We Want Freedom

We want Freedom

By

Justin Riley

Expository Writing

Ms Martin

November 28, 2005

We Want Freedom

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; 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." (Bill of Rights 5) The United States was formed by those who were trying to escape persecutions and to insure that the government of the U.S. did not become like that of Britain, which denied its citizens many important rights. In order to protect themselves from tyrannical rule in the future, the country's founding fathers created the Bill of Rights, a list of the rights of the people, which now makes up the first ten amendments of the United States Constitution. That bill includes the freedom of the press, a freedom that has not been effective at stopping censorship during times of war and peace. Censorship is used buy news media, government, and the military a way of keeping critical information out of the public eye. This should not be allowed since it violates the first amendment. This is evident by examining past and present incidents of censorship and the events surrounding them.

In the 200 plus years of the nation's history, censorship has always existed. For instance, on the verge of war with France in 1798, Congress enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, claiming that censorship was essential to stop enemy espionage and sabotage. The Sedition Act made it unlawful to "write, print, utter or publish . . . any false, scandalous and malicious writing" against government officials intending "to bring them . . . into contempt or disrepute" (1798, 1 Stat. 570). There were 25 arrests, 15 indictments and 10 convictions under the Act, mostly of newspaper editors and politicians from the party in opposition to the government. Legal challenges to the Act were unsuccessful at the time. But when party fortunes changed, the convicted were pardoned and most fines were returned. The dangers had been exaggerated. Another example of censorship legislation comes from the First World War during which Congress enacted the Espionage Act. This act made it a crime to utter, print, write, or publish any "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language or any language intended to bring the U.S. form of government, the Constitution, or the flag into contempt, scorn, contumely, or disrepute" (1918,40 Stat. 553). More than 2000 individuals, including journalists, were prosecuted under the Act. Convictions were mostly for criticizing U.S. participation in the war. Despite the obvious unconstitutionality of the Espionage Act, in Abrams v. U.S. (1919, 250U.S. 616) the U.S. Supreme Court upheld such convictions Censorship however is not only a problem of the past. There has also been more recent cases.

In the crisis following the September 11th attack, the main censorship problems have again involved government efforts to withhold information from the press, claiming that disclosures would endanger national security. These have been and still are coupled with appeals for self-censorship as a patriotic duty which have been well-publicized, adding the pressures springing from publicity to the request. Prominent examples of official secrecy are refusals to discuss war related matters with reporters, withholding all information about people detained by the government, limiting reports about military activities in Afghanistan to reports by the Secretary of Defense and a few generals, and failure to produce the records of what the government knew prior to the 2001 attack that might have forestalled it (Bojeeson 180) The press inquiries about the detainees rounded up after September 11th could be denied on national security grounds because "public disclosure would undermine counter-terrorism efforts and put the detainees at risk of attack from angry Americans as well as terrorists" (Sachs, 2002). Government lawyers have argued in cases that challenged the refusal to disclose the names of the detainees and the charges against them, that national security interests outweigh any public right to know who was detained for what reasons and for what length of time (Sachs, 2002). To throttle the circulation of war-related information, the government has followed the Gulf War pattern of allowing only a few top-level military and civilian officials to report about the on-going events and plans concerning the war. Reporters have to accept messages because most of the military activities are conducted by small groups of Special Operations Forces who can be neither accompanied by journalists nor interviewed.

The recount of past and ongoing current events makes it clear that national security concerns have always trumped First Amendment protections in periods of crisis. It also makes it clear that decisions made while the crisis mentality prevailed were later regretted when it became clear that curtailments of first amendment and other civil rights were excessive. One such example is not allowing papers to use the pictures of dead soldiers arriving home, with the reassuring that doing so it would not show the soldier due honor. Also, government officials want to keep the count down on how many soldiers had really died. The released photos blurred or "abstracted" the soldiers who were carrying their fallen comrades. Only releasing them after being drilled with a Freedom of Information Act law suite the military released them to the public. Such censorship does not come without ill effects

Many journalists have left the field because of the recent way they are to portray the military and government. Two such individuals are Leslie O'mera and Katrina Bojesson who worked for CBS during the TWA 800 crisis. Together with a team had found incriminating information on the military that they had four jets in the vicinity of the area. They had spent three and a half weeks gathering this information that revealed incriminated the military of withholding information that would change the view of this accident. Bojesson knew that given such information would come with recriminations she writes, "I was handed my release slip and I was expecting it." After being let go she and O'mera published a book called Into the Buzzsaw- the Myth of the Freedom of the Press. In her book she has collected many occurrences of journalist being