To Speak or Not to Speak

Introduction

Take it or leave it, the world is shifting, and it has been changing for a long time. Furthermore, we are getting more complex in terms of our everyday lives and connectivity, and these advancements impact our culture and how we work, so don't you think we can reform our laws as well?

Impact of Inclusivity

For example, if the legality of our sex and the LGBTQ population as a whole are becoming more inclusive, why can't we be progressive in reforming the laws governing our right to speak out? Whether it is a huge news network, an untrustworthy website, your friend posting on Facebook, or simply a tweet by our President. We are constantly drilled with fake news that is affecting people’s lives and when other people are affected by your decisions that is when action needs to take place. Fake news is a real issue and we need to change our laws if we plan to ever know what is truly happening in our society.

Outdated Laws

Many amendments need to be updated especially the first amendment and through President Donald Trump's tweets, political elites depicting what is and isn’t fake news, and the overall societal decline in trust for the general media I will prove that our laws for the first amendment are outdated and need tweaking.

The Need for Modification

The first amendment states that we are allowed “freedom of speech” and to “peacefully assemble” (Constitute Project). Nowhere in the constitution does it say that you can use your freedom of speech to mislead people and gain power. Currently, with the Internet and technology, there is an abundance of information available and it is hard for us to know what is factual and what is fabricated. Which is one of the reasons why our first amendment should be modified.

The Influence of Trump's Tweets

Think about it Trump's twitter is a huge source for media because of not only how ridiculous some of his tweets are but because the most powerful person in the country seems to be personally connected to you through a technological interface. For anyone to believe someone is credible there needs to be trust involved, so that personable feeling that the user gets from reading Trump's twitter makes that presence of credibility automatically there. All President Trump needs to do now is push his agenda and feed the public the information he wants us to hear. This is a recipe for disaster and shows how media is a tool for power, which is why we need to update our laws.

Undermining the Election

When President Trump tweets something like, "In addition to winning the electoral college in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally," this tweet had a purpose and whether it was his goal or not this tweet undermines the election by making it seem faulty and controls people’s thoughts by using his position of power to polarize them into separate opposing viewpoints.

Repercussions and Skewed Information

Some people will read that quote and truly believe that Donald Trump could have won the popular vote if millions of illegals were to not have voted. That is okay to believe, but there is no factual basis behind that statement and this is where the problem lies. Our president made a public statement saying that illegal citizens not only voted in our election but also undermined the election and affected the results. How can someone in his position be allowed to make such a statement and not have any repercussions? Millions of people see that and are all being given skewed information. That is extremely detrimental to a society and is the reason why I believe we need to make our first amendment more strict and updated with the current societal status.

Erosion of Trust

“To be able to constantly lie and get people to accept contrary statements is, after all, an assertion of power. And it’s a type of power Trump understands all too well.” (Beckett, 5). Our society today can no longer just blindly trust what political elites including our President say. As sad as that is to admit, this is what our society has come to because of how easy it is to spread information through social media and technology today. So unfortunately we have to start doing the fact-checking ourselves, which can still be tricky.

Fake Democracy

In the article "Fake Democracy, Bad news" it states, “A media that all too often preys on the vulnerable and bows down before the powerful; a media whose noble crusade for truth and justice has been replaced by a carnival of gossip and spectacle.” (Fenton and Freedman 1). This is what our society has come to, a bunch of individuals who cannot even trust its own government to tell them the bare minimum truth.

Decline in Trust

On top of that, the numbers speak for themselves, the amount of people who had faith in the media since 1997 has gone from 53% of Americans to 32% in 2016 (Fenton and Freedman 1). As we can see over the past few years, we have had a steady decline in our trust for the media. It is just purely sad that in a democratic government there are still secrets with people who believe they are more important and can control what is happening in our world.

Shift to Social Media

The public has shown that they are sick of huge news networks that are biased toward the left or right and are moving toward social media recommended news sources. “Social media recommendations improve levels of media trust, and also make people want to follow more news from that particular media outlet in the future.” (Turcotte, 1) Now it is great that people are finding ways to seek out the news they find worthy, but this can cause major issues in our society.

Issue of Credibility

The issue is everyone has no idea if what they are reading is credible when we use social media as our only platform for information. For instance, when people get their news on Facebook or Twitter, they are usually reading an unreliable source or reading an article because their friend said such and such story was incredible. So you go and read the story and afterward since your friend told you about it and it was on the Internet it must be true. This fallacy is a huge issue, and everyday more Americans are becoming more and more uneducated about our society, and it is exactly what the power elites want.

Relying on Satirical Shows

Our everyday news and current events have been so clouded by other news sources that currently some of the best sources of news are actually some of the satirical late-night shows like The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. Now I am not saying that this should be your primary news source nor am I saying to stop reading newspapers and just watch The Daily Show for your weekly dose of news. The fact of the matter is though they tell society how it is with no tricks or gambits. They do not care if they hurt someone’s feelings or expose someone their purpose is to discuss current events and put a satirical spin on it.

Comedians as Reliable Sources

Even more amazing though is that according to a 2007 Pew research study, “It revealed that those who got their knowledge from Stewart’s and Colbert’s shows were better informed than those who got their information from more traditional sources.” (Mcbeth and Clemons, 80). It is shocking to believe that some of our most reliable news sources are comedians, and our most untrustworthy citizens are the ones with the most power and say. We cannot allow for Trump and other political elites to keep controlling the media; it is time we put a stop to their words and start changing laws so we can truly benefit from our god-given rights.

Conclusion

We are living during a scary time period, a time period in which our own government constantly lies to us and tries to keep us from the truth by feeding us fake news stories. We have become so overloaded with fake news that we have coined a term for the epidemic. This idea of fake news needs to be monitored because this saturation of fake stories not only undermines the credibility of what used to be reliable sources but it also hurts the lives of everyday people because their own government cannot tell them the truth. Political elites and President Trump know the power of social media and the power of control and they plan to use both against its own society, since when is that legal or just in any society. We are on a slippery slope and changes need to be made to our legislation before it is too late.

Works Cited

Beckett, Charlie. “How Do You Report on Something That Isn’t True? Dealing with Trump’s Tweets and Other Fake News.” How Do You Report on Something That Isn’t True? Dealing with Trump’s Tweets and Other Fake News, eprints.lse.ac.uk/76611/1/blogs.lse.ac.uk- How%20do%20you%20report%20on%20something%20that%20isnt%20t rue%20Dealing%20with%20Trumps%20tweets%20and%20other%20fake %20news.pdf.

Fenton, Natalie, and Des Freedman. “Situating Fake Democracy.” FAKE DEMOCRACY, BAD NEWS , scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:im1JtLgZC9cJ:scholar.googl e.com/+trump+decides+news+is+fake&hl=en&as_sdt=0,33.

McBeth, Mark, and Randy Clemons. “Is Fake News the Real News.” The Stewart/Colbert Effect, McFarland Company, 2011.

Turcotte, Jason, et al. “News Recommendations from Social Media Opinion Leaders: Effects on Media Trust and Information Seeking.” Journal of Computer‐ Mediated Communication, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 1 June 2015, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12127/full.

“United States of America 1789 (Rev. 1992).” Constitute, www.constituteproject.org/constitution/United_States_of_America_1992#3.