College Essay On Freedom Of Speech

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Freedom of Speech
The freedom to express one’s thoughts freely is greatly valued in today’s society. I am fortunate that I live in a time and place where I can exercise this right without any restrictions. The importance of this right is evident in the fact that it is the first amendment, freedom of speech. Over the decades, though, this right has accumulated some negative actions. As numerous people acknowledge this right, they tend to test its restrictions and often see how far they can go in terms of expressing their inner most opinions about others within the same society. Freedom of speech began as a contradiction of itself, where people weren’t allowed to express their opinion. It seems that as soon as people were fully allowed to exercise …show more content…

This right is greatly abused when it is used to intentionally hurt and discriminate against an individual, and it gets even worse when the perpetrator can get away with it. An example of this would be when an Arab professor at a university was targeted with a hate crime, when a poster that had “terrorist supporter” written on it was directed towards her. When she tried reporting this incident, the administration dismissed her case and concluded that the poster makers were “entitled to free speech,” and that they were simply exercising their right (Hauslohner). A similar incident was about an “anti-Islamic video” that was posted on YouTube criticizing the religion and accusing those who were apart of it with crimes they never committed. Although Google did ban the video in several countries, they didn’t take the whole video down because they believed that the video did “not meet [the] definition of hate speech” (Sengupta). Another instance with the media was a man who sent life threatening messages through Facebook to his wife, he was later fined and imprisoned for this. His lawyer argued “First Amendment protection,” saying that he was exercising his rights, but this only proves that in some cases there is a clear line when freedom of speech is being abused (Advertisement). The only problem is that when this society deems a case insignificant, the line begins to blur (Volokh). Furthermore, the media can spread an idea widely and much faster than before, when hate speech is mixed in, it can lead to results such as cyberbullying which can in turn lead to fatal consequences for the victim (Advertisement). When those who are in power ignore such problematic situations and allow for such vile actions to take place, not to mention on such a grand scale, then

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