Freedom of Speech: Right to Express Without Restriction - Research Paper

Introduction

Freedom of Speech is the right to express one's opinions without censorship or restraint. Freedom of speech means that one can say or express anything without having to worry about of being restricted from speaking one's mind, feelings or opinion. Freedom of speech is a very important component of scientific researches and communication especially in situations where the participants have varying opinions. Everyone has the right to speak out there mind without the fear of being jailed or punished. Thus, this essay endeavor to investigate the concept of freedom of speech and its pros and cons.

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Over several years, the idea of freedom of speech has slowly gained root in the modern society. Everyday there reports of people on the streets advocating for their rights and their opinions to be heard. In a statement made by George Washington, he argued that "If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." President Washington believed that it was better to tell the truth than live in complete fantasy or lie. Not only did he advocate for freedom of expression, but he also believed that a free state is a more productive nation.

Another argument for freedom of speech is obviously expressing yourself in anyway way is good whether it may be hateful to one group or be praised in another. Many powerful groups formed this way, an example would the famous civil rights movement that was led by great men such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm x, Rosa Parks, among others. Using freedom of speech was an essential and powerful tool to utilize, spreading their thoughts of the unfair justice that was going on with America at the time. Dr. King utilized freedom of speech in his speech, "I have a dream" which spawned many intentions around the globe. It gained many intentions and his actions were very similar to how Gandhi was during his peaceful protest. Freedom of speech is a fundamental tool in establishing laws advocating for human rights and societal issues.

One huge downside of having freedom of speech is having false information being spread around. This sense of giving wrong information can have a significant negative effect. It is quite unfortunate that a significant number of people especially those in the communication and information industry such as blogs and vlogging. Most bloggers and vlogger are taking advantage of this right and using it to spread propaganda and unreliable information that has been found to be misleading. Today people have lost the respect for the national symbols such as presidency, the national anthem and other national symbols. The social media has been filled with posts and cartoons making fun of the president Donald Trump and his government.

Free speech can greatly be essential for honest journalism. In a world of changing events such as technology or global events. This can be essential to be given the right information. An example would be if a news network is reporting a high number of crimes of a certain city or street and you might be considering into moving locations you might want to avoid locations such as that and go to a location that has a low amount of crime that way you have your safety secured. Something else in journalism that is able to utilize freedom of speech is going to highly combatant areas and reporting all real-time events that are happening. One popular case was the Vietnam war and how the media was able to change the mind of millions of Americas if the war in Vietnam was even justifiable. These things really changed the way of how Americans saw war was in this is also a great example of how utilizing freedom of speech in an honest perspective. This was able to bring back thousands and thousands of soldiers back. So these points are clear indications that freedom of speech was able to be utilized in its proper way that was supposed to be utilized to bring troops back.

A counter argument about this can be how media in recent times have been corrupted by bias ideology and use the right of freedom of speech to give way to their influence. One example of how things were extremely biased and how it corrupted data was the 2016 presidential election. A lot of new media was proposing and intentionally using false polls to convince Americans that Trump wouldn't have a chance in a million years, but that turned out to be obviously not the case. The result was a complete and utter embarrassment and loss of credibility of much political analysis and many news media. This than spawn the idea of should we regulate how people are able to report the news to us? Like should we have it where they're monitored by government surveillance to make sure no falsehood is spread that may turn the tides of other future elections? This really made Americans wake up on the idea that even huge news media companies such as CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc. May not always be telling the truth and should always question anything that is thrown at them. So this gives the impressions that maybe freedom of speech may not be a good idea since it opens the door to corruptions as mentioned. So, this counter-argument shows that giving complete freedom to journalism in any form can lead to bias opinions and that can lead to not always accurately portraying the news.

An advantage and pro that free speech has is that it is a basic right that humanity should all have. As something as expressing personal opinions of how things should work is always going to be the foundation of civilizations. If everybody gets their basics rights restricted is it then it would be a right after all. Therefore, having the freedom of expressing opinions or of thoughts can be a huge point into building or maintain high sophisticated civilizations or structures like even simply a building.

A disadvantage to that is that if somebody yells at the fire! Fire! And the result is that there is no fire anywhere nearby. Like a boy the who cries wolf. Should the person be charged or should this be considered to be still the basic necessity for human rights and should be overlooked. An example of this would be a recent case of how a woman was driving by a police officer and showed the police officer her middle finger. This obviously upset the officer, and which pulled her over and gave her a nice ticket for speeding; however, this was clearly false and which the driver sued, and the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in her favor. Stating, "The woman didn't break any law by exercising her free-speech rights". What this means is that even if the officer found this to be disrespectful and she was still protected by the 1st amendment which again re-literates the question if things that are obvious as such as calling out for fire or point the middle finger to an officer, shouldn't things like that be considered to show that people should have their freedom of expression to be taken away so in cases like this where if somebody calls out fire it wouldn't be second-guessed be to be an actual emergency or else that person might have to go to prison and serve a sentence or the lady the pointed the finger to the officer and be considerate to give out hate speech and be charged for an x crime. If these were implemented it would give way to have harsher punishments since there is no longer a barrier protecting them from being heavily fined or sentence to x amount of years.

Conclusion

In conclusion freedom of speech has its magnificent benefits of showing the truth and challenging others belief systems and to form supportive interest groups that can guide someone. Without the true meaning of anything or just merely having 90% of the truth it can still be a destructive way of living and to think. It's best to never to know the truth rather than it is to learn most of the truth and live life through that. It is imprisonment for one's life and can lead to underdevelopment, but free speech can also be used as a tool to misbehave and cause chaos to everything around them and spawn groups like the KKK. Which this shows that free speech does have its weight it must carry to have to endure to some hateful interest without giving any consequences. I hope this document was well informative and helped you think of a more critical way of free speech that can be used in both sides of the coin.

Work Cited

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