As you may have heard, The New York Times newspaper could possibly be facing some serious allegations about breaking national security policies by publishing a controversial story. I have many problems with all of this.
Here in America we must abide by a certain document that is known as the supreme law of the land. The famous document I am referring to is of course known as The Constitution. When our Founding Fathers wrote The Constitution, the added ten amendments intended to protect us from the government. These amendments are known as The Bill of Rights. The first amendment states and I quote, "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."
Applying this to what is going on with The New York Times goes something like this. The government wants to prosecute members of the newspaper for publishing "classified" information that is supposedly endangering American's. My problem with this is in the form of two issues. First of all, the information they published wasn't classified information. All they said was that the government is keeping an eye on money transfers between the U.S. and Middle East countries. This information is no way classified. If you didn't have any idea that this was going on then you must be living a really sheltered life.
The second issue I have on this matter is why are we trying to prosecute the publisher of the story, The New York Times? Why not go after the person who is really responsible for the crime, the person who leaked the story. The New York Times didn't leak the story, so therefore they must have got their information from somewhere, and that person is the one responsible. That person is the one that is putting the American public at a risk of national security if the so called information leaked is actually "classified" information. This goes back to the old saying, "Don't shoot the messenger." The New York Times was only doing what their Constitutional rights allow them to do, and that is report the news based on their freedom of speech and freedom of press.
The same thing happened in 1971 when a high-level Pentagon analyst by the name of Daniel Ellsburg carried a briefcase filled with documents stamped "Top Secret" out of his office with one clear plan: leak them to Congress, leak them to the press, and get the truth out about the Vietnam War. Ellsberg said his only regret is that it took him so long - two years - to copy and leak the 7,000-page study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam to Congress and the press. Ellsberg was indicted for espionage and at one point faced 115 years in jail. Charges were dropped when it was revealed that President Richard Nixon's operatives burglarized the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist in order to discredit him. All this information was reported by the The New York Times who was the source for the leak of these Pentagon Papers. The government tried to prosecute The New York Times as well but of course the charges on them got dropped because they had no legal bounds for the allegations. I think if Nixon had not tried to pull some funny business then Ellsberg would have been convicted.
I truly think that if the government intervenes and puts a censorship on what the media can and cannot publish, then we are moving closer to becoming a communist government. This is everything the American way stands against. If the government censors what one can publish then what is stopping them from taking it to the extreme. What is stopping them from taking away our speech and opinions altogether. A person without an opinion is like a person with no heart or soul. You have to have the right to stand up for yourself and speak out in what you believe in whether it is right or wrong. Prosecuting The New York Times will not solve anything. It will only make matters worse.
To sum everything up I think that the two extreme conditions will still go against the American way. If you censor the press to its entirety then you are communist but if you don't censor at all then the country will have no secrets and all the other nations will know everything we are doing which will jeopardize national security. You must have some sort of regulations to stop the two extreme cases from happening.
