First Amendment must go?

 I am about to espouse a sacrilege, media fans. If you have a weak stomach or are prone to apoplexy, avert your eyes now. I believe the First Amendment to the Constitution is outmoded and needs to be itself amended.

As usual with my occasional flashes of what I presume to be brilliance, I am not alone, nor am I first.
 WHY? those of you who have not crumpled and tossed this page might ask.

 (And I am not talking about the flag burning discussions – that's for others to worry over.)

 Things have changed in the landscape of free speech and public discourse in this country. As things change, society and individuals must adjust as well. We don’t use leeches much in medicine anymore, nor do we adjust the spark timing from the steering wheels of our automobiles. Why should free speech be immune from evolutionary change?

 In fact, it hasn’t been immune. Free speech and press rights are not absolute, and they have evolved, and are continuing to evolve, mainly because of the massive technological changes since the 18th century.

 The twin concepts of free speech and press, as discussed in and protected by the First Amendment, do not necessarily reflect the wide variety of talk and reportage that we get in today’s electronic media. Do you honestly believe Madison and Jefferson wanted to protect some of what we see and hear every day? And our ubiquitous and invasive electronic media delivery system was not even imagined by Madison and Jefferson.

 The First Amendment, intended to protect us from Big Government, is not set up to protect us from Big Capitalists who need to deliver us, the audience – even kicking and screaming – to Big Advertisers. This is probably the root of the problem.

 Because of the need to reach the most people, we no longer have news, we have “infotainment.” Because we need to hit the lowest common denominator for that broad audience, we no longer have human drama on stage, we have toilet talk and sex and fistfights blatting at us 24-7 from that little monitor in the corner of the room.

 We have virtually endless amounts of sex and violence in ads, entertainment media and even news. Concerns about Big Government? Ha! No problem. But the mind-numbing drug of incessant mass media messages, especially advertising? The electronic porno-pablum that anesthetizes and amuses us while we are being brainwashed with force-fed consumerist messages? I think we may have a problem here.

 This kind of "free speech" is negatively impacting our quality of life.

 Maybe we need to define what kinds of speech and what kinds of press Congress shall make no law about. Let some slide and let's slam the door on others. Ah, therein lies the rub, according to local media attorney Brooks Rathet, of Holland&Knight, LLP.

 “The problem I would have is who will be the judge as to which category expression will go into?” he said. “Who will protect us from ourselves? Who will tell us what we can and cannot see? I don’t trust anyone to make that decision for me.”

 Rathet says if our culture is going down the tubes by paying too much attention to the blatherings of the media, it is not the media’s fault.

 “I feel that some of this concern is overblown,” he said. “I am wary of anyone who wants to change the First Amendment.”

 Uh-oh.

 (Now former) WJXX-TV anchor Bruce Hamilton shares my concerns. "It is such a subjective thing," he said. "As a journalist, I think we have gone well beyond where we should."

 He sides with Rathet, however, when it comes to further controls.

 "If the community has concerns and they are worried that the First Amendment is being abused, that's what the Supreme Court is for," he said.

 His solution? "We as parents and educators and journalists have to instill in our children common sense [about these issues]," he said.

 My point exactly. But in the current climate of split/melded families, latch-key kids, and pitiful public education, we can't rely on this approach to work.

 Why not go all the way and protect us from ourselves with a distinction between free speech and whatever term we come up with for the incessant and usually commercial prattle that often passes for free speech? The question is: would what we gain in an improved media landscape compensate for our “lost freedom?”

 It is worth thinking about.

         (A couple of good books to read about these ideas are The Death of Discourse by Collins and Skover and Amusing Ourselves to Death by Postman.)