A searchlight on government

In summary, the media have a history of testing the resiliency of the free speech and free press clauses of the First Amendment by challenging any attempts to restrict their coverage of politics and society, and by arguing passionately that the "public has a right to know." This is as it should be, since a free press -- even one that occasionally exceeds bounds of good taste -- is essential to the preservation of a democratic society. Thomas Jefferson considered such a press the best guarantor of freedom, and was willing to put up with its excesses in order to gain the benefits of a constant critique that can illuminate the activities of government.

Not all democracies share the same zeal as the United States for an unfettered press, and indeed even American courts, while tending to grant progressively more freedom to the media, have not invariably supported complete freedom of expression. To return to a principle enunciated at the beginning of this essay, however: For a nation to be considered truly democratic, it must be prepared to grant substantial protection to media expressing ideas. While the American record on this point has not been perfect, the strong tendency of what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes characterized in 1919 as the American "experiment" in constitutional theory has been to favor an increasingly free expression of published ideas.

 

For Additional Reading

Zechariah Chafee, Free Speech in the United States (Harvard University Press, 1967)

Fred W. Friendly, Minnesota Rag: the Dramatic Story of the Landmark Supreme Court Case that Gave New Meaning to Freedom of the Press (Random House, 1981)

Leonard Levy, The Emergence of a Free Press (Oxford University Press, 1985)

Paul L. Murphy, The Meaning of Freedom of Speech (Greenwood Publishing, 1972)

Paul L. Murphy, World War I and the Origin of Civil Liberties in the U.S. (W.W. Norton, 1979)

Richard Polenberg, Fighting Faiths: The Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech (Viking Press, 1987)

S.J. Ungar, The Papers & The Papers: An Account of the Legal and Political Battle Over the Pentagon Papers (E.P Dutton, 1972)

About the Author:

John W. Johnson has served as head of the Department of History at the University of Northern Iowa since 1988. He is the author of Historic U.S. Court Cases: An Encyclopedia (2nd edition, 2001), The Struggle for Student Rights: Tinker v. Des Moines and the 1960s (1997), Insuring Against Disaster: The Nuclear Industry on Trial (1986), and American Legal Culture, 1908-1940 (1981). He is currently working on a book on privacy in American life.

(John W. Johnson)