The Captive Press: Foreign Policy Crises and the First Amendment

A major priority of the national security bureaucracy is to manipulate or obstruct the new media, thereby thwarting critical coverage of military and foreign policy initiatives. The government's restrictions on the press during the Persian Gulf War, and the outright exclusion of journalists during the most important stages of the Grenada and Panama invasions, are especially flagrant examples. In The Captive Press, Ted Galen Carpenter argues that such episodes illustrate the inherent tension between the press freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment and a global interventionist foreign policy that places a premium on secrecy, rapid execution, and lack of public dissent. Crude forms of coercion by the national security bureaucracy are not the only source of danger to a vigorous, independent press. An equally serious threat is posed by the government's abuse of the secrecy system to control the flow of information and prevent disclosures that might cast doubt on the wisdom or morality of current policy. Most insidious and corrosive of all is the attempt by officials to entice journalists to be members of the foreign policy team rather than play their proper role as skeptical monitors of government conduct. Carpenter argues that although freedom of the press has not been killed in action during the many international crises of the 20th century, it has been seriously wounded. One of the most essential tasks of the post-Cold War era is to restore it to health.