The First Amendment and Censorship

(Source: Dolan Law Firm)

What is the 1st Amendment? and Why is it so important?

We all know that this country has its founding principles and guidelines put in place that we have followed for hundreds of years. The Amendments are often those principles that we all live by each day in particular, the 1st Amendment, 2nd Amendment, and many others. Recently the one that has been in the news a lot is the 1st Amendment, which includes a larger umbrella of freedoms. These freedoms include Speech, Religion, Press, Protest, and Petition. This has been a particular "hot" issue lately because it has been spoken about along with the term censorship. Only the government can violate the Constitutional rights meaning without government involvement, no Constitutional claim can be made. What is such an issue with this statement is that by this definition, the 1st Amendment does not reach private sectors. There are many factors that fall under the umbrella of the 1st Amendment which we will look into further to better understand current news stories.

State Action Doctrine (Protected vs. Unprotected Speech)

Protected (Speech)

Unprotected Speech (Action = Harm)

(Incitement)

These two words or types of speech lead to the term "Expressive Action" which is an action intended to send a message to an audience or speech that causes imminent lawless action.

By this definition a speech would have to be the cause of violence in order for it to fall under the unprotected speech category which often becomes a gray area. This recently occured with the Capitol Riots and Trump, where people claimed that his speech caused those individuals to storm the Capitol. When I first heard about that and people claiming it was his fault I had to look at both sides of the situation. On one hand maybe people could make the claim that he got the hopes up of many and they broke when nothing "happened" but on the other hand he simply wanted them to rally like they always do and some individuals broke the law. By no means do I condone the riots but to say Trump caused them under the "State Action Doctrine" is improbable and lacks the necessary evidence.

The Three Bedrock Principles

1. First Amendment protection is not absolute

2. First Amendment is not a shield against laws of general applicability

3. Freedom of the press is a "fundamental personal right", not an institutional right

Why do the 1st Amendment and its principles matter today?

There are many reasons to be worried about our freedom of speech and censorship in the current world because it is a hot topic with the big tech and their involvement in our lives. I found an article in Forbes that spoke about the 1st Amendment and how under the 1st Amendment what happened to Trump was justified.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomspiggle/2021/01/12/why-social-media-companies-can-censor-trump-and-why-your-boss-can-censor-you/?sh=62e05b8a7b79

This article states that "Trump's First Amendment Rights were not violated," (Spiggle, 2021) Although the statement made is true, I still do not believe it was justified that they banned his accounts on both Twitter and Facebook because it now becomes an issue on how much control these private companies have over "We the People." Twitter claimed that Trump incited violence and according to this article they say that he violated their community guidelines. From what I know he simply tweets messages out and more often than not he is not violating guidelines, but simply stating objecting opinions. You can argue that it is the private sector and is not protected, but by that statement itself censorship is happening. I have this discussion with people often and like to remind them the differences between a news station, and a social media platform.

(Source: Comparitech)

Social media is user-created content meaning we the users put up the content or share other content. A news station gives us the content and we read it which means if it something we don't agree with we do not have too much of a choice. On social media we post things and we probably see things we do not agree with. For the most part the content on social media that one would post would not get them silenced on a platform. The issue I have with this article is that they are telling us why social media companies can censor us but they forgot the issues of only censoring what they might disagree with. I do however agree with his statement saying "The more complicated answer probably adds other considerations, such as politics, public perception and company profitability." (Spiggle, 2021) This statement itself gives us the answer in relation to the "State Action Doctrine" which states protected speech vs unprotected speech.

In this scenario Trump gave a speech directed at his following, a riot occured, and suddenly social media companies were more worried about profit and public perception than anything else. If social media companies continue to want to censor others and filter the news we see on their platforms, than I see no reason they can't be held to the same standards of a news source. I also like to consider "The Three Bedrock Principles" and the third one in particular which states that the freedom of the press is a "fundamental personal right" and is not confined to the newspapers. By this principle I do not see how social media companies feel they can censor our freedom to share our opinions on their platforms.

This article and discussion leads me to a famous quote by one of the Founding Fathers;

"Let us dare to read, think, speak and write."

- John Adams

At one point are only a few of us allowed to think, allowed to speak, and allowed to write? I think that is an interesting question and one that scares me for our future. We can all have opinions but some opinions may never be seen by those who need to see it most.