Can Journalists Keep a Secret?

In an August 7, 2013  Wall Street Journal article, Jess Bravin had a story called Echoes from a Past Leak Probe, describing a little known event in World War II, involving Stanley Johnston, an embedded reporter (before they called them that) from the Chicago Tribune.  Stanley apparently stumbled upon an intelligence file, presumably a classified one, while travelling with the Pacific Fleet.  That gave him the idea that our Navy had broken the Japanese naval codes and knew in advance what they were going to do.  This was in 1942, at a time when the war could have gone either way in the Pacific and Allied lives were at risk in a number of places. 

Johnston wrote the story, apparently got it past censors who, in those days, were supposed to be at watch for this type of thing, and the Tribune published it.   This is certainly what we call Freedom of the Press.  It far exceeded any damage that might be done by similar incidents today.  Edward Snowden worked with Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian and Bradley Manning with Wikileaks, giving them cover for the release of information that they knew was important to National Security.  Manning was not convicted of aiding the enemy, and there is a good chance that Snowden wouldn’t be either.  A few would argue that neither one of them, compared to Johnston, had the same level of risk to soldiers in the field, fighting a known enemy. 

The law was on Johnston’s side, according to the analysis done by the Justice Department, though the same type of teeth gnashing done by the Justice Department today, made James Rosen, Fox News, a co-conspirator in a case of apparent espionage.  That case was nowhere near as dangerous as our knowledge of Japan’s codes.  Perhaps they are trying to break new ground in the Attorney General’s office.  That might not be a such a bad idea, though there are much better ways to go about it.  It was clumsy, at best.

The courts seem to want to shy away from defining what is legitimate conduct by journalists, but they have expanded the covered definitions of who is a journalist to almost anyone who can type.  There is a good question about whether giving national security secrets to an Internet-connected world is journalism.  Is giving the story to the Chicago Tribune to run, knowing the consequences to our naval forces in the Pacific, something other than journalism?  We need to reexamine what journalism is, and put law behind the limitations that would infer. 

Freedom of Speech is my Constitutional right, but there are limits on what that allows.  I can’t put other people at risk by yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater.  I can’t claim someone is behaving in a particular way, if it is libelous.  Yet, in the name of journalism, we can allow a citizen of the United States to give away secrets that will harm other persons in our country.  Let the Justice Department focus on the right aspect of what constitutes journalism.  We need new laws that will limit this kind of behavior or we won’t have any secrets left.