Editorial: A century after Espionage Act, censorship temptation remains – STLtoday.com

A century ago last month, America came close to formally empowering government censorship of the modern news media. That might seem like ancient history, but the censorship monster rises anew whenever a president finds himself under intense scrutiny and seeks to stifle coverage he doesnt like.

Donald Trump is waging a particularly angry campaign to harness press freedoms, including implied advocacy of violence against the fake news media, threats to yank reporters credentials and increasing bans on live TV coverage of White House press briefings.

The 1917 Espionage Act was an effort by Congress, supported by President Woodrow Wilson, to block any accidental or deliberate revelation of national security secrets as the United States fought the First World War. The original version explicitly outlined executive powers to censor newspapers prior to publication. Luckily, more reasonable minds prevailed and press censorship provision was withdrawn before the bill passed.

Even so, Wilson insisted, Authority to exercise censorship over the press is absolutely necessary to the public safety. This newspaper had solidly backed Wilson on other national issues, but our editorials then match our position today: The president was as wrong as he could be.

The Supreme Court has consistently viewed prior restraint of the press as unconstitutional, a position most notably affirmed when President Richard Nixons administration sought to prevent The New York Times and Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers in 1971, citing the 1917 Espionage Act.

The concern in 1917 was that reporters covering the war might come across secret information about troop movements, intelligence and strategies that could make it into print. Those were all valid concerns.

But several months into World War I, this newspaper noted, there had not been a single case of secret information being divulged, either accidentally or deliberately. Reporters and editors were capable of performing their jobs and being patriots at the same time, a June 1917 Post-Dispatch editorial said. Autocracies thrive when the press is muzzled, it added.

These issues have arisen anew in recent years as government leakers like Edward Snowden and Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning stole top secret electronic files and dumped them on reporters. News organizations awkwardly had to self-censor, deciding which items were too sensitive for publication.

Trump seems less concerned about publication of classified information than about being embarrassed by reports of his own actions and words. Prior restraint is banned because such extraordinary powers cannot be entrusted to presidents under news media scrutiny.

The public might not always like what the news media reports, but the freedoms we enjoy in this country would be a shell of what they are today if the original Espionage Act, as embraced by Wilson, had become law.

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Editorial: A century after Espionage Act, censorship temptation remains - STLtoday.com