Since the Michael Brown shooting in early August, the
tensions that have begun in Ferguson have further extended to the greater St.
Louis area, and have only worsened in recent weeks. The racial divide between
White and African- Americans has increased greatly, and the issue of police
brutality has been under intense scrutiny. Since the shooting in Ferguson
occurred, swarms of television and radio stations have swept into St. Louis,
trying to cover every angle and every incident that happens. However, the relationship
with the police and the media has been poor, with police trying to force the
press out of the situation, preventing journalists from retrieving the truth.
In recent weeks, there seems to have been a war between the
press and the police in St. Louis. For example, journalists from Al-Jazeera
were covering the protests in Ferguson when police officers laced them with
tear-gas, even after the journalists were yelling “press!” KSDK reporters were
ordered to leave an area in Ferguson by armed police officers for covering the
story. Two reporters from the Washington Post and the Huffington Post were arrested
at a local McDonald’s because they were simply charging their equipment in the
fast-food restaurant. A policeman slammed one of the reporters on the glass window
of the McDonald’s and apologized sarcastically. All of this brutality towards
the media from police is aimed to censor what is truly going on in Ferguson.
This, however, is in direct contradiction to the First Amendment.
The First Amendment defends the freedom of the press. This
means that the press is allowed to produce and report on almost anything
without the fear of government intervention or censorship. However, that is
exactly what was happening in Ferguson. Police were targeting members of the
press, trying to prevent their work from being published. However, what the
police were doing to the journalists was wrong for two very crucial reasons.
First of all, the press, as mentioned above, has the right to report on the
Ferguson shooting. That is their job, and the First Amendment undoubtedly
protects this. Second, preventing the press from covering this historical event
prevents Americans from learning the truth as well as analyzing the situation
from all angles. Both are crucial to the structure of American democracy and
both should be protected.
Sources:
The silencing of journalists in any situation is illegal; therefore the treatment of the reporters connected with Ferguson was unconstitutional. But more importantly journalists and reporters serve as the historians and the data collectors of the present. In any field, it is important to collect and document data thoroughly, giving us the ability to affirm the ideas and theories we have. Any good experiment is never born with having all the full picture, for if we did then there would be no need to experiment. Democracy and good government in general is always an experiment in the sense that it is always needing to change and remain malleable, either because of new technology such as television, radio, or the Internet or because society has changed its values. The very fabric of democracy is to take many and hopefully all ideas splay them so that we might choose the best one. It is crucial that we always have access to as least biased information about our society as possible, for without unbiased and thorough reporting; we cannot hope to uncover the problems we are blinded to by our own experience. With good reporting, I cannot guarantee that we can or will fix all the problems, but with bad or stifled reporting there is a guarantee that we will never intentionally fix the problems we have.
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