{"id":20401,"date":"2013-05-24T08:33:44","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T13:33:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=20401"},"modified":"2013-05-24T08:33:44","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T13:33:44","slug":"the-first-amendment-applies-to-everyone-not-just-the-professional-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/05\/24\/the-first-amendment-applies-to-everyone-not-just-the-professional-media\/","title":{"rendered":"The first amendment applies to everyone, not just the professional media"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/349210\/%5Btitle-raw%5D\" target=\"_blank\">Jonah Goldberg<\/a> on the bits of the first amendment that the mainstream media tends to forget about:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cCongress 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.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the full text of the First Amendment. But (with apologies to the old <em>Far Side<\/em> comic), this is what many in the press, academia, and government would hear if you read it aloud: \u201cCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, blah blah blah, or abridging the freedom of the press, blah blah blah blah.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>The press can always be counted upon not just to speak up for itself, but to lavish attention on itself. \u201cWe can\u2019t help that we\u2019re so fascinating,\u201d seems to be their unspoken mantra.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s fine. What\u2019s not fine is the way so many in the press talk about the First Amendment as if it\u2019s their trade\u2019s private license.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is twofold. First, we all have a right to commit journalism under the First Amendment, whether it\u2019s a <em>New York Times<\/em> reporter or some kid with an iPhone shooting video of a cop abusing someone.<\/p>\n<p>I understand that professional journalists are on the front lines of the First Amendment\u2019s free-press clause. But many elite outlets and journalism schools foster a guild mentality that sees journalism as a priestly caste deserving of special privileges. That\u2019s why editorial boards love campaign-finance restrictions: They don\u2019t like editorial competition from outside their ranks. Such elitism never made sense, but it\u2019s particularly idiotic at a moment when technology \u2014 Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Vine, etc. \u2014 is democratizing political speech.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jonah Goldberg on the bits of the first amendment that the mainstream media tends to forget about: \u201cCongress 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,28,13],"tags":[715,186,224],"class_list":["post-20401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-liberty","category-media","category-usa","tag-constitution","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-freedomofthepress"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5j3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20401"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20403,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20401\/revisions\/20403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}