DOES FREEDOM OF THE PRESS INCLUDE IRRESPONSIBILITY?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000100250003-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 17, 2010
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: July 12, 1971
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/17: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100250003-7
12 JUL 1971
DOES E DCCb M OF THE P S
INCLUDE`
(No more tragic episode in the relations between
the press and the Government has occurred in wartime
than the publication of the classified documents con-
tained in a "Pentagon Study" prepared by 36 civilians
assigned to research the history of our involvement in
Vietnam. One of them has confessed that he gave the
documents to several newspapers and is ready to face
prosecution.
But what is the responsibility of the press? Should
documents stolen from the Government be published,
especially during wartime, without consulting the Gov-
ernment and at least affording an opportunity to the
highest officials of the Administrations concerned to
give their side of the story?
During World War I and World War II, a "voluntary.
censorship" was established whereby the press was able
to confer with a governmental agency from which it
could be ascertained whether the printing of certain
news items would be harmful to the country. There
was cooperation not by limitation of the freedom of the
press or by.any law, but solely by volition.
A few days before the Supreme Court ruled on the
"Pentagon Study" case, a significant editorial was pub-
lished in "The Detroit News." Its Editor is Martin S.
Hayden, who was formerly a prominent Washington
correspondent and is familiar with national and inter-
national affairs. The editorial is reprinted in full on
this and the preceding page.-David Lawrence, Editor)
STAT
urn co c" o , U. an. Fr'r or I c r S s Cssuc?1
An editorial on the front page of "THE DETROIT NEWS," Sunday, June, 27, 1971
TFIE DETROIT NEWS does not agree with those of our
press colleagues contending that national interest-
and the cause of a free press-are served by the current
battle over publication of secret Pentagon papers.
As the U. S. Supreme Court considers a case which
could produce a new interpretation of the rights and
responsibilities of the press in a democracy, this news-
paper wants .to emphasize that, though we will be af-
fected and bound by the decision, the newspaper law-
yers in the court are not speaking for The Detroit
News.
We do not believe the New York Times and other
involved newspapers acted responsibly and in the pub-
lic interest when-without even trying to use estab-
lished procedures for declassification of secret papers-
they chose to publish an edited version of what it now
appears was an incomplete account of our involvement
in the Vietnam war.
Despite our devotion to, and dependence upon, the
basic rights guaranteed under the First Amendment, we
do not accept the premise that the doctrine of a free
press is an unrestricted license to print any secret
document, the publication of which, in an individual
editor's opinion, would be in the national interest.
Finally, we consider as unfactual the current conten-
tion by some newspapers that there never before has
been any prepublication restriction on what news-
papers decide to print.
Our brief includes several points:
First, carried to its logical conclusion, the Times
theory would permit publication of any government
secret-the design of a Polaris -missile, contingency war
plans, intelligence reports on enemy war preparations--
provided only that the editor believed such publication
would be in the national interest.
Such a conclusion, we believe, would result in a dis-
astrous (for the press) collision between press freedom
and the manifest democratic need for orderly govern-
ment.
Granted, the bureaucratic tendency to cover mis-
takes with a "top secret" stamp is a problem. It always
has been and newspapers have an obligation to fight it.
But the solution does not lie in a grant to an individual
-be he editor, scientist or public official-of power to
substitute his personal definition of national interest as
a basis for declassification.
To argue otherwise would be to accept the thesis of
defenders of Dr. Klaus Fuchs that his betrayal of
Anglo-American atomic secrets was justified by his
sincere conviction that a better world would result from
their delivery by him to the Soviet Union.
Newspapers which have published the Vietnam war
papers protest that, in stopping them by court action,
the Justice Department sought to establish a precedent
of prior restraint upon newspaper publication.
Is that true? Forgetting the national defense field,
is it not accepted that both state and federal judges
use "prior restraint" to protect their own secrets?
Would any of the judges to whom the Times appealed
last week have listened for a minute to a contention
that a newspaper which acquired a transcript of a grand
jury investigation of organized crime had a right to
publish it on the ground that Mafia operations con-
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/17: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100250003-7