Why Media Should Not Be Regulated by the Government

The world is full of all kinds of opinions, images, and ideas that, on the surface, one would naturally want to censor. While the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights provides we Americans with the right to free speech, there are exceptions that are not covered. However, if outside those exceptions, certain groups or individuals have their rights stripped away due to an unpopular opinion, then how long will it be until nearly every other group also loses these rights? Leaving America looking more like a foreign land, with dissenters silenced and locked away. As Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has said, “The First Amendment is often inconvenient, but that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech” (Susan300). Before getting into the issues regarding freedom of speech, we should first begin by going into detail about what is not considered constitutionally protected speech. “Obscenity,” a word that changes with time and society, has not been given protection by the Supreme Court. In order for an art work; say, a controversial painting, to not be considered obscene, it must have some kind of serious value, and not just be puerile for the sake of being puerile. In regards to pornography, which rarely has any “artistic” value, at least from what I’ve seen anyway, there is a “variable tolerance” for such sexually explicit material, and the Supreme Court let individual communities set the standard for what they would accept, except when it came to children, whom had no right to view such material. (nap.edu)2. There have been many court decisions over the years that have shaped the definitions of what is protected and what is not. “Our reputations are forged when people make judgments based upon the mosaic of information available about us.”(Solove) Another area that is not legally protected speech is that of slander and libel. Slander is words spoken against someone that