Provisions of the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights are continually being interpreted to balance the power of government and the civil liberties of individuals.
Explain the extent to which the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First and Second Amendments reflects a commitment to individual liberty.
In New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), the Supreme Court bolstered the freedom of the press, establishing a “heavy presumption against prior restraint” even in cases involving national security.
“The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.”
—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971)
In 2022, the U.S. ranked 42nd in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index. This is an overall measure of freedom available to the press, including a range of factors including government censorship, control over journalistic access, and whistleblower protections. The U.S.'s ranking fell from 20th in 2010 to 49th in 2015, before recovering to 41st in 2016.
Chelsea Manning is a whistleblower who worked for the US military as a data analyst during the US-led coalition war in Afghanistan. In 2013, she was sentenced to 35 years in military prison for leaking classified US government documents to the Wikileaks website, and revealing to the public that the US army, the CIA and Iraqi and Afghan forces committed human rights violations.
She spent a total of nearly 7 years in prison since her initial arrest in Iraq in 2010, before having her sentence commuted by President Barack Obama in 2017. Her treatment of imprisonment was heavily criticised as degrading, cruel, and inhumane, and it highlighted the lack of protections in place for whistleblowers.
Chelsea has always claimed that she released information in the public interest. The crimes she exposed have never been investigated.
In 2009, Edward Snowden moved from the CIA to the NSA, where he took on a role as a private contractor for Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton. During his time there, he collected information about various NSA operations, particularly focusing on surveillance programs he considered excessive. In May 2013, Snowden asked for medical leave and traveled to Hong Kong, where he participated in interviews with reporters from The Guardian the following month. Footage from this period was included in the 2014 documentary Citizenfour. Among the classified information Snowden revealed was a court order that required Verizon to provide metadata, including call durations and numbers dialed, for millions of customers. He also uncovered the existence of PRISM, a program that allegedly allowed the NSA, the FBI, and Britain's Government Communications Headquarters to access data directly from major tech companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple.
From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” he said.
Trump Attacks the Media
Shortly after assuming office in January 2017, President Donald Trump accused the press of being an “enemy of the American people.” Attacks on the media had been a hallmark of Trump’s presidential campaign