Without a free press, there is no democracy.
Those words have been uttered in countless variations since the adoption of the First Amendment, and while the First Amendment advocates for the right to free speech and freedom of the press, it’s the amount of information that is being shared from all parties involved that has led to sensory overload. Social media platforms, blogs, television and websites interrupt our daily lives, and they have made it increasingly difficult to determine what news is right and what news is false.
The most recent Gallup poll found that of the Americans surveyed, 84 percent said news media were critical or very important to our democracy yet found that only 28 percent of those same Americans believed the news media as supporting our democracy.
Which begs the question to be asked: “What is the media?”