Cartoons, such as the one above, are published in newspapers across the country because of freedom of the press. Without this freedom, reporters and cartoonists are unable to critic the news and tell their audience of how it affects all of them. The freedom of the press is always changing. Is there an absolute definition? No. As the definition of the press changes, the government has to figure out ways to make sure that the definition of this freedom is always under their control.

The freedom of the press as we know it that was taught to us was first created in the Bill of Rights, but it was really before the Bill of Rights that the freedom of the press came into existence. This freedom was created by the states in their constitutions before the United States had won its independence. The Bill of Rights was not just a list of ideas that carried over from prerevolutionary times; it was a way to recognize that the community was a sum of all its members (Hocking 11).

The First Amendment and the Sixth Amendment have had a running battle over the right to a free trial and the right to free speech in a trial. If a journalist refuses to name sources it is because there isn’t a source to name and so it forces journalists to have one source on the record for libel cases or they should be prepared to pay libel damages (Lorente 1). Libel is when printed words, picture or other form besides spoken word and gestures are defamation. The Supreme Court still has yet to make a decision about the revealing of sources by journalists in any form of legal proceeding.

Not until the middle of the twentieth century did the Supreme Court interpret the First Amendment as guaranteeing a right to publish, and today federal law still lags behind the states in its failure to protect journalists from revealing confidential sources in legal proceedings, (Mathewson 1).

The states have proven to be better adapters to the changing of the freedom of the press, whereas the federal government still seems to be lagging behind.

Today’s generation has been useful for informing the public and has shown massive growth in the First Amendment. Even though it seems as though the public knows everything about the history of the First Amendment, most people do not.

The twentieth century strengthening of the First Amendment, and this continuing limitation, both serve to underscore important facts little understood by the general public and even journalists: it was the states not the federal government, that created freedom of the press, totally without precedent, (Mathewson 1).

This thought presents itself as a reason for students in school and people studying journalism to know what the history of the freedom of the press is and that it was the states not the national government that first had control of the definition of the freedom of the press. “As press organizations continue to find themselves legally accountable for a variety of activities, Constitutional theorists have feverishly debated the role of the free press in a democracy,” (Yalof and Dautrich 20).  This debate is because “the media—especially the people who run it—have lost touch with reality,” (Applegate, 89). The freedom of the press would not be as strong as it is today without the role that the states have played in its development and there is hope that it will develop to be even stronger because of the role that the states have played.

Freedom for the Thought that We Hate is a book by Anthony Lewis that acts as a history of the press and speech clauses in the First Amendment and how the way we understand those words has changed over a span of nearly 220 years (Lorente 1). There is no absolute definition of freedom of the press. Hugo Black and William Douglas argued that the First Amendment meant what it said, while Chief Justice Burger said that the Supreme Court has not given the press any special privileges (Applegate 82).

“The Supreme Court, however, rarely agrees unanimously on the extent of legislative action in this area, and the differing points of view expressed by the justices generally reflect differing opinions on just what the men who wrote the First Amendment had in mind,” (Hatchen 4).

This thought has lead to the concept of the Supreme Court determining what the definition of freedom of the press and throughout the years the different justices on the Supreme Court have viewed the First Amendment differently. “Lewis makes the case that today’s view of the First Amendment came about through the courage of individuals willing to risk their freedom and judges willing to risk the public’s ire,” (Lorente 1).  If there were not journalists and judges that were willing to risk everything then the definition of freedom of press that we have today would not be in existence.

Everyone must follow the rules of the government. They are the law and one of the benefits of democracy. Democracy attempts to control, but no overpower, the population of the country. “For all Americans, the body of the Supreme Court decisions on freedom of the press, in addition to being law, is a precious lode of political theory, of social commentary, and of the history of free journalism,” (Hatchen 15). Newspapers are a way that the public gets to speak their own opinions. Since the establishment of the freedom of the press, everyone who is able to write is given a chance to share what they think and why they think that. “With printing, a single private voice could be carried to a nation,” (Hocking, 1). As Hocking says, one voice can be carried to a nation through the written word and today with the help of technology and the Internet a single voice can be heard in many nations across the expanse of the world.

As a society we need to acknowledge the fact that “a free press is not a passing goal of human society, it is a necessary goal,” (Hocking 194). A free press needs to be something that we cannot let slip through our fingers. It is important to know that we want the freedom of the press to reach everywhere in the world besides just existing in the United States. The press has been considered, especially in the United States, “as a modern-day whipping boy for frustrated citizens,” (Yalof and Dautrich 1). The press is considered a public forum, but it is believed that the public forum that newspapers create is just an illusion for the public and it masks the fact that the government is really in control. To “be free is to have the use of one’s powers of action (1) without restraint or control from outside and (2) with whatever means or equipment the action requires,” (Hocking 54).  The government is the control that is outside of that determines whether or not the press is free or not and the press has all the means that it needs to be active. It has the companies, the printers, the staff, the means in which a paper should run have been established and thus give to a definition of a free press.

The First Amendment is the guiding post that exists for freedom of the press. “The First Amendment is old, yet its words and the meanings in them have been renewed and revitalized by decisions of the Supreme Court,” (Hatchen 3). This statement verifies why there is no absolute definition because with each decision that the Supreme Court makes the words that were written by the Founding Fathers about freedom of the press renewed and revitalized.

The Supreme Court is the main decision maker when it comes to what the definition of the freedom of the press. They determine exactly what it means in several types of situations. Some of the cases that the Supreme Court has had to make decisions regarding freedom of the press are the cases of Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, Globe Newspaper Co. v. Superior Court, Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, and Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation. Some of the more important cases include Near v. Minnesota, New York Times Co. v. United States, Branzburg v. Hayes, and Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission (Lively). The Supreme Court has decided whether the state may restrain publication of a newspaper that published defamatory and scurrilous stories in the case of Near v. Minnesota. The courts also determined whether a publication of a classified document on the Vietnam War could be prevented in the case of New York Times v. United States.  In the Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission case, the Supreme Court determined whether or not a federal rule requiring broadcasters to balance points of view on controversial issues is constitutional. In the case of Branzburg v. Hayes the Supreme Court decided whether or not the First Amendment protects a news reporter from having to testify before a grand jury. This leads the continuing battle that is occurring between the Sixth Amendment and the First Amendment.

The Constitution has been unable to come towards an end to the conflict between the media’s right to freedom of expression, which has been laid out in the First Amendment, and the right that a defendant has to a fair trial, which has been laid out in the Sixth Amendment (Phillipson 1). The media, in high profile court cases, exposes the public to the real personalities of the defendants, the plaintiffs and show what a court case is like; however, “every scrap of…evidence, inadmissible or not, is leaked, stolen, or otherwise ferreted out and repeatedly published or broadcast,” (Phillipson 1). This poses the question of whether or not having media involved in court cases is fair to the defendant, whether it is a high profile case or not. Judges have the hardest time in court cases. Judges, when presiding over high profile cases are in denial about their inability to rid juries of bias and argue the role that the media plays in critiquing the criminal-justice system, even though it is attacking the integrity of the system that the judges work for (Phillipson 1). The Supreme Court has had to face a large number of Constitutional disputes that in some way involve the right of freedom of expression since World War I (Hatchen 6). These freedom of expression cases that the courts have had to deal with may be excessive in number, but together they bring the courts closer to an absolute definition for what the freedom of the press really is and it give the public a chance to know what the right to freedom of the press stands for.

Even though there have been many court cases that determine what freedom of the press really is, but since the establishment of freedom of the press there have been threats to what makes freedom of the press free and one of those threats is censorship. Censorship can be seen in several areas of journalism ranging from high schools to colleges and even to the professional level. Censorship in the school level is one of the areas that it is more commonly seen. That is because the publication is secondary to the class. Advisors, those that are in charge of student run newspapers, are the ones that are punished for their decisions about what goes into the paper and if they make poor decisions then they are the ones taking the blame. Advisors have the job to oversee and they function as mentors to the staff, they do not want to be considered censors. They do not want to make anyone feel like the work that they are putting out is not good enough to be a part of the final product. The College Media Advisor’s Code of Ethical Behavior says that student media should not have any external interference designed to control the content and it is the advisors job to protect their independence (Wicklein 4).

There are many critics of the media. They are either people that get paid for it or the everyday people that know more information about the media and feel that they can share their knowledge with the people around them in a more informal way. “Critics of the media have interpreted these cases to be symptomatic of an overall shift in the public’s positive understanding of the role played by the press in a democracy,” (Yalof and Dautrich 4). The media in the United States has a tendency to be focused on the negative things that are occurring in throughout the nation thus giving the public a reason to believe that the news has a negative connotation to it and that there is a hidden agenda. “According to the Associated Press, the top ten news stories of the year [1994] were: the murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman and the O.J. Simpson charge, the Republican Congressional victories in November, baseball strike, Susan Smith drowns sons, Tonya Harding and the Nancy Kerrigan attack, Aristide’s return to Haiti, universal health insurance, the Northridge, California, earthquake, the tragedy in Rwanda, and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” (Jensen, 305). Even though those were the top ten stories of the year there were ten other stories that were not run for the public to see they were “the deadly secrets of the occupational safety agency, the powerful group of ultra-conservatives has secret plans for our future, the secret Pentagon plan to subsidize defense contractor mergers, the poisoning the public with toxic incinerators, the EPA retreats on Ozone crisis, the 1947 AEC memo reveals why human radiation experiments were censored, the 60 billion pounds of fish wasted annually, the return of tuberculosis, the Pentagon’s mysterious HAARP project, and the news media masks spousal violence in the ‘Language of Love,’ ” (Jensen 306-316). These issues may seem unimportant now, but at the time they could have lead to controversy among the people and the government stopped these articles from being run and focused on the issues that became the top ten stories of the year. “Although influences or threats, such as businesses, advertising, and specific organized groups among others, exist, the biggest influence or threat is unquestionably the government,” (Applegate 79). No matter what the public tries to believe about the press the government will always be the number one influence and the number one threat to the freedom of the press that is defined in the First Amendment.

Throughout the years as the freedom of the press has changed, the government has had to adapt to the changes so that the rules the government creates run alongside of the First Amendment and what the Founding Fathers determined what the definition of the freedom of the press to be. The history of the First Amendment has lead to a definition that is not absolute and forces the Supreme Court to define what freedom of the press is in different situations. The Supreme Court cases that have occurred over the years have helped five a basis for a definition of freedom of the press, but there still is nothing that is absolute. Censorship and threats to the freedom of the press have forced editors and other reporters to focus on certain issues and maintain their objective ways. There is no guideline that every reporter or newspaper has to follow making it difficult for the public to truly know what freedom of the press is.

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