Last week’s Constitution Day celebrations sparked a flurry of news and debates about the role of the First Amendment in our society. On its surface, the First Amendment embodies the sort of apple-pie American value that all people tend to agree with. It’s fundamental to our democracy and has been our media’s defining characteristic since the nation’s founding. However, what became clear throughout the course of the week was that the First Amendment is a contested terrain, and the technological and economic changes shaping our media are also shaping new understandings and implications of freedom of speech and the press.

For FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, the First Amendment is, at its roots, a challenge to all of us. Copps, who last week received one of the Roosevelt Institute’s prestigious “Four Freedoms” awards, noted in his acceptance speech that “no citizen should be denied the news and information he or she needs to participate responsibly in our democracy any place in the land.”  He described freedom of speech and the press as “a shining goal — but never fully achieved and every day threatened.”

In a blog post coinciding with last week’s celebrations, Mathew Ingram of the site GigaOM argues that “freedom of the press applies to everyone — yes, even bloggers.” Ingram is particularly concerned with the way that acts of journalism, from recording police in public to tweeting updates from protests, are being attacked and undermined by those in power, even as courts uphold a more expansive view of freedom of the press.

“[C]hanges in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw,” writes Judge Kermit Lipez, who Ingram points to in his post. “Such developments make clear why the newsgathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.”

The shifting media landscape has challenged traditional legal definitions of freedom of the press, even calling into question what we mean by “press.” It is increasingly important for us to remember that freedom of the press is more than just a law; it’s a core value of our democracy.

This is not a new idea. In 1944 Judge Billings Learned Hand explained the importance of understanding the First Amendment in our hearts, not just in our law books: “Liberty lies in the hearts and minds of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.” A recent report on young people’s attitudes toward the First Amendment, published by the Knight Foundation, echoes that sentiment, finding that engagement with the media — including social media — deepened support for freedom of speech and the press.

People around the country, working alone or in small startups, are reclaiming freedom of the press and trying to fill the gaps left by mainstream media. What has often been called the crisis in journalism may indeed be a moment of opportunity to reclaim and enact our core values. In his speech, Copps reminds us that “time and again, ‘we the people’ have come together to renew our freedoms.”

Too often, freedom of the press is available only for those who can pay to play in our media system. Technology has put more media-making tools in the hands of more people, but media policy still privileges a few large corporations who have incredible sway over our nation’s media.

“Freedom of speech and expression suffers from the excesses of financial speculators who are more interested in the bottom line on the quarterly report than in quality news on the front page or the evening news,” Michael Copps said last week, arguing that these forces have “ravaged the diversity of local journalism and left in their path of destruction a diminished and too often dumbed-down civic dialogue.”

In Michael Copps’ description of a ravaged landscape we can hear echoes of former FCC Chairman Newton Minow’s famous “vast wasteland” speech, delivered 50 years ago. At a Harvard event celebrating the speech’s anniversary, Minow raised concerns about the intersection of media and elections, where he sees a crisis emerging.

As the depth and breadth of TV news have deteriorated — especially at the local level — communities have been left with fewer sources of meaningful election coverage. People now receive the majority of their information about candidates from self-serving campaign ads — not from public service-oriented news. In its recent future of media report, the FCC noted that in 2006, “viewers of local news in the Midwest got 2.5 times more information about local elections from paid advertisements than from newscasts.”

Minow noted that candidates must raise incredible amounts of money from the public so they can buy access to the public airwaves. And as campaign ads have become huge windfalls for TV broadcasters, there is little market motivation to change this equation. More than two-thirds of all campaign spending in the last election went to TV stations. In 2008, TV commercials ate up at least $2.8 billion in campaign funds nationwide. Robert McChesney and John Nichols call this “the money and media election complex.” 

The First Amendment was never meant to suggest that the market alone is enough of a system to protect freedom of speech and the press. We should understand these freedoms, not just as freedom from government influence, but also freedom for all people to participate in and access news and information.

Michael Copps seemed to agree. “Freedom of speech and expression is further impaired by a federal government absent without leave for more than 30 years from its responsibility to protect the public interest,” he said last week. “Instead, government — and I speak specifically of the Federal Communications Commission where I work — has abetted the decline of our small ‘d’ democratic dialogue by, for example, failing to insist that the people’s airwaves serve the people’s interest.”

This is a critical moment, as we re-imagine the future of journalism and think about what the First Amendment demands of us and our nation. But even as court cases and legal challenges help shape the role of freedom of speech and the press in an era of participatory media, we should hold ourselves and our leaders to a higher standard. Instead of focusing on narrow legal definitions of free speech and freedom of the press, we should let our best values be a guide.