The White House is now threatening to prosecute reporters and editors who publish classified information, a move that really strikes at the very soul of what the phrase “free press” is all about. I’m not well-versed in First Amendment law, but I’m not even sure prosecuting reporers under the Espionage Act would even be possible, given the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Pentagon Papers case.

In any case, the usual Bush cheerleaders notwithstanding, this attempt to intimidate the press into, for example, not reporting on efforts by the U.S. government to spy on its own citizens is, to say the least, frightening. Given the Bush administration’s extraordinary secrecy, and it’s penchant to “classify” any information it feels could potentially be politically damaging (even information wholly unrelated to national security), this move toward jailing journalists ought to scare the hell out of you. It could render the media pretty much powerless as any sort of check on government. All the White House would have to do is classify all documentation of its mistakes.

Perhaps the Bush sycophants at Powerline could see the inherent danger here if they shift their sights beyond the next few years. Imagine how “President Hillary Clinton” might wield such power, for example.

The best take on this comes from NY Times editor Bill Keller. As quoted in the Post:

“There’s a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public’s business risk being branded traitors,” said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post. “I don’t know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad.”

And as we all know well by now, the terrorists hate us for our freedom, not for our foreign policy. The Bush administration is undermining one of our most basic freedoms. Which means, by way of warblogger logic, that the Bush administration is appeasing the terrorists, doesn’t it?

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 5th, 2006 at 12:06 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.