The Illusion of the Free Press

The Illusion of the Free Press PDF

Author: John Charney

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-01-11

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 1509908889

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This book explores the relationship between truth and freedom in the free press. It argues that the relationship is problematic because the free press implies a competition between plural ideas, whereas truth is univocal. Based on this tension the book claims that the idea of a free press is premised on an epistemological illusion. This illusion enables society to maintain that the world it perceives through the press corresponds to the world as it actually exists, explaining why defenders of the free press continue to rely on its capacity to discover the truth, despite economic conditions and technological innovations undermining much of its independence. The book invites the reader to reconsider the philosophical foundations, constitutional justifications, and structure and functions of the free press, and whether the institution can, in fact, realise both freedom and truth. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned in the role and value of the free press in the modern world.

The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication

The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication PDF

Author: Kate Kenski

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-06-23

Total Pages: 977

ISBN-13: 0199793484

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Since its development shaped by the turmoil of the World Wars and suspicion of new technologies such as film and radio, political communication has become a hybrid field largely devoted to connecting the dots among political rhetoric, politicians and leaders, voters' opinions, and media exposure to better understand how any one aspect can affect the others. In The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson bring together leading scholars, including founders of the field of political communication Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler, Doris Graber, Max McCombs, and Thomas Paterson,to review the major findings about subjects ranging from the effects of political advertising and debates and understandings and misunderstandings of agenda setting, framing, and cultivation to the changing contours of social media use in politics and the functions of the press in a democratic system. The essays in this volume reveal that political communication is a hybrid field with complex ancestry, permeable boundaries, and interests that overlap with those of related fields such as political sociology, public opinion, rhetoric, neuroscience, and the new hybrid on the quad, media psychology. This comprehensive review of the political communication literature is an indispensible reference for scholars and students interested in the study of how, why, when, and with what effect humans make sense of symbolic exchanges about sharing and shared power. The sixty-two chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication contain an overview of past scholarship while providing critical reflection of its relevance in a changing media landscape and offering agendas for future research and innovation.

Networked Press Freedom

Networked Press Freedom PDF

Author: Mike Ananny

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2023-10-31

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 0262549662

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Reimagining press freedom in a networked era: not just a journalist's right to speak but also a public's right to hear. In Networked Press Freedom, Mike Ananny offers a new way to think about freedom of the press in a time when media systems are in fundamental flux. Ananny challenges the idea that press freedom comes only from heroic, lone journalists who speak truth to power. Instead, drawing on journalism studies, institutional sociology, political theory, science and technology studies, and an analysis of ten years of journalism discourse about news and technology, he argues that press freedom emerges from social, technological, institutional, and normative forces that vie for power and fight for visions of democratic life. He shows how dominant, historical ideals of professionalized press freedom often mistook journalistic freedom from constraints for the public's freedom to encounter the rich mix of people and ideas that self-governance requires. Ananny's notion of press freedom ensures not only an individual right to speak, but also a public right to hear. Seeing press freedom as essential for democratic self-governance, Ananny explores what publics need, what kind of free press they should demand, and how today's press freedom emerges from intertwined collections of humans and machines. If someone says, “The public needs a free press,” Ananny urges us to ask in response, “What kind of public, what kind of freedom, and what kind of press?” Answering these questions shows what robust, self-governing publics need to demand of technologists and journalists alike.

A Free and Responsible Press

A Free and Responsible Press PDF

Author: Commission on Freedom of the Press

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1947

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 0226471357

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"The question of how much freedom the press should enjoy has been debated throughout American history. In 1942 an impartial commission was formed to study mass communication, evaluate the performance of the media, and make recommendations for possible regulation of the press. This book is the general report of that commission."--Book cover.

The Free and Open Press

The Free and Open Press PDF

Author: Robert W. T. Martin

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2001-08-01

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 0814764193

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The current, heated debates over hate speech and pornography were preceded by the equally contentious debates over the "free and open press" in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thus far little scholarly attention has been focused on the development of the concept of political press freedom even though it is a form of civil liberty that was pioneered in the United States. But the establishment of press liberty had implications that reached far beyond mere free speech. In this groundbreaking work, Robert Martin demonstrates that the history of the "free and open press" is in many ways the story of the emergence and first real expansions of the early American public sphere and civil society itself. Through a careful analysis of early libel law, the state and federal constitutions, and the Sedition Act crisis Martin shows how the development of constitutionalism and civil liberties were bound up in the discussion of the "free and open press." Finally, this book is a study of early American political thought and democratic theory, as seen through the revealing window provided by press liberty discourse. It speaks to broad audiences concerned with the public square, the history of the book, free press history, contemporary free expression controversies, legal history, and conceptual history.

Free Speech and Unfree News

Free Speech and Unfree News PDF

Author: Sam Lebovic

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-03-14

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 0674969596

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Does America have a free press? Many who answer yes appeal to First Amendment protections that shield the press from government censorship. But in this comprehensive history of American press freedom as it has existed in theory, law, and practice, Sam Lebovic shows that, on its own, the right of free speech has been insufficient to guarantee a free press. Lebovic recovers a vision of press freedom, prevalent in the mid-twentieth century, based on the idea of unfettered public access to accurate information. This “right to the news” responded to persistent worries about the quality and diversity of the information circulating in the nation’s news. Yet as the meaning of press freedom was contested in various arenas—Supreme Court cases on government censorship, efforts to regulate the corporate newspaper industry, the drafting of state secrecy and freedom of information laws, the unionization of journalists, and the rise of the New Journalism—Americans chose to define freedom of the press as nothing more than the right to publish without government censorship. The idea of a public right to all the news and information was abandoned, and is today largely forgotten. Free Speech and Unfree News compels us to reexamine assumptions about what freedom of the press means in a democratic society—and helps us make better sense of the crises that beset the press in an age of aggressive corporate consolidation in media industries, an increasingly secretive national security state, and the daily newspaper’s continued decline.

Emergence of a Free Press

Emergence of a Free Press PDF

Author: Leonard Williams Levy

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13:

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A wonderful combination of judiciousness and vigor. Henry Steele Commager

Journalism Under Fire

Journalism Under Fire PDF

Author: Stephen Gillers

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2018-08-07

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 0231547331

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A healthy democracy requires vigorous, uncompromising investigative journalism. But today the free press faces a daunting set of challenges: in the face of harsh criticism from powerful politicians and the threat of lawsuits from wealthy individuals, media institutions are confronted by an uncertain financial future and stymied by a judicial philosophy that takes a narrow view of the protections that the Constitution affords reporters. In Journalism Under Fire, Stephen Gillers proposes a bold set of legal and policy changes that can overcome these obstacles to protect and support the work of journalists. Gillers argues that law and public policy must strengthen the freedom of the press, including protection for news gathering and confidential sources. He analyzes the First Amendment’s Press Clause, drawing on older Supreme Court cases and recent dissenting opinions to argue for greater press freedom than the Supreme Court is today willing to recognize. Beyond the First Amendment, Journalism Under Fire advocates policies that facilitate and support the free press as a public good. Gillers proposes legislation to create a publicly funded National Endowment for Investigative Reporting, modeled on the national endowments for the arts and for the humanities; improvements to the Freedom of Information Act; and a national anti-SLAPP law, a statute to protect media organizations from frivolous lawsuits, to help journalists and the press defend themselves in court. Gillers weaves together questions of journalistic practice, law, and policy into a program that can ensure a future for investigative reporting and its role in our democracy.