Privilege of the pen

A large percentage of young Americans agree with restricting the rights of the First Amendment
The idea of con-

By Chris Richards stricting the rights giv-

en to press including
news and other media sources, is one that is as
unacceptable as it is eerily possible.
Now with so much information in the
public eye, famous people and people in power as well as ordinary people do everything
they possibly can to protect their images and
as well as protect the images of their respective organizations or even governments. Some
may even argue that people have access to too
much information for their own good.
However, the Freedom of Press is one that
is an absolute necessity for thriving of any
culture and is a freedom that is especially important for young people to learn about and
be able to fully express.
Any person, program, or group that would
even attempt to restrict one of the most basic
principals of American foundation is misled
entirely.
Another disturbing thing is that unfortunately, only a small minority of younger people truly fully understand this amazing right
and freedom that they posses in the United
States.

However, with this ultimate freedom

comes responsibility as well, with many arguing that things that are recognized as offensive
to different groups world wide should be limited or eliminated by the government.
In a November 2015 poll, the Pew Research Center found that 40 percent of American people aged 18 to 34 were in favor of this
limitation and about 28 percent of Americans
overall in the survey were in favor of this restriction proposal.
It is understood that many people do want
to avoid offending people if possible. With
that being said, it is that freedom provided by
the fist amendment that allows American people many of the luxuries that they enjoy and is
the basis of all journalism itself which should
not be tampered with at all.
The idea of the restriction would be to
prevent the offending of minority groups and
other movents and having the objective not to
hurt the feelings of anyone in different forms
of media or literature like newspaper and
magazine articles.
This argument, although being a nice idea
in not wanting to offend people, proposes
something that is not entirely policeable and

tries to prevent something that is truly unavoidable.

No matter what anyone writes on their
opinion, if enough people read the article,
someone is bound to be offended by something that a writer says.
This would also bring forth the question of
What is offensive?
Aside from the obvious slurs and slandering information, the idea of offending an individual can be very much a gray area because
of the simple fact that something that offends
one person could be absolutely fine with another person reading the same article.
The use of this restriction may also cause a
writer to deviate from what they truly believe
when writing an opinion piece, or any article
at all for that matter.
Writers not giving their actual view on a
subject would only take away from the reader
by not giving readers a straight answer and a
complicated and political article instead.
The idea of being politically correct is a
straight jacket that simply restricts writers,
politicians and everyday people altogether.

What the First Amendment is all about

The First Amendment protects the rights
of citizens in America to have freedom of
religion, press, speech and free protest.
Critical to journalism in order to protect writers from being swayed by any
force other than their own to write and
protects sources other than threats to
National Security.

Restriction downfalls

The restriction would ruin any idea remaining of true press by making writers
have to hold back when writing in any
piece of media.