Media Law & Literacy - Summer 2021

Ryan Smith When thinking about a current event to talk about for this post, I didn't want to cover something like the Black Lives Matter movement or the storming of the capitol as they seemed too far back and I wanted to talk about something very recent. The BLM movement was last year, and the storming of the capitol was in the very first week of this year, so I chose something going on in this current month, and that is the censorship of all holidays at schools. While this isn't a nationwide event at the moment, it very well could be in the future. Starting June 10th, 2021 every holiday in the academic calendar will be removed and be replaced with "day off" to prevent offending anyone. Not only does this cause confusion, but it's actively destroying freedom of speech in order to protect people's feelings. This culture that we've grown into is extremely detrimental to society because it teaches people to censor things they don't like so they never have...

Ryan Smith When talking about the 8 values of free expression, a lot of the different values stood out to me, to the point that I couldn’t just choose one as the focal point for me. When reading each of the 8 blurbs and trying to think of them in a certain context, one that screamed out at me was social media. What once started as simply a way to connect with others online has become a cesspool of exclusivity, double-standards, and mob mentality. This is going to be a handfull, let’s start off with Value #6: Promote Tolerance. In recent years, people on social media have become so incredibly closed-minded to the point that they can never change their mind on anything, it’s actually sad. The people claiming to best the most inclusive people are actively taking away freedom of speech, which meshes well with Value #4. I understand being against people using slurs, but people will find a way to complain about anything someone has said nowadays. Using blanket terms like “hate speech” detrac...

Ryan Smith What did you learn about the Supreme Court that you didn't already know? At the very beginning of the article, it states that the Supreme Court was going to meet for the first time on February 1st, 1790, but they had to delay it to the next day because of scheduling conflicts. While not a very important detail compared to the rest being discussed, this blurb at the very beginning added a slight comedic hook to encourage me to read the rest and may have done so for others as well. What is the most important take-away point about the Supreme Court? While it's something that I've already known for a long time, I think the most important take-away when learning about the Supreme Court is that it's an incredible risky move to make by going there. You want to take your case to smaller courts first to get the outcome you need and only only go to the supreme court as an absolute last resort. If you fail at the Supreme Court, then there's nothing else you can do a...

 Ryan Smith In recent times, I've tended to stray away from current events and I don't seek out news and information. A lot of this behavior has stemmed from the past year and a half, but the Coronavirus actually isn't a huge reason why I've been avoiding news. Sure, it contributed a bit, but there was just a bunch of other events during that time-frame that really made me sick of current events and made me completely disconnect. I don't use any kind of social media either, be that Twitter, Instagram, etc. It's because of that that the sources of information I do have are sources that I don't necessarily want, but can't avoid. #1 - Word of Mouth This one is pretty obvious, but of course due to the nature of the source, there's no real way to reference or link it. A lot of the time, someone will just come up to me and say "Hey, Ryan! Did you hear about ___?" Yes, there may be a bit (or possibly more) bias coming from the person giving the in...