The term “Fourth Estate” had taken on the dust of a neglected antique before the release of the Pentagon Papers. Afterwards it seemed possible to think again of the press as the independent pole of power required by a working democracy.
Daniel Ellsberg says using the Espionage Act against journalist Julian Assange in blatant violation of the First Amendment means the First Amendment is essentially gone.
Since 2006 WikiLeaks has been censuring governments with governments’ own words. It has been doing the job the U.S. constitution intended the press to do, says Joe Lauria.
Anyone in journalism who wants to regain that trust would do well to read American Dispatches and internalize the lessons that Robert Parry offers, writes Nat Parry.
The revelations of the secret study should have spawned permanent, radical skepticism concerning the candor and competence of U.S. foreign interventions, writes James Bovard.
In part four of this eight-part series, the implications of the Supreme Court decision in NYT v. the US leave Sen. Mike Gravel in more legal peril as he contemplates publishing the Papers outside of Congress.
After publication of the Pentagon Papers was shut down, Dan Ellsberg leaked the top secret history to Sen. Mike Gravel. This is how Gravel got the Papers, what he did with them and what happened next. Part One.