The First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

            Abridging the freedom of speech or the press has come under fire recently.

            According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, many court decisions have defined what is not considered protected by the First Amendment.

            First is incitement; speech that is both directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.  Those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.

            Next is fighting words that are, by the very act of being spoken, tend to incite the individual to whom they are addressed to respond violently and to do so immediately, with no time to think things over. The fighting words category is an exceedingly limited classification of speech, encompassing only face-to-face communications that would obviously provoke an immediate and violent reaction from the average listener.

            On to obscenity which has a three-prong standard that material must meet in order to be considered legally obscene:  Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the "prurient interest" (an inordinate interest in sex); Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct; and Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. (Note: This third prong is considered an "objective" standard and is judged by reference to national rather than community standards.).  If all three prongs are met, the material enjoys virtually no First Amendment protection.

            Then there's defamation which is protected with very limited exceptions, including defamation and fraud.  Defamation is a false statement of fact that (1) is communicated to a third party; (2) is made with the requisite guilty state of mind; and (3) harms an individual's reputation. To be defamatory, a statement must be an assertion of fact (rather than mere opinion or rhetorical hyperbole) and capable of being proven false. As to state of mind, if the person allegedly defamed is a public figure, he or she must prove actual malice. A non-public figure need only prove that the speaker was negligent in making the false statement.

            Next up is fraud and perjury where the First Amendment makes no categorical exception for false or misleading speech, certain types of fraudulent statements fall outside its protection. The government generally can impose liability for false advertising or on speakers who knowingly make factual misrepresentations to obtain money or some other material benefit (such as employment).

            Speech Integral to criminal conduct is next in that the First Amendment affords no protection to speech or writing used as an integral part of conduct in violation of a valid criminal statute.

            You can read the exceptions in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression's website at https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/unprotected-speech-synopsis.

            If you disagree with what is being shared over the airwaves, change the channel.  Poor ratings will hurt celebrities more than your anger.