Name: Tatsuya King
Social Justice Group: 2018-2019, Freedom of the Press
Date of Fieldwork: December 18, 2018
Name of Organization: Civil rights attorney
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Andrea Taetle, Civil rights attorney
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did:
In this field work, our group visited the house of Andrea Taetle, a Civil rights attorney as well as the mother of one of our group mates. When we got there, we watched a video about James Risen and talked about how he was related to freedom of the press and whistleblowing. She shared facts as well as opinions on problems related to freedom of the press and how our country is dealing with it currently.
What I learned:
Through this experience, I learned about James Risen and how he was able to inform the whole country that the government was spying on them by exercising his first amendment right. Even though the government wanted to arrest him, they couldn’t because he was protected through freedom of the press. Instead, they could only go after his source and the person who illegally told him the information. We also learned what Andrea Taetle thought about our current administration and how it is dealing with the press. We learned more about how the media is making valid news sources less believable to people who aren’t educated about them. Way fewer people are willing to spend a lot of time working on investigative news reporting if fewer people are actually going to read their articles. More and more people are starting to rely on social media for their news instead of authentic sources like the New York Times because social media is a lot more convenient. This coupled with the president calling valid news sources “fake news” is making freedom of the press a lot less free than it should be. Andrea Taetle’s suggests that the best way to fix this problem is to educate people on what is and what’s not a valid news source.
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
From the video we watched and talking to Andrea Taetle, I learned how much you need to know about freedom of the press and 1st amendment laws to take a good opinion on certain tough situations like that of James Risen. Without a good deal of knowledge, you might miss key laws that allow certain things. For example, if you were trying to make a case that you were allowed to publish something but you didn’t know your 1st amendment rights, you would have a really hard time making a believable and factually correct case.
