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Post by pieter on Feb 5, 2022 7:38:54 GMT -7
 www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/our-government/the-constitution/The First Amendment The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws which regulate an establishment of religion, or that would prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.
The clauses of the amendment are often called the establishment clause, the free exercise clause, the free speech clause, the free press clause, the assembly clause, and the petition clause.
The First Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, originally restricted only what the federal government may do and did not bind the states. Most state constitutions had their own bills of rights, and those generally included provisions similar to those found in the First Amendment. But the state provisions could be enforced only by state courts.
The Bill of Rights was proposed to assuage Anti-Federalist opposition to Constitutional ratification. Initially, the First Amendment applied only to laws enacted by the Congress, and many of its provisions were interpreted more narrowly than they are today. Beginning with Gitlow v. New York (1925), the Supreme Court applied the First Amendment to states—a process known as incorporation—through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the Court drew on Thomas Jefferson's correspondence to call for "a wall of separation between church and State", though the precise boundary of this separation remains in dispute. Speech rights were expanded significantly in a series of 20th and 21st century court decisions which protected various forms of political speech, anonymous speech, campaign finance, pornography, and school speech; these rulings also defined a series of exceptions to First Amendment protections. The Supreme Court overturned English common law precedent to increase the burden of proof for defamation and libel suits, most notably in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). Commercial speech, however, is less protected by the First Amendment than political speech, and is therefore subject to greater regulation.
The Free Press Clause protects publication of information and opinions, and applies to a wide variety of media. In Near v. Minnesota (1931) and New York Times v. United States (1971), the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protected against prior restraint—pre-publication censorship—in almost all cases. The Petition Clause protects the right to petition all branches and agencies of government for action. In addition to the right of assembly guaranteed by this clause, the Court has also ruled that the amendment implicitly protects freedom of association.
Although the First Amendment applies only to state actors, there is a common misconception that it prohibits anyone from limiting free speech, including private, non-governmental entities. Moreover, the Supreme Court has determined that protection of speech is not absolute. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
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Post by pieter on Feb 5, 2022 8:09:46 GMT -7
Folks,
What I and other Europeans love about the US American Democracy and the US Constitution and Bill of Rights was that the various European settlers that became Americans and merged into one Post-European Pan-American mix of people (the white Americans with their European mixes) and later added Black (African-American), Asian and Latino peoples to that mix, is the fact that it is a 'Radical democracy' in which opinions, views, ideologies, philosophies, financial and economical theories and practices could be tested and proven in the 'American way'. In say could be, because both the Democrats and Republicans in the Financial economical sense chose an chose the Classical Liberal Free Market Economy Capitalist direction. Unlike Europe where both Social Democratic Social Capitalism & Liberal Democracy vs Etatist State Capitalism & Marxism-Leninism were tried and worked (in the Social Democratic Scandinavian sense) and failied in the Soviet, East-German (German Democratic Republic) and the Polish Peoples Republic (1947-1989) sense. In Europe the Black (African-American) American culture has had and has a huge influence on white Europeans. Generations of white Europeans, even my parents with their Old School Oscar Peterson, Erroll Garner and Blue Note Jazz albums and cd's and cassette tapes. Blues, rhythm and blues, Black American Folk music and Singer song writers music, Ragtime, Jazz, Bebop, Rock 'n Roll, Soul music, Disco music, Funk music and quality Hip Hop music based on the lyrics of the Last Poets, Dance, House & Techno music greatly influenced Modern European music, culture, youth culture and thus the generations of the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties as well. There would be no the Beathes, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, the Who, the Kinks, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Roxy Music, Genesis with Phil Collins, the Police and Queen of Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon without the influence of Black American Folk music, Jazz, Ragtime, Bebop, Blues, rhythm and blues, Rock 'n Roll and Soul music. That British pop music was heavily influenced by Bo Diddley (1928-2008), Robert Johnson (1911-19398) , Howlin' Wolf, Johnny Temple, Rosetta Howard, Frankie Jaxon, Bobby Bland, Lonnie Johnson, Leroy Carr, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Otis Redding, T-Bone Walker, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald, Fats Domino, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Nat King Cole, Herbie Hancock, Art Blakey, Count Basie, James Brown, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, George Clinton, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross and her The Supremes, Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5 and last but not least Jimmy Hendrix and Prince. In many white European teenage rooms, on white European t-shirts and in white European studio's, pubs, discotheques, clubs, offices and apartments posters, paintings and photo's of African American musicians, singers and composers hung and still hang. African music coloured my childhood in Dutch and Zeelandic pubs, discotheques and clubs and later of course in Amsterdam and Arnhem. Soul, Disco, Blues, R&B/rhythm and blues, Black Folk music, Funk & Hip Hop. Afro-Europeans (lack Europeans of African ancestry, approximately 9.6 million people of Sub-Saharan African or Afro-Caribbean descent) took a lot of influence from the African-American culture and music and made their own European version of it like the British Mersey Beat, Beat music musicians did in the sixties and the later rock and pop bands in the seventies and eighties. Of course white American music also influenced European music, but I can assure you that the African American musical civilization of the 20th century had a great influence on music from the United Kingdom and the European continent. In the fifties African American Jazz musicians loved to tour Europe, and in that way made an enormous impression in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, Antwerp, Brussels, Paris, Rome, London and other cities. Their influence was huge, because Europeans started to attend Jazz concerts and bought Jazz records and listened to Jazz, Blues,rhythm and blues, Rock 'n Roll and Soul music on the Radio.
Next to this image through the years I have seen a lot of African American anchorwomen and men in CNN, CBS/ABC, Fox News and other chanals, people of the Congressional Black Caucus, African Americans in Amsterdam, Arnhem, Rotterdam (Whitney Houston concert in 1988), France, Belgium, Berlin -African US Gi's in a Humvee in West-Berlin-, Helmstedt (African American Military police in the front of a German discotheque in 1987, Helstedt was a British/American NATO town on the Helmstedt–Marienborn border crossing between West-Germany and East-Germany of that time. We drove with dads silver green Ford Taunus Bravo from the Netherlands -Vlissingen- to Poznań in the Polish Peoples Republic. 1.041,4 km/647,09 miles), London and Poland (to my surprise and actually ridiculous and biased and stereotypical white Western European arrogant thinking and mindset -a portion of self criticism from Pieter over here folks- I saw wealthy, sophisticated, well dressed and good looking African American tourists in Warsaw in August 2006. My distorted image and ridiculous mindset was, what is interesting about a white European country without Black or Coloured people for these African American visitors. Forgetting and ignoring that Dutch, Danish, British, American, Polish and French white European tourists travel whole the world and visit entirely Black African, Eastern Asian Asian, Polynesian and Middle Eastern countries with Semitic, Persian or Kurd people without European roots and etc.)
It was great to see Black American top advisors (Susan Rice in the Obama administration) and United States Secretaries of State (Colin Powell & Condoleezza Rice) and Black Democratic and Republican senators and the US president Barack Obama. Besides music, sport and culture, African Americans entered American universities, the American Business world, American science and the American society as a whole more as equals despite racism that still exist within certain Democratic, Republican and Independent circles. The same counts of course for the Asian, Latino, Muslim American, and Native American communities (Cherokee, Apache, Sioux, Navajo, Blackfeet, Comanche, Iroquois, Algonquin, Huron, Wampanoag, Mohican, Mohegan, Ojibwa, Ho-chunk (Winnebago), Sauk, Fox, and Illinois) of course. I wonder how much part, integrated and assimilated Native Americans are today in the larger US society? Do the majority of them still live in Indian Reservations in the USA? Did many of them mix in interracial or intercultural relations and marriages with White Americans and Black Americans?
Susan Elizabeth Rice (born November 17, 1964) is an American diplomat, policy advisor, and public official serving as Director of the United States Domestic Policy Council since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Rice served as the 27th U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013 and as the 24th U.S. National Security Advisor from 2013 to 2017.
Today the USA of 2022 is a country of equal people of white European heritage, African American heritage, native American heritage, Latin Amerian heritage, Amerasian and Vietnamese-, Chinese-, Japanese-, Korean Americans and others. From the latter I mention Francis Fukuyama (known for his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which argues that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free-market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government, an assessment met with criticisms), top class movie actress, producer, and artist Lucy Liu, Andy Kim (New Jersey’s first Asian American congressman and son of Korean immigrants who believes service is a way of life)
Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama (born October 27, 1952) is an American political scientist, political economist, and writer.
The American way is unique in it's Republican, Liberal Democratic, Democratic, conservative, progressive, deeply humanist ("We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union"), Thomas Jefferson's “all men are created equal”, George Washington's “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” and “Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.” and “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.” and “As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.” way.
The USA in my opinion was and is a project of British English-, Scottish-, Welsh-, Irish-, German-, Dutch- (New Amsterdam and later waves of Dutch immigrants in the english speaking America, the Dutch Americans of today - 3,557,936 people - 1.08% of the U.S. population (2019)), Scandinavian-, Italian-, Slavic- European settlers, immigrants and religious dissidents who escaped from Feudalism, Serfdom (Czarist Russia), religious persecution (British non-Anglicans leaving the United Kingdom and thus the powerful British Empire that ruled the world and was the most powerful force in the world in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the largest colonial empire), Absolutist Monarchism, Autocracies, Totalitarian regimes (Nazi Germany , the SovietUion of Vladimir Lenin and later Stalinist SovietUnion, Famines, antisemitism and racism (British against the Irish, with the British occupation of Ireland -white slavery-, and the the terrible and inhumane, immoral, and harsh treatment of African Blacks as slaves in the USA - inclusive the Jim Crow laws in the USA - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws -). The USA has taken a long road from a rough and tough settlers society in the 17th century to today in 2022. Before that of course the first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge and arrived at least 12,000 years ago; however, some evidence suggests an even earlier date of arrival. The Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000 BC, is believed to represent the first wave of human settlement of the Americas. This was likely the first of three major waves of migration into North America; later waves brought the ancestors of present-day Athabaskans, Aleuts, and Eskimos. From the initial WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) project of British & Scottish/Welsh settlers who opposed the British Colonial rule of the British Crown and Parliament in America grew a more inclusive American Democracy in which Irish, Italian and Slavic and German Roman-Catholics became equal, slavery and racism was largely abolished, and Jews, Muslims, Hindu's, Sikhs, Bahai people, Zoroastrist people, Buddhist, Confucianist and Taoist Asians became equal and in which democracy secular humanists and atheists and agnostic people were respected as well. I speak of the American USA civilization of the Second half of the 20th century since the late sixties and early seventies until today. In what direction will that American civilization, American Culture, American society, American sophistication, American scientific community, American technological world, American quality and quintessence develop itself Ron, John, Jaga, Jeanne and Karl. The road from "Strange Fruit" by Abel Meeropol & Abel Meeropol and signs with 'No dogs, no Irish' to America today is also a long road in about one century.
I ask Karl as an objective and rather neutral 'outsider' like myself with his European roots, US & Canada experience and experience with other nations, continents, political systems and cultures.
Cheers,
Pieter
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Post by karl on Feb 5, 2022 13:15:54 GMT -7
Pieter {I ask Karl as an objective and rather neutral 'outsider' like myself with his European roots, US & Canada experience and experience with other nations, continents, political systems and cultures.} Thank you for your confidence in asking of my experience in the various areas of appointments and related observations with journalism that comprises both the printed word and the spoken broadcaster word. For each although different in methodology still relates the same, and that is the word of the people. For both begin with the reporter on the street gathering the news to then be quickly provided to either the editor of the printed word or broadcaster of the spoken word. For each of intention to be the product of the freedom of information. Although the information may be of simular content, it may not be of same manner of dissemination. For it must meet the level of culture in location for to be understood by those to understand. Such as the difference between journalism in the South Africa in the de Klerk administration and that of past and current Canadian and American broadcast. The content would be or should be most simular, with the difference being in word usage that mean the same. For to say that: A free press/Broadcast Journalism is vital to freedom and Democracy is a must, is to ask, why? For this is the most efficient manner of dissemination of information to most people. For it may through television or radio dependent upon location and manner of possession of the respective house whole. If for politicians try to censor and/or influence broadcasters for their own vested interest, this then circumvents truth of information that is the bases of journalism in both broadcasters and the press. For this belongs to the people not politicians or government. www.theodysseyonline.com/why-freedom-of-the-press-is-so-importantKarl |
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Post by pieter on Feb 5, 2022 14:50:34 GMT -7
Karl,
Very good reply. A well functionating Western Democracy in the Western world in my point of view should be resilient towards authoritarian tendencies, absolutist forms of rule, despotism and totalitarian ideologies. A well functionating Democracy which is carried and monitored and protected by the political spectrum of left, centre left, the centre, centre right and right has armed itself against the extreme left, extreme right and theocratic fundamentalist religious sectarians. A well functionating Western Liberal Democracy can survive if a moderate and centrist Middle of the political spectrum is willing to back this political system and defend it against foreign and domestic threads, and erosion by Corruption, clientelism, nepotism, bribes and Fraud. Therefor transparent, open, well informed, pluriform democracies florish well.  How journalists and the public shape our DemocracyFrom Social Media and “Fake News” to Reporting Just the Facts  What is your source for news? That answer can vary according to your age. Generally, millennials rely on social media like Twitter and Instagram, blogs and podcasts. Many baby boomers still have the newspaper delivered to their homes or online subscriptions. Others, such as Gen-Xers, fall in between and may prefer as their news source all-news radio, talk radio, local news or national news programs on cable and network TV.
Social media, blogs and traditional news sources all provide information and news but determining what is fact and what is fake has become a major concern. Journalism’s old “Five ‘W’s” of providing the “Who,” “What,” “When,” “Where” and “Why” of a story is not enough anymore; add an “F” for fact or fiction.
Because of the many news sources available these days, people tend not to sample them all, but listen to, watch and read those sources that feed into and support their point of view. When what is reported rubs the wrong way, some people question the validity of the story and others go to the extreme and question the place of a free press in a democracy.
It is perfectly clear to me that without freedom of the press, there can be an abuse of power and an abuse of people. What you don’t know can hurt you. That is the lesson Retired WSB-TV Atlanta news anchor Monica Kaufman Pearson learned over her 49 years as a reporter in radio, newspaper and television. The role and responsibility of reporters and news organizations is to be where citizens can’t always be and to tell stories that inform, entertain and educate. We uncover stories about corruption, crime, malfeasance, pain and suffering. We should always tell the story through the voice and eyes of the people who are affected, showing humanity.
Done correctly, news stories can lead and have led to changes in laws, policies and lives. The primary role of media is to provide information to help people make decisions about their lives and the lives of others. This requires freedom to do our job, but we must do it professionally and cor- rectly, as outlined in the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists. It states, “Public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy.” There are four principles to be fol- lowed: “Seek truth and report it; minimize harm; act independently and be accountable and transparent.”
Kaufman Pearson sums it up another way, using the slogans from local TV stations. It is media’s responsibility to be “dedicated, determined and depend- able; holding the powerful accountable; giving you coverage you can count on.” We must be fair, balanced and accurate; proactive and less reactive; thorough and persistent and always keep in mind the needs of the reader, listener and viewer. That’s our job, but your job is just as important. We need you to care and be involved. Source: www.georgiahumanities.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/MediaGuide_Web.pdf Around the world, disinformation is spreading and becoming a more complex phenomenon based on emerging techniques of deception. Disinformation undermines human rights and many elements of good quality democracy; but counter-disinformation measures can also have a prejudicial impact on human rights and democracy. COVID-19 compounds both these dynamics and has unleashed more intense waves of disinformation, allied to human rights and democracy setbacks. Effective responses to disinformation are needed at multiple levels, including formal laws and regulations, corporate measures and civil society action. Source: www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2021/653635/EXPO_STU(2021)653635_EN.pdfThe role of local and regional media next to the National/Federal and International media  The media play a number of crucial roles in democratic society, most notably, the role of public watchdog; the role of creating channels for the circulation of information and ideas, and the role of providing forums for public debate. The media’s forum-providing role is particularly important for fostering participatory democracy because the media can open up shared spaces for discussion and debate on matters of public interest. Such discursive spaces can be created at different geographical levels, which exhibit different features. Media operating at the regional level have special significance for participatory democracy as the relationship between regional media and persons from the areas and communities they serve tends to be closer, stronger and more representative than equivalent relationships at, say, the national or international levels. That proximity is often evident in audience/readership/user statistics and in levels of participation in the media. The special significance of regional media for participatory democracy can also be gauged by the nature and focus of regional journalism. This is due, first, to regional journalism’s coverage of regional politics and issues that are either underrepresented in, or absent from, national journalism. Second, regional journalism also fosters public discussion of, and engagement with, regional politics and issues. The proximity of regional media to their target communities is therefore also political in character. This extends to social media (eg. Twitter) because they are an increasingly important source of information and tool for engagement when it comes to regional politics and issues, particularly during the run-in to regional elections or plebiscites.Source: www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/regional-media-and-participatory-democracy.pdf Cheers,
Pieter
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