An Analysis of Media Law and Ethics: Free Speech and Censorship

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of media law and ethics, exploring the evolution of media from print to digital platforms and the increasing influence of social media. It delves into the debates surrounding fake news, censorship, and the impact of these issues on journalism and freedom of expression. The essay examines the ethical and legal challenges faced by media houses, including defamation, privacy concerns, and intellectual property rights. It argues that while media regulations may be necessary, excessive censorship can stifle free speech and critical journalism. The study highlights the need for ethical standards and legal frameworks that protect both the public's right to information and the freedom of journalists, especially in the face of increasing threats and violence against them. The essay concludes by emphasizing the importance of balancing public and organizational interests to safeguard democracy and free expression in the digital age.

Running head: MEDIA LAW AND ETHICS
Media Law and Ethics
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Abstract
Ethical and legal practices in media has been the source of much debate. Media houses has
been accused of endorsing unlawful and unethical practices in order to serve their own
financial interests. There have been numerous accounts of fake news and violation of
intellectual property when it comes to media discourse and presently, since the election of
2016 in America, the issue of fake news and censorship of media through regulations have
become a common exercise. While the financial interests of the media houses cannot be
rejected, it is also important to note that media channels have worked as the machinery to
promote free speech and expression and fair use of intellectual properties. The history of
development of media shows that in one form or another, the influence of media has
increased gradually and presently, media influences and shapes the opinion and buying
decisions of present generations. In this essay, it is argued that due to the digitalization and
internet use, the influence of media has increased gradually, reaching its zenith with the
influence of social media on the lives of people and world scenarios. Due to the increasing
influence of social media, the need for ethical and legal compliance has been propagated by
many politicians. It is understandable here that their interest may lie to the censorship of
content that clashes with their personal political interest and thus, imposing more regulations
on media, especially journalism is likely to stifle the voice of free expression and criticism.
The study concludes that the increasing violence on journalisms show that journalists need
more freedom and power to survive in the profession. It is also suggested that the practice of
journalism or any other form of media should be guided by the basic ethical and legal
standards without violating the free expression.
Keywords: media- journalism- free and fair use- intellectual property- law- ethics- politics-
censorship.

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The media has been one of the most influential and popular factor of the modern
society, politics and change. The first use of media started with the intention of circulation of
information, a noble approach which led to the renaissance (Bertrand, 2018). The book was
Bible and the attempt led to print revolution which can be attributed as the root of all media.
In the beginning, the focus of media was to inform people about recent affairs and
entertainment. In the past twenty years that has changed significantly. The use of media has
been different through the generations (Twenge, Martin & Spitzberg, 2019). The earlier
generations like the baby boomers or the generation x had limited access to media and media
till then had influence over people. People followed the news, stayed updated, followed
fashion of the actors. Before millennia, the popular media were television, newspaper,
advertisements and radio.
With the introduction of television and cable system, there was a huge transformation
in the digital media. Television started to reach more people and channels showing programs
all over the world changed people’s perspective (Luo, 2017). People started to become more
informed about the world affairs as they could see live feed of various incidents. The post
millennial era saw the emergence of social media and the influence of media increased ten-
fold. Evidently, media earlier was mainly for informative and entertainment purpose while
media now has become an inseparable part of the present generation. This surely begs the
question as to how powerful really the media is and whether there should be regulations to
control the power and influence that the media has developed.
The changes in media use, consumption and usage history can be traced back to the
growth of internet (Espinoza, Cevallos & Tusev, 2017). With the advent of the internet age,
the media usage changed completely. New media platforms like YouTube, Netflix and social
media platforms started to influence people. The major shift that came with it was that media
by then had become so influential that they were controlling the lives and choices of the

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people (Jibril, 2017). Channels like YouTube and Netflix along with the use of social media
has led to unpredictable consequences. The developments in technology has further
facilitated the increasing influence of media.
According to Sorokin, Rybakova & Popova (2019), the print media is used by
government and non-governmental agencies to shape public opinion. In this regard, posters,
advertisements printed in newspapers and printed news are the tools that organizations use
for their purpose. Due to the increasing use of social and digital media, the print media has
become almost obsolete. Despite that, the governmental agencies depend on print media to
communicate with the mass. They use strategic communication method such as manipulation
and exaggeration to meet their interest (Bell et al., 2017). The social media too, is used for
such purposes. The instances of fake news can be used as examples to establish the power of
media. There has been numerous cases where fake news has been used or strategically placed
to modify people’s opinion.
The millenials are the most influenced population of media. The millenials use more
than 10 hours of television and other media resources (Newman, 2018). The Generation Z is
far more involved and are almost constantly online, an activity that has been further
facilitated by mobile and internet. Even the government have come to realize the influence
that media has on the lives of people and use the popular media channels, including, print and
digital media to promote fake news in order to influence the decisions of people.
Manipulating people’s opinion through the use of fake news gives way to further ethical
struggle and for that reason, several censorship and accountability clauses have been added to
the laws of media publication (Tambini, 2017). Many a times, fake news is used to tarnish
reputation, misguide people which leads to cheating and reaping people of their right to
information. It violates their right to choose and fair election system as well.

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Media consumption today has changed significantly and it goes beyond anybody
could have ever imagined 20 years ago. What earlier was used as source of news and
information, has now become the primary mode of communication and influencer shaping
and changing people’s opinions, choices, buying behavior and involvement in situations. The
major legal and ethical issues that pervades today’s journalists and media houses are
defamation, privacy and accuracy of information, unethical access to public data, recording
laws, intellectual property rights and misuse of fair use law (Rath, 2017).
Ethical practice of media is necessary and for that protecting intellectual property and
a code of ethics is applicable to the present media system (Five Principles of Ethical
Journalism - Ethical Journalism Network, 2020). The influence of media presently is mostly
negative as media uses only newsworthy or titillating news in order to attract public attention
and both traditional and digitals channels have become the machinery for that. If looked
close, the newspapers in Australia mostly focus on news related homicides and other violent
crimes as they attract more attention of the readers (Waters, Bond and Eriksson, 2017). The
ethical constitution of media is further questioned when media chooses certain news and
ignores others on the basis of readership and popularity, thus, overriding the actual influence
that the media is supposed to play. As the situation worsens, the necessity of media
regulations, code of ethics and copyright protections become especially applicable to media
consumption (Stroud, 2019).
The legal and ethical issues that appear with the present media consumption can be
further focused on the practices of journalism. Fake news has been the concern for the world
in many regards. Fake news has been used to change election results and upturn government
in many cases (The top 10 legal issues today’s Journalists, Creators, and Entrepreneurs share |
New Media Rights, 2020). Fake news is circulated in many forms such as publishing
falsehood knowingly in order to undermine candidate’s chances in election, distribution of

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false news for any financial gain, satirizing or making parodies that harm the image of a
person or organization and bad journalism where images and headlines are used without
proper support of text and evidence. In this regard, it is necessary to note that journalism is
also affected by the laws and policies regarding copyrights. The major laws that these issues
violate are the defamation laws, intellectual property law and electoral law (Kirillova, 2016).
Journalists are also sometimes accused of publishing fake news when the news challenges the
established or orthodox authority or it opposes the ideology of powerful people, mainly
government.
Donald trump had harped upon the use of fake news and censorship of media in order
to curb them. The problem lied in the propaganda that he wanted to continue to take away the
freedom of press and meet his political ambitions. In many cases, when a news or piece of
investigation does not support the well-established hegemony, it is termed as fake news
without determining the actual value of news (Acerbi, 2016). These are the scenarios, which
clearly indicates that media censorship and regulations of media are more likely to stifle the
source of information that people use to educate themselves than to protect them. The
problem with enforcing regulation is that the balance between public and organizational
interest is lost in most cases as the government has more power in regulatory actions.
In the 2016 presidential election, much concern was expressed about the widespread
false news that appeared in the social media. Trumps worry about the false news is
understandable as false news regarding him were circulated all over social media more than
30 million times (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017). The question here lies on the effectiveness of
those fake news as Trump ultimately was the winner. The fake news here may have
contributed to the growing popularity of the candidate as it kept him in the news circulation.
Use of sensitive content is also another issue that comes with journalism regulations

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(González-Esteban et al., 2018). In this regard, different countries have different laws that
justifies their take on what constitutes sensitive content.
Journalism has been subjected to scrutiny and regulation, many of which has been
designed to stifle the voice of truth (Lee, 2016). Accusations of fake news and unethical
journalism has led to the rise of hatred and anger towards journalism. An UNESCO statistics
present that the past decade saw death of 700 journalists for publishing stories (Draghici &
Woods, 2018). Journalism is predominantly based on the idea of freedom of expression and
free and fair use policy. The journalists have been subjected to physical harm and threat to
life during the course of their career and that has led to the lack of popularity in the career
choice. Studies have shown that unethical journalism in the form of fake news or parody does
not actually affect people’s view as the present generation has very minute attention span and
people tend to forget unsavory stories easily (Bago, Rand & Pennycook, 2020).
Taking the need for free press and need for uncensored truth for the public good along
with it, it quickly becomes evident that censorship and regulations regarding journalism or
any kind of media is bound to help the powerful and the dominant but is actually threatening
towards the very idea of democracy and free expression.

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