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The Cardinal — Arlingtoncardinal.com
Big changes are occurring in media and the newspaper industry. Unfortunately some newspapers have shut down — perhaps caught off guard by new media inventions, innovations on the Internet, and competition from social media. The Cardinal mission is to be a part of the news media community; and support, communicate with, and utilize the media community for the benefit of concerned citizens, activists, consumers, small businesses, big business and government. One of The Cardinal’s major missions is to deliver local content and global content that is intended to help local individuals and communities. Content that helps individuals understand current events. Content that helps individuals be safe and healthy. Content that helps individuals protect their property. Content that helps individuals gather information to comprehend ways to govern their lives and their government. Finally, content that is organized in a manner that helps prevent misinformation.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Freedom of speech today is understood as a multi-faceted right that includes not only the right to express, or disseminate, information and ideas, but three further distinct aspects:
• The right to seek information and ideas
• The right to receive information and ideas
• The right to impart information and ideas
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship or limitation. The synonymous term freedom of expression is sometimes used to denote not only freedom of verbal speech but any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are closely related to, yet distinct from, the concept of freedom of thought. In practice, the right to freedom of speech is not absolute in any country and the right is commonly subject to limitations, such as on “hate speech”.
Democracy is self-government by the people, which requires an informed electorate. In order to be appropriately knowledgeable, there must be no constraints on the free flow of information and ideas — except in cases of national security, or in the middle of crises when the free flow of information may be misinterpreted or misunderstood by altered emotional states or by the haste of emergency situations.
“The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.”
— Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.”
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
Freedom of the press consists of constitutional or statutory protections pertaining to the media and published materials.
John Hancock was the first person to write newspapers in the British colonies in North America published “by authority,” that is, under license from and as the mouthpiece of the colonial governors. The first regularly published newspaper was the Boston News-Letter of John Campbell, published weekly beginning in 1704. The early colonial publishers were either postmasters or government printers, and therefore unlikely to challenge government policies.
The first independent newspaper in the colonies was the New-England Courant, published in Boston by James Franklin beginning in 1721. A few years later, Benjamin Franklin, Jame’s younger brother, purchased the Pennsylvania Gazette of Philadelphia, which became the leading newspaper of the colonial era.
During the American Revolution, a free press was identified by Revolutionary leaders as one of the elements of liberty that they sought to preserve. The Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) proclaimed that “the freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.”
With respect to governmental information, any government distinguishes which materials are public or protected from disclosure to the public based on classification of information as sensitive, classified or secret and being otherwise protected from disclosure due to relevance of the information to protecting the national or public interest. Many governments are also subject to sunshine laws or freedom of information legislation that are used to define the ambit of national interest.
“No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all avenues of the truth”.
— Thomas Jefferson
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The Cardinal — Arlingtoncardinal.com is designed to provide breaking news with as little drama as possible. Since it is breaking news, facts may not be complete and follow up to the articles may be limited. The depth and investigation may not be what some readers desire. The depth may often depend on the rate of influx of news. Like any news day with any news company, new stories may push back other stories to the back burner or into oblivion before they ever get started. While continuity and in-depth coverage is important, The Cardinal cannot do it alone. That’s why every article has a link to favorite media, network news, cable news, newspapers, and radio websites for Chicagoland.
Remember NEWS is a rough draft of history.
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Related links from Wikipedia …
Freedom of Speech
Freedom of the Press
Freedom of the Press — United States
With freedom, comes responsiblity. Wikileaks overkill?
WikiLeaks
See also …
Arlingtoncardinal.com/mediabias
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