Some denounced Snowden as a traitor while others supported his actions, calling him a whistleblower and champion of media freedom. His leaks revealed several government surveillance programs and set off a global debate about government spying. United States, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the newspapers, making it possible for The New York Times and Washington Post to publish the contents of the Pentagon Papers without risk of further government censorship.įormer CIA employee Edward Snowden leaked classified documents from the National Security Administration to newspapers in the U.K., United States and Germany in 2013. government sought to block publication of the papers in the Washington Post as well, but the courts refused this time. The government obtained a court order preventing The New York Times from publishing more excerpts from the papers, arguing that the published materials were a national security threat. Johnson all had misled the public about the degree of U.S. The Pentagon Papers exposed government knowledge that the war would cost more lives than the public had been told and revealed that the presidential administrations of Harry Truman, Dwight D. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. ![]() The documents, which would become known as the Pentagon Papers, detailed a top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. In 1971, United States military analyst Daniel Ellsberg gave copies of classified documents to The New York Times. More than a decade later, Virginia Representative (and later president of the United States) James Madison would borrow from that declaration when drafting the First Amendment. The 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights stated, “The freedom of the Press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic Governments.” Virginia was the first state to formally protect the press. (Cato was a statesman and outspoken critic of corruption in the late Roman Republic.) The essays called out corruption and tyranny in the British government.Ī generation later, Cato’s Letters frequently were quoted in newspapers in the American colonies as a source of revolutionary political ideas. They were published under the pseudonym of Cato between 17. The essays were written by Brits John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. "Media Freedom, Political Knowledge, and Participation.American free press ideals can be traced back to Cato’s Letters, a collection of essays criticizing the British political system that were published widely across pre-Revolutionary America. These results are robust to sample, specification, and alternative measures of media freedom. Where the media is less regulated and there is greater private ownership in the media industry, citizens are more politically knowledgeable and active. ![]() I find that where government owns a larger share of media outlets and infrastructure, regulates the media industry more, and does more to control the content of news, citizens are more politically ignorant and apathetic. Finally, I investigate media freedom and voter turnout in these same 60 or so countries with data from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Next, I consider media freedom and citizens' political participation in 60 countries using data from the World Values Survey. ![]() To explore these connections, I first examine media freedom and citizens' political knowledge in thirteen central and eastern European countries with data from Freedom House's Freedom of the Press report and the European Commission's Candidate Countries Eurobarometer survey. This paper examines the relationship between media freedom from government control and citizens' political knowledge, political participation, and voter turnout.
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