"Industrialization" of the First
Amendment
Freimut Duve is a member of the Lower House of the German Federal Parliament
and Representative on Freedom of the Media for the Organization of Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
This "industrialization" of Article 5 of the
German constitution (or of the American First Amendment) has presented
the modern democracies and many media firms with a problem for which we
do not yet have either a precise name or a solution. The "Article
5" share in the turnover of the great media corporations that is
to say, journalism in the narrow sense - is now small, and it is even
smaller if we consider, as the central element of a free democracy, the
narrower definition of freedom of speech and of the press. Although its
economic significance is slight, its political significance for the free
democracies is great: It is indispensable!
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