The Value of Free Expression

The Government in its purest form is supposed to be by the people for the people but at certain times the people inside of the government can corrupt and use the overarching power of it to hurt and abuse its own people and it is times like that when we as people must stand up for ourselves. That is why I believe Check on Governmental Power is the most important of the Eight Values of Free Expression. The ability to speak out against our government is so powerful and important. When I first saw this as an option to choose it immediately made me remember the video we watched on the first day of class when Tulsi Gabbard spoke her mind about the current state of the democratic party

and why she
is leaving it. In that video Tulsi is calling out the Democratic Party, the party currently in control of the White House and Congress, for what she sees them as they truly are. She is essentially calling out the president of the country for his faults and if not his the faults he has allowed. In some countries this is imprisonment or at the worst death.

    While I do feel that the check on Governmental Power is the most important of the Free Expression values the one I see most used in action today is Promote Tolerance. In the year 2022 with the amount 

of sites and apps we can use, communication is at a peak and with the use of these new sites and technology things that are taboo in society will surely find their way there. There is an extreme amount of racial tension in America at all times I would say and after events like the BLM protests during the pandemic this type of tension had reached an extreme high. We see all the time on twitter and other social media apps racist propaganda being said about a specific race or at a person in general. While I personally do not agree with anything these people have to say the fact that they are allowed to say it is good for society. One of the most prominent examples I can think of is when Laura Ingrahm told KD and Lebron to shut up and dribble when they were talking bad about the current president at that time Trump. While she may not have seen it, that statement had some very racist undertones to it as it seemed she meant you two are only good at playing basketball and nothing more. While nothing really happened to her career wise it helped society to see what it was really like while you may not agree with it the first amendment makes us more vigilant to situations like this while Laura Inghram is free to say stuff like this again she is probably gonna think twice about it. An even more recent example of this is Kanye west and his very anti antisemitic tweet that he sent out while it is know he deleted off the platform the impact it left completely tarnished his legacy. That tweet led to Adidas and Gap cutting off ties to Kanye and while those are the main ones there is so much more. Kanye did

nothing illegal by tweeting that he was well within his rights to tweet whatever he wanted but in the end society deemed it wrong and he now has to deal with the consequences of society turning its back on him. That is what's so great with the first amendment because it allows companies and independent people to decide what they believe is right or wrong and through this process we can make a more tolerant society.  

Supreme Court

What I Learned 

The video and reading  really opened my eyes to the way the Supreme Court is run and operated the first

major thing that surprised me is that Congress is the one who meets and decides how many justices there will be and they have the power to create inferior courts under the Judiciary Act of 1789 (History.com, 2010). Also the video  talked about the fact that the court receives around 100 cases a week but only accepts 100 in a year which is astounding when you think about it. The amount of time and effort you have to put in to analyze every case that comes in and determine if it is worthy enough for the court has to be painstaking. The other moment from the video that I did not know about was how the judges meet once a week in conference to discuss upcoming and last court cases and say how they will vote on each which if you think about it does make sense to talk and converse about these things I just did not know it was once a week.

Most Important Take Away Point

The most important point that I took from the video

and readings is the court is infallible. The court is

made up of men and women who make mistakes and they have tons of pressure on them to decide whether a highly controversial topic is protected under the Constitution. I feel like all of us including me see these justices as masters of the law and while they are masters of their craft the video showed how much help these people have they each have their own teams and they heavily rely on each other to come to certain opinions.

                                                          Most Surprising Thing I learned

The most surprising thing I learned is mentioned before but the amount of help that the justices really receive. The teams in the video seemed massive and they help with stuff like helping to write opinions and even come to certain rulings while in the end all the credit and decisions come down to the justices they are definitely not alone in this process

How Did the Video Change The Way I View the Court

I personally was of the mindset that a Supreme Court justice had to be partly cut off from the world to make unbiased decisions based only on the constitution. While I still believe that their decisions are still based on the constitution they are very much connected to the world around him. In the video Clarence Thomas made a statement about how when the court decided to not take up a case the public like to spin it as the court has upheld a certain right or the court has denied a certain right and he made the point that the way the media spins that is very false. This statement made it seem to me that the justices do really care about their image it's just that justices really are not allowed much media time to express their opinions. Most people derive their entire opinions on what they think of a judge based on rulings they have made on court cases and the subsequent opinions they might write.

My Top 5 News Sources

 

https://www.cnn.com/

#1 CNN

    This is the main major news source that is always on at home especially if something major has happened in the US or in the world my parents turn on CNN. Also when I was in high school my Government class would always show the top 5 news stories on CNN. I particularly like Don Lemon he does great coverage of the world around us and I remember my parents like watching Don Lemon tonight.  While I am not huge into news CNN would have to be my major news source since I am kind of always around it.

#2 Instagran

    I am honestly always on my phone and my most used app by far is Instagram and while it is not a tradition news source I do see a lot of breaking news on here first rather than anywhere else. The appeal to me about Instagram is they give you very quick headlines and breaking news and while that might lead to omission of some facts if I am very interested in the topic I will look it up on other sites to see the full scope of the situation. My favorite news page would be Roca News they give you around five news stories a day and all in one post and they are kind of concise and easy to read. My other favorite pages would be CNN and ESPN for sports.

https://www.espn.com/

#3 ESPN

    While I know ESPN doesn't cover traditional news like politics and world events I am very interested in sports particular basketball and football so I am always checking here for that type of news. ESPN in my opinion is probably the biggest sports reporting company so they always seem to have the inside scoop one of my favorite ESPN correspondents is Adrian Wojnarowski  his twitter always post breaking news for the NBA whether it is a trade or a head coach decisions he is generally the first to know. I also regularly read the articles they post especially if it is about a team I like or even if it is about the league as a whole I always the articles a good read.

https://www.bbc.com/

#4 BBC

    I am not huge into European or even British news but my aunt who lives in the UK sends me articles from here all the of stuff she finds interesting. During Brexit I actually would check articles from the BBC sort of often as well since I was very interested in how the process would go down and stuff like that. Even when I was in high school we had to learn about other governments and when we started to discuss the UK government we looked daily at news for the UK and we primarily used BBC. While I do not know which way politically BBC leans I like the way they offer their information and I do not find it a difficult read.

https://www.nbcwashington.com/

#5 NBC 4 Washington

    This the main local news source that my family uses. The station is normally on late at night when my parents are seeing the snapshots of what happened during the day. If there is a snowstorm or a rainstorm the station will probably be on all day to watch the coverage and see how long it is going to last. I remember when I was younger I would turn on this station whenever it snows to see if my county would cancel classes for the day and one anchor on the show Pat Collins would walk around areas of Maryland looking for cool snowmen and if he did he would hand out a "Pat Collins" snow stick while I sadly never got one I always enjoyed that segment he did on snow days.