Perplexities Of American Journalism--On Current Conflicting Issues Of Press Freedom In The U.S.A.

The freedom of the Press is a fundamental American right endowed by the First Amendment of the United States, and the social responsibility of the press is also a fundamental American issue. Freedom and responsibility are ambiguous and often come into conflict. Attempting to reconcile them results in a number of perplexities and quandaries. As more and more media outlets become controlled by fewer and fewer owners, criticism of how the media is functioning in the American society begins to be louder in recent years. The main areas of concern are the following:The media owners wield enormous power for its own ends. They propagate their own opinions, at the expense of opposing views.The media has been subservient to big business and at times advertisers control media policies and content.The media often pay more attention to the superficial and sensational in its coverage of current happenings.The access to the media is difficult for the newcomer, and media is controlled by one socioeconomic class, the business class.The media-government relation is more of cooperation than confrontation, and in some cases, especially in time of war the media even go great lengths to help the government screen out the facts.In this thesis, following the discussion of theoretical perplexities concerning press freedom, the author addresses the prominent current issuessuch as diversity and independence of the media in the context of the media power concentration and the war on terrorism. Additionally, the author provides his own reflection on the relations between American Government, the media and the public in the process of media functioning.In the Conclusion, the perplexing reality of the freedom of the press in the U.S.A. is boiled down to one point: the freedom of press is only a privilege of the few elites who dominate the means of communications, while the freedom of the press as a prerequisite for American democracy is merely a scrape of paper on the First Amendment.