The First Amendment -- It's Not Just For Big Media Companies Anymore
Why does The Washington Post willingly publish "classified" information affecting national security? Should Post journalists and others who reveal the government's secrets be subject to criminal prosecution for doing so? These questions, raised with new urgency of late, deserve careful answers.Kaiser walks us through some of the distinguished history of the media's role in digging for the truth (like the Pentagon Papers) and recaps some of the thinking behind the First Amendment. He makes a good argument against those who seem to feel that the press does the nation a disservice by running stories like the one the Post did on secret CIA prisons being operated in Eastern Europe. But I would quibble just a bit with him on this point:There's a reason why we're hearing these questions now. We live in tense times. The country is anxious about war and terrorism. Washington is more sharply divided along ideological lines than at any time since I came to work at The Post in 1963. The Bush administration has unabashedly sought to enhance the powers of the executive branch as it wages what it calls a "war on terror," many of whose components are classified secrets.
These are new circumstances, but to a reporter who has been watching the contest between press and government for four decades, what isn't new here seems more significant than what is. What isn't new is a government trying to hide its activities from the public, and a press trying to find out what is being hidden.
Once we understand the need for balance, it follows logically that no single authority should be able to decide what information should reach the public. Some readers ask us why the president's decisions on how best to protect the nation shouldn't govern us, and specifically our choices of what to publish. The answer is that in the American system of checks and balances, the president cannot be allowed to decide what the voters need to know to hold him accountable.It seems to me that this is exactly what critics of the media have complained of for some time – that big press outlets like The Washington Post, New York Times and television networks believe themselves to be, as a group, that "one single authority" deciding "what information should reach the public." Couple that appearance of self-appointed gatekeeper with a series of scandals and mistakes by these media organizations and it's not illogical for people to start asking who gives them the power to make decisions about the information we receive.
That's a little overstated. After all, it's not entirely the fault of The Times or The Post that their journalism has an enormous impact on what the rest of the media covers. They do have more resources than other press outlets and they have a pretty darned good historical track record. But one of the lessons the MSM is learning these days is that the First Amendment exists for everyone, not just big media outlets. And with increasingly easy and effective ways to exercise their rights, more and more are challenging the old order of things. That means outlets like The Washington Post (and CBS News) are finding the need to discuss their role in this equation. Kaiser provides a good road map, but we'd all do well to recognize the fact that there truly is no "one single authority" any longer.