Media Law

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, tolerance is defined as “ sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own .” The promotion of tolerance as a value is a leading argument for the protection of speech under the First Amendment. With today’s political divisiveness, however, some are starting to question the legitimacy of this value, because it allows hatred and stupidity to be spewed from the mouths of our citizens, including some of our elected officials.  (See Free Speech has Failed Us).   As much as the tweet to the right goes against all my instincts of civility, we need to tolerate it as a free exercise of speech. The importance of tolerance for differing views was initially argued by John Stuart Mill. In his essay entitled, “On Liberty (1869), Mill encourages diversity of thought, opinion and speech in the marketplace. Allowing people to challenge each other will, in the end, result in a better society. ...

We do it every day...pictures of ourselves at school, on the beach, getting ready for a party. Posting selfies to Instagram is a common occurrence in many of our lives today. We generally do it for fun and to share our lives with our friends and followers. It usually doesn't take much thought and not much thought is usually put into it. But when we post those images of our faces, do we realize the power of our message? It is actually way more powerful than we may know. Just recently, the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, made a speech in front of the United Nations General Assembly. At the beginning of his speech, he took out his phone and snapped a selfie. Some may argue that this action was completely inappropriate at the time. But Bukele strongly believes otherwise. He said, "Believe me, many more people will see that selfie when I share it than will listen to this speech...A couple of images on Instagram can have more impact than any speech delivered in this asse...