New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971)

"Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press
is the duty to prevent government from deceiving the people
and sending them off to distant lands to die."

New York City, 1971. Pentagon Analyst (and former Marine) Daniel Ellsberg completes a top secret document. It outlines, in Ellsberg's opinion, an ongoing history of government deceipt and futile attempts to win an unwinnable war. The title is "U.S. Decision Making in Vietnam"; it's 47 volumes -- or as Ellsberg puts it, "seven thousand pages of presidential lying." When he leaks it to the press, it becomes known as The Pentagon Papers.

The Department of Justice, citing national security, quickly gets, for the first time in history, an order restraing the press for publishing. A few days later the U.S. Supreme Court nullifies that order. Justice Hugo Black writes: "The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do."

For more...

Conversations with History: Daniel Ellsberg Interview

     Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

AMENDMENT 1 Freedom of Religion, Speech, and Assembly

Passed by Congress September 25, 1789. Ratified December 15, 1791.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or 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. [^].

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