 |
| A Coffeehouse Disscussion |
Introduction
Life as a writer in American Society has never been easy unless you make it. There is history of writers living in Grub Street in the 19th century as "hack writers." A hack writer is one that is paid to write low quality, rushed articles or books very quickly. These writers were paid per word so, as you can imagine, what these hack writers produced was of low quality. There wasn't much freedom in what they were writing at the time because they were writing to survive. The passion in writing that is needed in order for writing to inspire or to change the perspective of others was probably lessened in this process. What was the point in writing if it did not inspire? Can words just be words and where did these writings take us?
Previous Posts: Hotspots in Journalism Revising Hotspots in Journalism
Five Thesis Statements
1. [Policy Claim]
Journalists should be confident in voicing their opinions no matter what the consequences may be because of the future consequences that not doing so, will produce.
2. [Definition Claim]
It is part of human nature to want to know the truth, but when that truth is meddled with censorship and commercialism, the truth can be obscured.
3. [Comparison Claim]
Publishers in every department have the responsibility to censor the content put out by their companies just as journalist and writers have that obligation in order to receive pay, but with that, the whole concept of the Freedom of Speech is disturbed.
4. [Evaluation Claim]
Placing censorship on a specific article or book is an ineffective way of producing content because now a days, people are looking for the raw facts and if we do not produce any such thing, we may be violating our own codes of ethics.
5. [Causal Claim]
Not allowing journalists to post uncensored content will led us to back to where we started without a free democracy.
I think my favorite claim that I have is the second one because thats the one I could really feel passionate about. Seeing the different ways I could argue my points has opened my mind up a little more. How do you guys feel about censorship within journalism? And writing to make a profit rather just to write to inspire?
I'm not really sure what the answer is, but I think this is an interesting concept. On one hand, I totally agree that people should be free to write what they want to write. On the other hand, there is some rhetoric that I think is dangerous. In general though, I would agree that there should be very little limitation in what people can write, with the exception maybe being things intended to cause violence. Then again, that is a blurry line, and of course there are good things (like the American Revolution) that have happened, and also included quite a bit of violence.
ReplyDeleteAll of your claims I think are very well done and really take a stand. The policy claim had me mind blown. It is true that there are major consequences when you choose not to use your voice. I liked how you used the word "should" and expanded on it.
ReplyDelete