Behind the Bylines: The civic work after the protest

Behind the Bylines: The civic work after the protest

In moments like this, when the political climate feels volatile and the stakes become unabashedly personal, it is tempting to treat the First Amendment as a shield we can simply hold up. We feel empowered to speak, criticize, protest, and publish. But the Amendment is a civic structure that depends on what a society can do with speech once it is released into the world. The function of the media, as an architect of meaning and motivator of cultu…