The Six Freedoms
The article I found that can relate to the First Amendment was from the Times Reporter in
New Philadelphia, Ohio. The article explained that there is currently an issue in the town
over citizen's first amendment rights. This citizen has an Anti-Biden flag on their property
but the city explains that they cannot do anything about the flag because it is protected under
the citizen's first amendment rights. Some citizens in this town want the city to break first
amendment rights and remove the flag. At this time the city has responded that they cannot
force the citizen to take the flag down as it is classified as protected speech. They have
said that concerned citizens should take the good neighbor approach and ask that the flag
be changed to something more appropriate.
When speaking of first amendment rights they were first laid out in the case of Cohen v. California where it was ruled that some speech is protected. The first amendment does not allow threats, defamation, or criminal activity. These types of speech are not condoned by the first amendment and can be censored by the government.
A private company does not have to follow free speech laws as it is privately owned and they can decide what is allowed. Being privately owned gives the owners complete control to decide what they allow people to say. This can cause problems within a company if everyone involved does not have the same opinions about a situation. The opinions that differ from the ones in control can just censor these comments and not allow this opinion to be expressed.
Free speech online is a big issue that our society deals with today. Many times on social media false information can be easily spread as long as the ones in control of social media agree with the statement. In 1997 the Supreme Court passed laws to protect online first amendment rights but in my opinion, these laws are not always followed by big tech social media companies. Today it seems companies can censor any information that they don’t agree with and I think this will only lead to further first amendment issues in the future.
For more information or to read the full article:
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