To kick off the Noise vs. News series, Amanda Cook Fesperman brought to attention about how important the First Amendment is for our country and how it directly impacts everyone in the country.

            She discussed how the government would be run without newspapers and how beneficial it is that we run the government with the media and different news outlets there to inform the public about what is really going on.

            Near vs. Minnesota from 1931 was discussed along with the idea of prior restraint. According to the Bill of Right’s Institutes website, “This Landmark Supreme Court Cases and the Constitution focuses on the 1931 Supreme Court case Near v. Minnesota. In this landmark freedom of the press case, the Court struck down a state law allowing prior restraint (government censorship in advance) as unconstitutional.”

Amanda brought up great ideas and topics that are eye opening and prevalent to any journalist or anyone who wants to read news.

            Fesperman discussed issues from the Pentagon papers and press issues from The Vietnam War. Along with a lot of issues with Press and war they discussed different ideas such as Press Pools, Embedded Journalism and Ban of Pictures of Military coffins and how it was lifted in 2009.

            She also brought to attention that even though we have more media available now we have had less free press for the past 15 years then we ever had due to government censorship. The internet is under attack and silencing the messenger.

            She also talked about a video on YouTube by Trevor Timm or Ted Talk called “How Free is our Freedom of Press” and it talks about the importance of information. This video is a good clip.