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Communication Lesson I a) New York Times Company vs. Sullivan On March 29, 1960 the newspaper published a full-page ad Heed Their Rising Voices. This advertisement claimed that arrest of Martin Luther King, Jr. for perjury in Alabama was made in order to destroy Luther Kings attempts to allow blacks to vote.
Sullivan (the commissioner from Montgomery), filed a libel action and claimed that allegations against the police of Montgomery were libelous and false, and, in such a way, these allegations insulted and defamed him personally. According to Alabama law, the commissioner wasnt obliged to prove that he had been harmed. He filed the petition against the New York Times and four black ministers mentioned in the advertisement. Sullivan won the case and a $ 500, 000 judgment in Alabama court. New York Times Company vs. Sullivan case can be called the cornerstone of the 1 st Amendment as it forever changed the legal landscape for journalists and expanded the breathing space for media and working journalists.
I b) Miller Vs. California case (1973) Miller Vs. California case (1973) illustrates the problem concerning national involvement in community standards. Miller Vs. California case concerns of what defines unprotected obscenity for the 1 st Amendment purposes.
According to the court decision, obscenity wasnt protected by the 1 st Amendment and ascertained the Miller test in order to determine what constituted obscene material. The court has to answer the question is the distribution and sale of obscene materials / production by mail protected under freedom of speech guarantee established by the 1 st Amendment. According to the courts decision, it wasnt protected. The court made an effort to define the term obscenity and established the Miller test for obscenity consisted of three criteria: 1) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; 2) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law 3) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value This decision provided more freedom in prosecuting alleged surveyors of obscene production / materials . II As far as we know, the First Amendment claims that the Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. The decision of the court in Cable Communications of California, Inc.
v. FCC case established that the First Amendment shouldnt be applied equally to all mass media sources, including press, cable, and broadcasting, as they all should be treated unique according to the attributes of each media. However, the broadcasting and cable do have more limited protection under the First Amendment. The main explanation is that broadcasting and cable have unique attributes of broadcasting, and, therefore can intrude on privacy of home without prior warning regarding the content of program. Besides, the content of program is easily accessible to children (even to those who cannot read). III What is the developmental journalism?
The main idea of developmental journalism is that the media has aim to support national interests for social and economic development. Besides, the media (according to the position of developmental journalism) has to support national stability, unity, and cultural integrity. It focuses on the needs of deprived and poor people and accentuates on their active and effective participation in developmental planning. Developmental journalism advocates the interests of these people and deals with peoples issues. IV It is difficult to establish the effects of mass communication because the ways mass media influences people are contingent and quite complex. The mass media transmits the message from a sender to a receiver.
Further, the receiver interprets the received image in his own way. Such inconsistency between the reality and information presented is also the issue of the day. Besides, some mass media sources use this effect on purpose, as the art of creation of images, fixed ideas and methods of manipulation reached the technological level that allows forming an intended reality. In such a way, the truth turns out to be not the real facts but the way these facts are presented by mass media. Media sources are examined as powerful propaganda tools and persuasive forces in society that can lead to unpredictable consequences.
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Research essay sample on 1 St Amendment Freedom Of Speech
