CNN vs. Clay Travis

This week's question was: "What are the constraints on free speech and the First Amendment for the news industry?" The way I answered this was by researching a recent issue that arose when a male guest, Clay Travis, appeared on Brooke Baldwin's CNN segment and said that the only two things he faithfully believes in are "the First amendment and boobs." This immediately offended Balwdin and the other male guest and Baldwin kicked him off live air. He received backlash for his comment but no real repercussions took place. When looking at this, three key terms come to mind that we've studied: the first is the First Amendment for obvious reasons being that by saying this he exercised his right to free speech, Obscenity because what he said was an obscene comment directed at a female news anchor about the anatomy of women, and lastly, Censorship because CNN has a "play nice" policy where they address how guests and anchors should speak to one another, ultimately censoring what is said on their programs, that of which Travis did not follow. While it can be argued that because the First Amendment does not protect obscenity and his comment was obscene, he does not deserve to have some sort of punishment, it can also be argued that if it there were better regulations on censorship than he would not have been able to make such a comment, especially to a woman. In the end, my opinion falls in the middle. I do believe that he, along with everyone else, should be able to exercise their right to free speech whether they are saying an obscene comment or not, because even though legal action was not taken, he did show the world what type of person he is and he will reap the repercussions he deserves. I think that in order to prevent this from occurring more, every news outlet should have policy put in place about how they will allow for words to be spoken or published. All in all, to answer this weeks question, I believe that the constraints on free speech and the First Amendment for the news industry are as established and enforced as well as they can be. In every case, improvements can be made but I think it is difficult to always be able to predict what somebody is going to say on live television. You can't control people and what they decide to say or publish but you can regulate it and put in disciplinary actions when broken.

Helpful resources:
Brooke Baldwin's take: http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/15/opinions/espn-and-women-in-2017-brooke-baldwin-opinion/index.html
Video: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/15/clay-travis-used-his-first-amendment-and-boobs-line-long-before-he-shocked-cnn/?utm_term=.b704fddd2d73

What are the constraints on free speech and First Amendment for the news industry?

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