Wermiel clarifies that the United States is no stranger to issues of freedom of speech, specifically pertaining to that of the press. He references cases such as Near vs Minnesota (1931) which saw measures placed to limit the state government from prior restraint, which allowed said governments to place restrictions on speech preemptively. While our country has a great track record of protecting freedom of speech, Wermiel raises the questions regarding what is truly considered to be freedom of press in the modern age of media, specifically with the growing influence and use of social media. Over the past decade or so, platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have exploded in popularity. It is on these website that users spend hours browsing daily, often times reading news stories about current events. On these websites, fake news can spread like wildfire as all it takes is a click or two for someone to share an article with all their followers. While sharing a story which makes baseless claims seems like it should be harmless, it can have real life consequences. One such example of this is the Pizzagate scandal from 2016, in which a man brought a rifle to a pizza shop in Washington D.C. claiming that the shop was the base for a child trafficking ring which Hilary Clinton was involved in. The following article by Takashi Imamura goes into further detail about the factors which led up to the event, and how fake news played an important role.

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