When the Government Walks Into a News Room...

In class, we've discussed the landmark court cases over the history of the United States that have sought to protect and maintain our First Amendment rights, specifically many of the Sedition Acts that limited the press. I live in a day and age when people tweet their utter distaste of the entire system, the term "Fake News" exists-- the First Amendment is utilized to its fullest extent by both the public and the news networks.

According to a Providence news outlet, Rhode Island Senate was attempting to pass a bill that punished news outlets for publishing or ignoring certain stories: branded as "Selective Reporting." The goal of the bill was actually to promote a fair and equal presentation of issues from the press, but First Amendment advocacy groups spoke out in protest when the bill was announced.

The protests make sense: the government has to be kept out of the newsroom at all costs; let them in once, and we set a precedent that sanctions can be put on the press. Ultimately, the First Amendment won out and the bill was withdrawn to be rewritten and presented again alongside another bill.

Apparently, the goal of the bill was to support those who are accused of a crime, especially those that are heavily reported, if they are afterward declared innocent. Frequently, people accused of crimes and then villanized by the press are never reported on afterward if their innocence is found. This bill was hoping to do so-- the senator who had been pushing it through apologized for the language that affected the First Amendment but vowed that she would continue to seek justice for those affected by the media in this way.

For more information on the bill, check out this article: https://turnto10.com/news/local/selective-reporting-bill-pulled-after-first-amendment-advocates-speak-out

The History of Netflix

After listening to a series of presentations on the development of technology in class, I decided to dive a little bit deeper into the history of Netflix.

Netflix was founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph (Who happens to be High Point University's Entrepreneur in Residence!)

Originally a website where people could select movies and have them shipped to their homes, Netflix has now cultivated an entire industry of binge-watching TV shows and streaming entire seasons at one time.

Netflix is the precursor to Hulu, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, and Disney+.

When Netflix changed its shipping model to a streaming service in 2011, it completely changed the game. It took TV worldwide -- at this point in 2020, the only countries without Netflix are China and those with sanctions on the United States. Entire seasons and documentary specials come out in an instant and are consumed by the masses within a week, within a day, within a matter of hours.

How we consumed film and television changed instantly. More impressively, Netflix has made a recent move to win Academy Awards. In order to qualify for the Acadamy, a film does have to be shown in a certain amount of theaters, but Netflix was still able to make their original content available on their streaming services as well. They released multiple films to the public in such a way and therefore were able to produce streamable content that was nominated for Academy Awards, a huge step in moving the industry away from movie theaters and discs.

Here's the biggest indicator that the times are changing: in 2018, 33 million people got rid of cable. And more are sure to follow.

Check out this site to learn more about how Netflix is changing the game:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2019/02/19/what-is-the-netflix-effect/#5f11cb7e5640