Government Controlled Media

Written By: Craig L. Parshall  |  Posted: Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

Even the quickest glance at the text of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution makes one thing exceedingly clear: each of the rights guaranteed therein-religion, speech, assembly, and freedom of the press-were meant to apply to private citizens and were enshrined in our Bill of Rights to keep them vibrant and free from excessive government control.

If we go back to the intent of our Founding Fathers, we see their very notion of freedom of the press, for example, was to safeguard the news media from government regulation. There was a good reason for that. In 1774, when the beleaguered Continental Congress began to realize the colonies might have to break with England, the delegates were already thinking ahead to the basics of a free government and healthy society. On October 26, 1774, members of the Congress penned a letter to the inhabitants of the Province of Quebec, hoping to gain their support against England. In that letter they described, among other things, what they saw as the essentials of a free press:

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