Why does a democracy need journalism and the First Amendment?

Doesn’t anybody care about truth anymore?  I guess that’s what journalism and the First Amendment for. 

Democracy needs journalism and the First Amendment to help inform people of the truth about the government’s news agenda and also shine a light on issues not recognized by the public, so citizens can be actively involved in the government.  It’s extremely important for citizens to be fully informed, so they can participate in democracy.

Democracy is the active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life.  Democracy can be thought of as a political system, designed to allow the people to choose and replace the government through free and fair elections that will represent them at local and national levels. 

However journalism could not prevail to inform citizens if it was not for the First Amendment.  The First Amendment is part of the Declaration of Independence and is simply defined as the freedom of speech, press, assemble, petition, and religion.  The First Amendment provides the freedom to speak anything, even if it is not so nice speech.  That’s right.  The First Amendment protects not so nice speech, because nice speech doesn’t need protecting.  The truth needs to be told and sometimes it needs to be said in a way that’s not so nice, that’s where the First Amendment comes in to provide protection.

Though journalism is not simply reporting news, facts, opinions, and telling stories.  It is much more than that.  Journalism can be written as non-fiction or fiction and can then be defined by several different models.  Advocacy journalism or elite journalism, deals with social change and justice.  Public or civic journalism or also known as traditional elite journalism is concerned with community problem solving.  Citizen 2.0 journalism is an interactive type of journalism that occurs on the internet within social networks. The purpose of this type of journalism is to change the news agenda, rally the power of the people, create solutions and really draw on what the truth of the matter is.

 

     The main point is that we need to be informed citizens and strive to have a high socio-economic status; a high educational attainment and a greater knowledge base of current news and public affairs to be able to participate and contribute in government decisions.  To be informed citizens in our democratic society we need journalism and the First Amendment, so we can know the truth.