Daniel Ellsberg, a political scientist working for the Pentagon, stole classied papers called, “The Pentagon Papers.” He then gave these documents to The New York Times, which began publishing them. Just a couple days later, the government was granted an order to stop the publishing of these papers. The case was quickly appealed to the US Supreme Court. The question was: Could the government prevent the publication of materials because they could be endangering national security?
The Court’s decision was issued per curiam. This means that the decision came from the Court as whole, rather than there being one writer for the opinion, all nine justices wrote their own opinion. Justice Hugo L. Black wrote that he felt the whole reason behind “freedom of the press” in the First Amendment was so that the press could let out government secrets and inform the people. Justice William O. Douglas agreed and added that there is nothing barring the press from publishing this kind of information. I agree with the Court’s decision for this case. Justice Black’s argument makes perfect sense. Today there a lot of information gets leaked to the public. It is as if the freedom of the press keeps the government on its toes and prevents it from committing any acts of corruption. If the government could control everything that gets published, there would be much more “behind the scenes” things taking place.
This case is often compared to Wikileaks, which is a company responsible for leaking much government information to the public. This video discusses the similarities and differences between these two situations.
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