Page 12 Portland Observer Section II Thursday, February 23, 1978
The Block Press
and the First Amendment
by James I). Williams
When the first Congress pro
posed the first ten amendments -
The Bill of Rights - to the
Constitution in 1791, it was act
ing in response to the public's
fears that the Constitution itself
set no limits on what the govern
ment could do in its relationships
with its citizens. Having just
emerged from a revolution
whose purpose was to create a
free nation, the protection of
individual rights against govern
ment intrusion was of critical
importance to the founding fath
ers. and not the least of these
rights was freedom of the press.
In writing into the First
Amendment the stricture that
“Congress shall make no law...
abridging the freedom of speech
or the press," there was both a
recognition of the vital role the
press had played in influencing
public opinion in America to
throw off the yoke of English
rule -- a role which was regarded
as patriotic and not treasonous -
and an effort to insure that the
freedom, which had helped
spawn the revolution, would be
preserved.
The Amendment
echoed Thomas Jefferson's asser
tion that "our country depends
on the freedom of the press and
that cannot be limited without
being lost.”
Freedom of the press as em
bodied in the First Amendment,
however, has always been limit
ed. As a practical matter, only
those who owned the press were
free to exercise that freedom;
those who were non-owners
could not. Just as the govern
inent was constitutionally prohi
bited from telling a press owner
what could or could not be
printed, so was a non-press own
er powerless to determine what
the press should or should not
say. That privilege was reserved
for the owners, not the consum
ers.
What the government was
guaranteeing was simply the ba
sic right of the press to operate
free of governmental restric
tions, not how well or how fairly
it should serve the public. This
basic concept has been continual
ly reaffirmed throughout the 200
years of the nation; most recent
ly in the decision of the Supreme
Court in the case of the New
York Times vs. United States.
Here the government sought to
prevent the Times from printing
portions of the so-called Penta
gon Papers. The Court ruled
against the government. In re
jecting the plaintiffs conten
tions. Justices Hugo Black and
William 0 . Douglas wrote:
“In the First Amendment the
Founding Fathers gave the free
press the protection it must have
to fulfill its essential role in our
democracy. The press was to
serve the governed, not the
governors. The Government’s
power to censor the press was
abolished so that the press would
remain forever free to censure
the Government."
And so the press has remained
free in this phase of its operation
since the beginning of the nation.
But at the same time, as the
press has grown in size and
pervasiveness and expanded to
include radio, television, and
other methods of communica
tions which certainly could not
have been foreseen by the fram
ers of the First Amendment - it
has moved further and further
away from the people, increasing
the difficulty of public access. In
the early days of the Republic,
when any free man. assuming
that he was literate and so
inclined, could set up his own
small press with what for that
time was a reasonably modest
investment, newspapers proli
ferated and there was the oppor
tunity for many views to be
heard. Later, with the develop
ment of the mass communica
tions industry as big business,
the enormous cost of operation
materially reduced the number
of press outlets to the point
where today, many of our cities
are one newspaper towns. Many
of the television and radio sta
tions are owned by the same
people who own the newspapers,
and the accepted hallmark of
success - television news - from
whence most people get their
information - is not necessarily
based on content, but on the
number of viewers a news pro
SAMUEL CORNISH
James D Williams, Director of Communications
of the National Urban League, is a prize winning jour
nalist with more than a decade of experience in the
black press. His intimate knowledge of its history
comes as a result of serving successively as editor of
The Carolinian, the Baltimore Afro-American and the
Washington Afro-American A former Public Affairs
Director of the Office of Equal Opportunity, and Direc
tor of Information for the U S. Commission on Civil
Rights. Mr. Williams currently is an adjunct professor
of journalism at Hunter College.
U not m .
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