Every citizen of America is bound to live by certain rules and regulations and have some rights and responsibilities. These rights and responsibilities are made by the government to ensure that all people live peacefully.
These rights protect all American citizens:
- Freedom of expression
- Freedom of worship
- Right to a fair trial
- Right to vote
- Right for federal employment
- Right to run for elected office
- Freedom of life and pursuit of happiness
These rights discussed in the US citizen website have added to the list after the first amendment called the “Bill of Rights.” Other amendments that are a part of Bill of rights are the changes in voting rights and age for voting.
They also have some responsibilities:
- Support and defense of the constitution
- Stay informed about community affecting issues
- Participation in the democratic process
- Respect for federal and state laws
- Respect for rights, opinion, and beliefs of others
- Participation in local community
- Honest and timely payment of taxes
- Serve on a jury
- Defense of the country when there is a need
The role of media in the understanding of rights and responsibilities is both promoting and suppressing at times. In the past, media’s role in freedom of expression and pursuit of happiness was encouraging. We can see by several campaigns that run in the past two years about the gay rights movement that media promoted. While it also has worked negatively that can be described by minimal effects theory, cultivation theory and the hypodermic theory in which media uses its powerful, penetrating approach to place information reader’s mind and change our concepts about our rights and responsibilities.
The article written by Nancy Qian and David Yanagizawa-Drott discusses the independence of media and government distortion of news coverage. The study describes clearly what the human rights of the US citizens are, but its main focus is on the government distortion of the rights. The article changes our previous perception about the interference of government in presenting of rights to the public (Qian and Yanagizawa-Drott, pp. 2). The evidence of government interference in delivering human rights to the public via media was also seen in the past at the time of Civil Rights movement.
This fact is in direct violation of US responsibilities as it gives wrong information to citizens about the changes happening that affect their community. The people if base their concepts on the information delivered to them will misinterpret the information and they will not understand their rights correctly.
As a US Citizen, the right to have correct information about changes in policy and modifications in the constitution are a must as it is the basic right of every citizen to stay informed of their rights. The article reveals that government involvement in media especially the democratic government raises deep and fundamental freedom of speech concerns in the rights. The qualitative evidence from political scientist and government objectives show solid evidence of government manipulation of the media and journalism.
The article changes the concepts of freedom of speech rights of US citizens. This violation of civil rights has changed my concepts on the level of authenticity present in the news. The media being the only source of information transfer from policymakers to the general public, if manipulated will create anxiety in public, and their level of trust in the government may decrease. This involvement in media also raises concerns of suppressing the rights of backward communities who do not have direct interaction with the government and their rights may be severely violated. This also raises responsibilities on the public to raise voice against transparency of media so that people will know about changes in decisions made by policymakers of the nation.
Works Cited
Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities. (2018). USCIS. Retrieved 23 April 2018, from https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/learners/citizenship-rights-and-responsibilities
Esler, Michael. “Bill of Rights.” The Encyclopedia of Political Thought (2014).
Qian, Nancy, and David Yanagizawa-Drott. “Government Distortion in Independently Owned Media: Evidence from US News Coverage of Human Rights.” Journal of the European Economic Association 15.2 (2017): 463-499.
