Restricting the Freedom of the Press!

Restricting the Freedom of the Press!

The generous freedom of having no regulations on what is printed or published has persuaded many people into believing false or bias information. Journalist and reporters tend to abuse the freedom granted to them by the government in many ways. A few examples are the use of propaganda to persuade a certain crowd or group of people, enter the privacy life of a celebrity or someone famous, they let false or bias opinions be published, and some journalist often try to get attention instead of investigating for the truth.

(1) Propaganda is used to spread ideas, rumors or information in order to make an individual or a certain cause sound or look better than an opposing force. The actually definition of Propaganda is “Systematic spreading (propagation) of information or disinformation (misleading information), usually to promote a religious or political doctrine with the intention of instilling particular attitudes or responses.” (The Hutchinson Dictionary of Ideas) A) Propaganda is used in the fight of politicians in order to make themselves look better than their opponent. Instead of stating their own benefits they exaggerate the negative parts of their opponent’s campaign and make themselves look like complete problem solvers to the citizens. B) Another example of negative use of propaganda is television commercials. In one of the Alltel Wireless commercials, they use propaganda to make their positives look more dominant over the other cell phone companies. While all of the cell phone companies have their pros and cons also, they only state the downfalls of the other ones and even make some of their positives look like weak features.

(2) Often times celebrity’s personal life is violated by paparazzi or journalist. A) Bill Clinton was accused of committing adultery with Monica Lewinsky. Even though adultery is a “religious crime” it is not a federal crime. It doesn’t affect his performance of running this country. It was his own choice and it isn’t considered a federal crime so it shouldn’t be announced publicly due to the fact that he has his own personal life too. (Nichols, Minzesheimer) B) A lot of times the paparazzi tends to get out of hand because they have no limitations of what they print. This often creates problems with celebrities because they get crazy reporters trying to get information or pictures of them when they are just trying to live their personal life. Some of the information reporters get can be used against them somehow and attack their career even though it was a personal issue. C) When Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and her kids took a trip to the beach, paparazzi was all over it. Even though celebrities know the risk of their privacy life being ruined, the press should still be limited on what they can publish or do to invade the privacy life of a celebrity.

(3) Regulating some of the press freedom would be a good idea because less