CONCLUSION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2009
Summary
Jerome Barron used the title of a superb book to ask a key question: “Freedom of the Press for Whom?” Although possibly intended to be rhetorical, supplying a meaningful answer to this question is not that simple. In a rant against corporate control of the media “debasing democracy,” Ronnie Dugger asserted that constitutional law had been “perverted” by “entrenched corporate seizures of the First Amendment.” According to Dugger, it is the “reporter, for the dissemination of whose work the press is supposed to be free.” A journalist himself, Dugger's answer to Barron's question probably represents the view of many journalists. That may be a better answer than the alternative he considered, corporate owners, but the answer is not adequate. Whether the First Amendment gives journalists any special privileges is a very debated and controversial issue. But assuming, as I do, that it does and should and that it does and should protect media entities in ways that it does not protect other business entities, the reason cannot be because journalists can rightfully claim a class of citizenship denied other people or that media entities are valuable in themselves. Special privileges for journalists or the media make sense, if at all, because the press serves particularly important functions in society and that granting these special privileges (whether constitutionally or policy based) increases the likelihood that the press will be able to successfully serve those functions.
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- Media, Markets, and Democracy , pp. 277 - 284Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001