OpinionJournal - Featured Article

OpinionJournal - Featured Article: "As Alexander Bickel wrote, the relationship between government and the press in the free society is an inevitable and essential contest. The government needs a certain amount of secrecy to function, especially on national security, and the press in its watchdog role tries to discover what it can. The government can't expect total secrecy, Bickel writes, 'but the game similarly calls on the press to consider the responsibilities that its position implies. Not everything is fit to print.' The obligation of the press is to take the government seriously when it makes a request not to publish. Is the motive mainly political? How important are the national security concerns? And how do those concerns balance against the public's right to know?"