only the truth. The freedom of the press allows the press to report whatever it has to to keep the people informed. Yes, inaccuracies and mistakes will happen occasionally, and apologies and repercussions will follow. The freedom of the press doesn't hold the press to the standard of truth; rather, it allows the press to pursue truth regardless of the outcome.
However, the question is whether or not the media intends to pursue absolute truth, and it absolutely does not. Everyone knows that the media always puts their own spin on things. That's not a media interested in absolute truth. Americans are normally confused about numerous situations when they see two sides of the aisle fighting about who's right. That's not transparency. That's the destruction of knowledge.
CONCLUSION
The First Amendment is supposed to protect expression, belief, and knowledge in America. Unfortunately, the media has its own agenda that prohibits them from pursuing these fundamental American rights. They respect the First Amendment and allow for its protection when it benefits their desires, but they do not represent the First Amendment through their actions. This nation is not an empire. We will never be governed by a man as powerful as Nero. We deserve free expression and should strive for it daily. Relying on social media for information may have been the answer fifteen years ago, but it is not the answer today.
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