Freedom of the Press and How It Has Affected the American
Political Process throughout History

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Presented in Partial fulfillment of the
Requirement for American Federal Gov 1114
Mark L. Hays
Tulsa Community College

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By

E-Man

June 13, 2010

Freedom of the Press is a yearly report by U.S-based non-governmental organization freedom house, measuring the level of freedom and editorial independence enjoyed by the press in every nation and significant disputed territories around the world. Levels of freedom are scored on a scale from 1 (most free) to 100 (least free). Depending on the basics, the nations are …show more content…

By contrast, such analysis had little effect on the extremity of views expressed by politically involved males (Gag Rule, Lapham 2004). According to Reporters, more than a third of the world's people live in countries where there is no press freedom. Overwhelmingly, these people live in countries where there is no system of democracy or where there are serious deficiencies in the democratic process. Freedom of the press is an extremely problematic problem/concept for most non-democratic systems of government since, in the modern age, strict control of access to information is critical to the existence of most non-democratic governments and their associated control systems and security apparatus (Lawrence Grey P. 129). To this end, most non-democratic societies employ state-run news organizations to promote the propaganda critical to maintaining an existing political power base and suppress (often very brutally, through the use of police, military, or intelligence agencies) any significant attempts by the media or individual journalists to challenge the approved "government line" on contentious issues. In such countries, journalists operating on the fringes of what is deemed to be acceptable will very often find themselves the subject of considerable intimidation by agents of the state. This can range from simple threats to their professional careers (firing, professional blacklisting) to death threats, kidnapping, torture, and