"Why freedom of speech is important for the media?" is the right way to put it and Instead of answering this question in a subjective form, I will be telling you about few real time incidents.Spotlight - USA (1997–2002)
The sexual abuse scandal in Boston archdiocese was part of a series of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in the United States and Ireland. In early 2002, Boston Globe’s SPOTLIGHT team, one of the oldest newspaper of USA coverage of a series of criminal prosecutions of five Roman Catholic priests thrust the issue of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests into the national spotlight. The coverage of these cases encouraged other victims to come forward with their allegations of abuse, resulting in more lawsuits and criminal cases. As it became clear that there was truth to many of the allegations and that there was a pattern of sexual abuse and cover-up in a number of large dioceses across the U.S., what had originally appeared to be a few isolated cases of abuse exploded into a nationwide scandal. The resulting scandal created a crisis for the Catholic Church in the United States, encouraging victims in other nations to come forward with their allegations of abuse, thus creating a global crisis for the Church.
2. CHAKRAVYUH - India (2006)
Star News channel in India through a sting operation - Operation Chakravyuha done with Detective Intelligence Group - showed six MP’s soliciting commissions while allotting funds under the MPLADS for developmental works in their respective constituencies. This exposed the corruption practices by the then ruling government by the media.
3. Downing Street Memo - UK (2002)
The ‘Downing Street Memo’ scandal was exposed by the UK press. The London Times released details of a memo which showed that President George W. Bush had plans to give out false information about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. The supposed aim of this exercise was to project a just cause for initiating a war on Iraq. This exposed the false reason used by the USA to wage war against Iraq.
The above few operations and stings are few on the countless things done by the media all over the world which eventually forced out the the government responsible for it to fall, famous people being persecuted for their crimes and so on. Without any freedom of speech of media, their would have been not a single exposure of the scams and political wrongdoings by the powerful people and organizations.
I hope this answers the question that why freedom of speech of media is very important in a society.
