What Free Media Means To America

All Americans live their lives day by day. An American can wake up in the morning, go to work, spend some time with his friends, and then go home. Most don't spend time thinking how our lives would be different without the First Amendment. Freedom of speech actually means a lot to this country. Without free media we would have very little power to keep our country alive.

Most people don't think that the First Amendment is significant to their lives. Not everyone goes around protesting and complaining about the problems we live with. If your not one of those people then you may think that the First Amendment is useless to you. In fact, freedom of speech and press means more to the citizens who don't actively question the country. Many people throughout our country's history needed to fight for the rights that we all take for granted. One of the most important is the ability to vote for the members of the government. Without activists like Martin Luther King, only some of the population would be able to vote. Without the freedom of speech, he would have never given a large amount of our population the freedoms we all share today.

The media plays an important role in this country as well. It keeps everyone in check by helping to inform the people of wrongful actions. Let's say the media wouldn't have the right to criticize the government. The country would be led into a false sense of security when everyone realizes that we are spiraling down because of some official's selfish acts. The German people believed they were winning most of WWII because Hitler wouldn't allow any media too criticize him. We would never even find out if a new law passed helps our country or worsens it because of the lack of negative criticism. Furthermore, imagine 9/11 without the media. A government controlled newspaper or TV broadcast could skew the truth by adding more facts than there are in order to blame someone.