The importance of the First Amendment

Capturing a rare picture, you smile to yourself with great content. You know this will be it, your big moment. This is the picture that will earn you the promotion you’ve been longing to have.

Scanning over the picture, your eyes draw to a small hand that was caught in the frame. In disappointment, you roll your eyes. This hand ruined your masterpiece picture.

With a few clicks, the hand that once lingered in the frame is now gone. Your masterpiece has now been restored, but what about your ethics and creditability?

Throughout this assignment we read many different articles about the First Amendment and ethics.

While reading over them, I thought to myself what they personally mean to me as a journalism student. Being able to express myself throughout my pictures and reports, without being told what to post or where to post is what the First Amendment means to me, along with providing trustworthy ethics throughout my work and just being honest.

Ethics is one aspect of this lesson that really resonated with me. In today’s society, it is very easy for anyone to alter or significantly change facts or pictures. I feel the way you capture a picture and what you write about them speaks about you and your character as a person. 

Though altering may make the picture more attractive, you are losing not only your credibility as a journalist, but also your ethics.

The way in which you honor both these aspects will not only speak about your character but also, your work as a journalist. 

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment