War and Press Freedom: The Problem of Prerogative Power
by Jeffery Alan Smith
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jeffery Alan SmithEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1999-02-25
ISBN: 019509946X
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of War and Press Freedom: The Problem of Prerogative Power
Book Review: Superb
Summary: 5 Stars
I first read this book when it was entered into a media history book competition for which I was a judge, before Sept. 11 and Afghanistan and Iraq. I was extremely impressed then. More recently, I have assigned my media history students (undergraduate and graduate students) to read it, and this fall, I am requiring graduate students in media law to read it. I'm not using this book so much because I'm too lazy to find or read another one; it's really that good. Nearly every sentence forces one to think about democracy, law, journalism, the nature of government, the role of the military, and the information needs of average citizens. It's not only for professors and journalism, history or law students. One of the best books I've ever read--no kidding.
Summary of War and Press Freedom: The Problem of Prerogative Power
War and Press Freedom: The Problem of Prerogative Power is a groundbreaking and provocative study of one of the most perplexing civil liberties issues in American history: What authority does or should the government have to control press coverage and commentary in wartime? First Amendment scholar Jeffery A. Smith shows convincingly that no such extraordinary power exists under the Constitution, and that officials have had to rely on claiming the existence of an autocratic "higher law" of survival. Smith carefully surveys the development of statutory restrictions and military regulations for the news media from the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791 through the Gulf War of 1991. He concludes that the armed forces can justify refusal to divulge a narrow range of defense secrets, but that imposing other restrictions is unwise, unnecessary, and unconstitutional. In any event, as electronic communication becomes almost impossible to constrain, soldiers and journalists must learn how to respect each other's obligations in a democratic system.General Books
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