Questioning the Media Chapter 16

“The writer A.J. Liebling once said that freedom of the press belonged only to those who owned one. Explain why you agree or disagree.”

I personally agree with this statement. In the years prior to the internet and the many different publications that we can have brought to our doorsteps, not just anybody could knock on the door and have the paper run their article. Journalists and others who gathered what was deemed news amassed their stories and information and the publication as a business decided what to run in their printed paper. The fact that the everyday person didn’t own a printing press was the very reason as to the restriction from a press. You can’t exactly take advantage of a resource that isn’t there. Yet, I see where there has to be a line drawn. I don’t own a firearm of any kind, but I feel that I should still have the right to own a gun. I technically have my 2nd amendment right to own that gun, as the same as I have the freedom of the press. Yet the fact that I own neither a gun nor a printing press is a statement as to my indifference to being entitled to exercise that freedom. I feel like it is saying that a person that cannot speak or communicate in any way, does not have the right to free speech. It doesn’t really matter because they cannot communicate anyway, but does it matter that the implication is that if they could speak, that they do have that right. I’m having a hard time communicating my exact idea on the matter because this is a one-sided blog. I talk you read. There is no real back and forth for me to make sure you’re understanding what I mean, but I’m going to hope that I have explained it enough so you can understand what I mean.

Anyone who wants to exercise your freedom of the press, drop on by sellpress.com...

In today’s culture though, there are so many technological advances that have turned almost every electronic device into a “press”. You want to express your ideas and feeling? Start a blog. That is your press. You hit publish and you have, for free, created a product that is pushed into the media at an infinite number of copies. You want your friends and fans to know what your up to? In 120 characters or less, you can “tweet” your own personal little installment to your 6 followers. Your Facebook even acts as a personal and recreational resume and yearbook. Your life is on that thing and to anyone you choose, you can push your product (albeit your Facebook page) into anyone on the internet’s face. I understand that as technologies change, that laws have to change as technology changes in some cases but I still believe that Liebling’s statement is still factual. Until you exercise and show that you have that right you might as well not even have it at all. Currently almost everything is a “press” in a sense, therefore everybody owns a press. It’s simply adapting your understanding as we progress as a society. Sure, everybody knows that you’re not supposed to discharge a firearm within so many hundred yards of a school or place of worship, but there’s no law against detonating a proton torpedo within school property. It’s just all using common sense to rationalize what makes sense.