Multimedia

Introduction

Multimedia, in computer science, the presentation of information using the combination of text, sound, pictures, animation, and video. Common multimedia computer applications include games, learning software, and reference materials. Most multimedia applications include predefined associations, known as hyperlinks, that enable users to switch between media elements and topics.
Thoughtfully presented multimedia can enhance the scope of presentation in ways that are similar to the roving associations made by the human mind. Connectivity provided by hyperlinks transforms multimedia from static presentations with pictures and sound into an endlessly varying and informative interactive experience.
Multimedia applications are computer programs; typically they are stored on compact discs (CD-ROMs). They may also reside on the World Wide Web, which is the media-rich component of the international communication network known as the Internet. Multimedia documents found on the World Wide Web are called Web pages. Linking information together with hyperlinks is accomplished by special computer programs or computer languages. The computer language used to create Web pages is called HyperText Markup Language (HTML).
Multimedia applications usually require more computer memory and processing power than the same information represented by text alone. For instance, a computer running multimedia applications must have a fast central processing unit (CPU), which is the electronic circuitry that provides the computational ability and control of the computer. A multimedia computer also requires extra electronic memory to help the CPU in making calculations and to enable the video screen to draw complex images. The computer also needs a high capacity hard disk to store and retrieve multimedia information, and a compact disc drive to play CD-ROM applications. Finally, a multimedia computer must have a keyboard and a pointing device, such as a mouse or a trackball, so that the user can direct the associations between multimedia elements.

Visual Elements:
The larger, sharper, and more colorful an image is, the harder it is to present and manipulate on a computer screen. Photographs, drawings, and other still images must be changed into a format that the computer can manipulate and display. Such formats include bit-mapped graphics and vector graphics.
Bit-mapped graphics store, manipulate, and represent images as rows and columns of tiny dots. In a bit-mapped graphic, each dot has a precise location described by its row and column, much like each house in a city has a precise address. Some of the most common bit-mapped graphics formats are called Graphical Interchange Format (GIF), Tagged Image File Format (TIFF), and Windows Bitmap (BMP).
Vector graphics use mathematical formulas to recreate the original image. In a vector graphic, the dots are not defined by a row-and-column address; rather they are defined by their spatial relationships to one another. Because their dot components are not restricted to a particular row and column, vector graphics can reproduce images more easily, and they generally look better on most video screens and printers. Common vector graphics formats are Encapsulated Postscript (EPS), Windows Metafile Format (WMF), Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language (HPGL), and Macintosh graphics file format (PICT).
Obtaining, formatting, and editing video elements require special computer components and programs. Video files can be quite large, so they are usually reduced in size using compression, a technique that identifies a recurring set of information, such as one hundred black dots in a row, and replaces it with a single piece of information to save space in the computer's storage systems. Common video compression formats are Audio Video Interleave (AVI), Quicktime, and Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG or MPEG2). These formats can shrink video files by as much as 95 percent, but they introduce varying degrees of fuzziness in the images.
Animation can also be included in multimedia applications to add motion to images. Animations are particularly useful to simulate real-world situations, such as the flight of a jet airplane. Animation can also enhance existing graphics and video elements adding special effects such as morphing, the blending of one image seamlessly into another.

Sound Elements:
Sound, like visual elements, must be recorded and formatted so the computer can understand and use it in presentations. Two common types of audio format are Waveform (WAV) and Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI). WAV files store actual sounds, much as music CDs and tapes do. WAV files can be large and may require compression. MIDI files do not store the actual sounds, but rather instructions that enable devices called synthesizers to reproduce the sounds or music. MIDI files are much smaller than WAV files, but the quality of the sound reproduction is not nearly as good.

Organizational Elements:
Multimedia elements included in a presentation require a framework that encourages the user to learn and interact with the information. Interactive elements include pop-up menus, small windows that appear on the computer screen with a list of commands or multimedia elements for the user to choose. Scroll bars, usually located on the side of the computer screen, enable the user to move to another portion of a large document or picture.
The integration of the elements of a multimedia presentation is enhanced by hyperlinks. Hyperlinks creatively connect the different elements of a multimedia presentation using colored or underlined text or a small picture, called an icon, on which the user points the cursor and clicks on a mouse.

Multimedia Applications:
Multimedia has had an enormous impact on education. For example, medical schools use multimedia-simulated operations that enable prospective surgeons to perform operations on a computer-generated 'virtual' patient. Similarly, students in engineering schools use interactive multimedia presentations of circuit design to learn the basics of electronics and to immediately implement, test, and manipulate the circuits they design on the computer. Even in elementary schools, students use simple yet powerful multimedia authoring tools to create multimedia presentations that enhance reports and essays.
Multimedia is also used in commercial applications. For instance, some amusement arcades offer multimedia games that allow players to race Indy cars or battle each other from the cockpits of make-believe giant robots. Architects use multimedia presentations to give clients tours of houses that have yet to be built. Mail-order businesses provide multimedia catalogues that allow prospective buyers to browse virtual showrooms.

Radio Broadcasting

The story of radio begins in the development of an earlier medium, the telegraph, which was the first instantaneous system of information movement. Patented simultaneously in 1837 in the United States by inventor Samuel F. B. Morse and in Britain by scientists Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke, the electromagnetic telegraph realized the age-old human desire for a means of communication free from the obstacles of long-distance transportation. The first public telegraph line, completed in 1844, ran 64 km (40 mi) from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland. Morse's first message, “What hath God wrought?”—transmitted as a coded series of long and short electronic impulses conveyed his awareness of the momentous proportions of the achievement.
Telegraphy proved so useful and popular that over the next half century wires were strung across much of the world, including a transatlantic undersea cable (1866) connecting Europe and North America. The instantaneous passage of a message over a distance that required hours, days, or weeks to traverse by ordinary transport was so radically unfamiliar an experience that some telegraph offices collected admission fees from spectators wanting to witness the feat for themselves.
As society began to depend on the telegraph for everything from birthday greetings to the news of momentous events, the limitations of telegraphic communication became apparent. Telegraphy depended on the building and maintenance of a complex system of receiving stations wired to each other along a fixed route and requiring trained operators to transmit and receive messages. The telephone, patented by Scottish-born American inventor Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, made instantaneous communication possible via a desktop appliance available to untrained users. However, it required an even more complex system of wires and switching stations than the telegraph. Neither device could be used by ships at sea or reach the many remote communities that could not afford the costs of lines and stations.
Although neither the telephone nor the telegraph could address large numbers of people simultaneously, mass circulation newspapers and magazines benefited greatly from the two devices, translating wired reports into print for mass consumption. News agencies such as the Associated Press and Reuters are still often called wire services, referring to their beginnings as telegraph services.

Radio experiments:
Scientists in many countries worked to devise a system that could overcome the limitations of the telegraph wire. In 1895 Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi transmitted a message in Morse code that was picked up 3 km (2 mi) away by a receiving device that had no wired connection to Marconi's transmitting device. With this transmission, Marconi demonstrated that an electronic signal could be cast broadly (broadcast) through space so that receivers at random points could capture it. The closed circuit of instant communication was at last opened by a so-called wireless telegraph. The invention was also called a radiotelegraph (later shortened to radio), because its signal moved outward in all directions, or radially, from the point of transmission. The age of broadcasting had begun.

World War I and Early regulations
With the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918) in Europe, wireless transmission proved an invaluable military tool on land, sea, and air. Impressed by its strategic applications, and wary of its potential as an instrument of espionage and mass propaganda, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson banned nonmilitary broadcasting when the United States entered the war in 1917. Civilian equipment was confiscated under executive order, and regulatory power over broadcasting was transferred from the U.S. Department of Commerce to the Department of the Navy. The war also aided the development of radio technology, as governments on both sides of the conflict poured money into research. Armstrong, a decorated military pilot who served with U.S. forces in France, is credited with having made great improvements in air-to-ground and air-to-air radio systems.

The Golden age of Radio
Early evidence of a systematic scheme for broadcasting to the general public can be found in a 1916 memorandum written by David Sarnoff, an employee of Marconi's U.S. branch, which would become the Radio Corporation of America (now part of General Electric Company; see RCA Corporation). Sarnoff proposed “a plan of development which would make radio a household ‘utility’ in the same sense as the piano or phonograph.” Sarnoff's memo was not given serious consideration by Marconi management, and President Wilson’s suspension of nonmilitary broadcasting in 1917 made it impossible for the company to immediately explore Sarnoff's ideas. After World War I ended in 1918, however, several manufacturing companies in the United States began to explore and implement ideas for the mass-marketing of home radio receivers designed for casual use.
In an effort to boost radio sales in peacetime, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation (now CBS Corporation) of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, established what many historians consider the first commercially owned radio station to offer a schedule of programming to the general public. Known by the call letters KDKA, the station received its license in October 1920 and began service from a studio inside a canvas tent built on the roof of a Westinghouse factory. Frank Conrad, a radio hobbyist and veteran engineer with experience in civilian and military radio research, ran the project. Responsible for the station's programming as well as its technical operation, he aired various forms of entertainment, including recorded music generated by a phonograph placed before a microphone. KDKA charged no user fees to listeners and carried no paid advertisements; instead, the station was financed by Westinghouse to encourage people to buy home radio receivers.
Other manufacturers soon followed Westinghouse's example. The General Electric Company (GE) began broadcasting over station WGY, located at its corporate headquarters in Schenectady, New York. The chairman of RCA, Owen D. Young, gave Sarnoff permission to develop company sales of radios for home entertainment. Sarnoff soon opened stations in New York City and Washington, D.C., and in 1926 he began organizing the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), an RCA subsidiary created for the purpose of broadcasting programs via a nationwide network of stations.
Another important early broadcaster was the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T, Inc.). Barred from manufacturing radios by the terms of its telephone antitrust exemptions, AT&T explored the possibilities of what the company called toll broadcasting (charging fees in return for airing commercial advertisements on its stations). The first known instance of an advertiser paying for a broadcast commercial took place in 1922, when AT&T accepted a fee from the Queensboro Corporation to air a 12-minute pitch for the sale of cooperative apartments on WEAF, the company’s New York City station. Fearing legal action by radio companies that might threaten its telephone franchises, however, AT&T sold its stations to RCA. In return for leaving the broadcasting business, AT&T was granted the exclusive right to provide the connections that would link local stations around the country to the NBC network.
The sale of radios more than justified the expense of operating broadcasting services for RCA, GE, Westinghouse, and other radio set manufacturers. According to estimates by the National Association of Broadcasters, in 1922 there were 60,000 households in the United States with radios; by 1929 the number had topped 10 million. But increases in sales of radio receivers could not continue forever. Broadcasters needed a new incentive to produce and transmit programs once the home radio market matured. The sale of advertising time loomed as a promising growth area.
In Britain, and in the many countries that followed its lead, broadcasting was developing in a different way. Radio owners paid yearly license fees to the government, which were turned over directly to an independent state enterprise, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The BBC in turn produced news and entertainment programming for its network of stations. The editorial and artistic integrity of the BBC was to be insured by its funding mechanism, which was designed to isolate it from immediate political pressures.
In the United States, on the other hand, it was widely accepted that broadcasting was a commercial enterprise that should pay its own way without government aid or interference. However, there was some opposition to the development of broadcasting as a primarily commercial medium. Herbert Hoover, who as secretary of commerce was in charge of broadcast regulation, expressed his disapproval of commercialism at the 1922 Radio Conference in Washington, D.C., saying he found it “inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service and for news and for entertainment and education to be drowned in advertising chatter.” By the late 1920s, nonetheless, the direction of broadcasting as an industry, art, and technology in the United States had shifted decisively to mass distribution of popular culture funded by commercial advertising.
Noncommercial broadcasting would play only a minor role in the rise of American broadcasting. In the agricultural Midwest, state universities saw radio as a natural tool for broadcasting educational programming to rural areas, and schools such as the University of Iowa, Ohio State University, and the University of Wisconsin established stations supported with funds set aside by state legislatures. There would not be a coast-to-coast noncommercial radio network in the United States until the formation of National Public Radio (NPR) in 1970.
In 1927 RCA initiated two transcontinental radio services through NBC, its subsidiary: the Red Network (usually just called NBC) and the Blue Network. The Columbia Broadcasting System (see CBS Corporation) radio service was established in 1928. Originally launched by the Columbia Phonograph Record Company as a means of promoting its recording artists, it was saved from bankruptcy after less than a year of operation by the Paley family of Philadelphia. William S. Paley, who took charge of CBS, and David Sarnoff, who now headed NBC and its parent company (RCA), would become the two dominant personalities in the American broadcasting industry for the next 50 years. As the radio networks grew in size, they were able to bring a consistently high level of entertainment to even the most remote corners of the nation. In 1934 a group of nonnetwork (or independent) stations, led by WGN in Chicago, Illinois, and WOR in New York City, formed a cooperative programming and news venture, the Mutual Broadcasting System, to compete against the network programs of NBC and CBS stations.
By 1934 almost 600 radio stations were broadcasting to more than 20 million homes in the United States. The radio had emerged as a familiar household item, usually built into a substantial piece of wooden furniture placed in the family living room. It became the primary source for news and entertainment for much of the nation. Despite the Great Depression that affected the economy of the United States during the 1930s, American commercial radio broadcasting had grown to a $100-million industry by the middle of that decade.
Radio in World War II
Radio broadcasting reached its height in global influence and worldwide prestige during World War II (1939-1945), when it carried war news directly from the battlefront into the homes of millions of listeners. This conflict became, in many ways, a “radio war.” American commentator Edward R. Murrow created a sensation with his eyewitness descriptions of street scenes in London during German bombing raids, delivering these accounts from the rooftop of the city’s CBS news bureau. American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt had often used radio to bypass the press and directly address the American people with his so-called fireside chats during the Great Depression, and he continued to do so throughout the war. The radio speeches of German leader Adolf Hitler helped set the conditions for war and genocide in Europe, and the radio appeal from Japanese emperor Hirohito to his nation for unconditional surrender helped end World War II following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Radio and Television Broadcasting

Introduction
Radio and Television Broadcasting, primary means by which information and entertainment are delivered to the public in virtually every nation around the world. The term broadcasting refers to the airborne transmission of electromagnetic audio signals (radio) or audiovisual signals (television) that are accessible to a wide population via standard, readily available receivers. The term has its origins in the medieval agricultural practice of “broadcasting,” which refers to planting seeds by scattering them across a field.
Broadcasting is a crucial instrument of modern social and political organization. At its peak of influence in the mid-20th century, radio and television broadcasting was employed by political leaders to address entire nations. Because of radio and television’s capacity to reach and influence large numbers of people, and owing to the limited spectrum of frequencies available, governments have commonly regulated broadcasting wherever it has been practiced.
In the early 1980s, new technologies—such as cable television and videocassette players—began eroding the dominance of broadcasting in mass communication, splitting audiences into smaller, culturally distinct segments. Previously the only means of delivering radio and television to home receivers, broadcasting is now just one of several delivery systems available to listeners and viewers. Sometimes broadcasting is used in a broader sense to include delivery methods such as wire-borne (cable) transmission, but these are more accurately called “narrowcasting” because they are generally limited to paying subscribers.

Technology and the Media

In this essay, British historian and broadcaster Asa Briggs looks at how technological advances made in recent decades have created a revolution in the media, allowing people to communicate in ways they had never dreamed of. Briggs notes that although these new modes of communication—including the television, the personal computer, the Internet, and other digital technologies—are available throughout many parts of the world, these media may be used in different ways depending upon the prevailing political and social circumstances. Briggs also raises questions about the future of the media and how the unfolding media revolution will affect people’s lives.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Asa Briggs
The sense that the world is in the middle of a continuing communications revolution has been strong since the 1960s when television made its great breakthrough. It was then that the Canadian writer on communications, Marshall McLuhan, made his memorable statements that “the medium is the message” and that the world was becoming a global village. It was then too that the word “media” became part of daily speech, covering not only electronic media, live television, but older print media, particularly the press.
Comparisons were drawn between the progress and the development of television in the 20th century and the advent and diffusion of printing in the 15th and 16th centuries. Yet much had happened between. It was not until the 19th century that the newspaper became the dominant pre-electronic medium, following in the wake of the pamphlet and the book and in the company of the periodical. It was during the 19th century also that the communications revolution speeded up, beginning with transport, the railway, and leading on through the telegraph, the telephone, radio, and motion pictures into the 20th-century world of the motor car and the airplane. Not everyone sees that process in perspective. It is important to do so.
It is generally recognized, however, that the introduction of the computer in the 20th century, followed by the invention of the integrated circuit during the 1960s, radically changed the process, although its impact on the media was not immediately apparent. It now became possible to combine thousands, later millions, of individual transistors on a single chip. Computers became smaller and more powerful. They became “personal” too, as well as institutional, with memory and storage increasing and display becoming crisper. They were thought of, like people, in terms of generations, with the distance between generations much smaller.
It was within the computer age that the term “information society” acquired wide currency to describe the context within which we now live. Advanced countries, it was claimed, were evolving from an industrial to an information society. The term “industrial revolution” had been used before the term “communications revolution,” and now these two “revolutions” were compared. They had each influenced both work and leisure and how we think and feel both about place and time, but in each case there had been controversies about their economic, political, social, and cultural implications. “Benefits” were weighed against “harmful” outcomes. Generalizations proved difficult. The press and the journalists who wrote for it had always had their critics. Television was attacked more comprehensively for “consuming much [time and] energy” while ignoring “the fundamentals of life.”
Not everyone agreed—or agrees—about the “causes” of the communications revolution. Were there single causes of particular episodes in it? The words “cause” and “effect,” which have been applied to each technological change in turn, from the steam engine to the computer, are quite inadequate. It has never been possible to isolate each single effect, big or small. Technology by itself does not explain. The same technology was used in quite different ways in different political and social contexts. In Britain, for example, the national broadcasting agency had a monopoly both of radio and television until 1955, and was financed by license fee, not by advertising. In the United States broadcasting from the beginning, radio and television, was dependent on advertising and on the business system. In some other countries, including the Soviet Union, all the media were viewed as instruments of propaganda. Such differences of purpose led to differences in programming, both news and entertainment. Only with satellite television and the prospects of “globalization” were national systems threatened and with them, it was often argued—the debate continues—“national cultures.”
McLuhan, fascinated by the universal pervasiveness of television, thought of it as an effect, not as the cause of effects. Each medium, printed or electronic, had its own inherent characteristics, whatever its context. He had little to say about ownership or control of the media, an issue always in the forefront after the advent of satellite television. His views now seem dated, as does his language. Despite the popular use of the term global village, television did not create a new one. The words “network” and “web” seem far more appropriate. Another new phrase of the 1990s, “information superhighway,” also demands critical attention. This raised the question of “access” to new technology just as the industrial revolution had raised questions of distribution of wealth as well as of its production. The aspiration, eloquently formulated in the United States, was to make the superhighway available to “as many voices, eyes and ears as possible.”
Meanwhile, within the changing communications pattern, the Internet, with less rhetoric, has been perhaps the most interesting development and has certainly most captured the imagination. At first, in the 1960s, the purposes of the Internet were limited, as were its users. The “web,” as it came to be called, was designed to serve military and academic needs. Soon, however, as a “world web,” it attracted a wide range of participants, becoming an electronic exchange system, operating from below. Accessed, often graphical, “pages” of information with embedded addresses, allowed users of all ages and types to link to other sites at the click of a “mouse” button. The “pages” created constituted “hypertext,” allowing compilation of pictures and words. There was scope for the exchange not only of information (with varying degrees of authenticity) but of ideas and creativity. The distinction between “producers” and “consumers” of content lost much of its point. For a time they had seemed—and still seem—like high priests of the media.
The most important technological changes in communications since the 1960s, apparent in the way that both the Internet and the media have developed, have all involved what has been called “convergence” or what in France has been described more poetically as “the ballet of the electrons.” Digital technology, bringing together computing and solid-state electronics, certainly revolutionizes (this time the word cannot be argued about) telecommunications and the media. Binary digit signals enable language, numbers, images, patterns, and music to be communicated through a common technology. The possibilities seem almost limitless. They would have seemed in the past to have belonged not to science but to science fiction. The word “information” itself seems to be inadequate. It covers “entertainment,” as it did in the McLuhanesque period, raising different issues, and it encompasses ways of learning as well as of communicating. It is difficult to keep a sense of perspective given the rate and scale of change.
Because of the scale, it is now as necessary to look at the 1960s in perspective as it is to look at the invention of printing or the railway in perspective. One thing is as beyond doubt as the relevance of the word “revolutionary.” The continuing communications revolution has brought the media not only into the library or the office but into the home. The modern home has been a place of entry not only for books, magazines, newspapers, cassettes, discs, and videos but for “hardware,” including radio and television sets, record players, telephones, typewriters, cameras, projectors, calculators, and computers. Each has its own history: each poses distinct questions about technology and use. And even if it is difficult to establish perspectives, it is essential to identify the linkages that exist—or can exist—between all these gadgets. They are all products, hardware or software, of the continuing communications revolution. Each one, of course, has had its effect on the particular home, and not all modern homes include these gadgets, many of them much advertised. Their physical presence and access to them depends on family income and choice. Nonetheless, what were once thought of as luxuries—television sets, for example—become to be thought of as necessities, and what were once thought of as “novelties” (with an element of miracle about them) begin to be taken for granted. It is tempting, indeed, to believe that the “technology of tomorrow” is already here.
The questions multiply. What will be the next stages? Will old media disappear? For example, what will happen to the book or to the compact disc? How will the newspaper change? Will it ever become completely electronic? Can public broadcasting survive? What is the future of digital terrestrial television? Will we have new business alliances and consortia? They are already forming. At the individual level will E-mail displace letters or fax? Will the relationship between media producers and editors and users (or customers) become more interactive?
At the more fundamental level will digitalization divide the world even more than at present into “haves” and “have nots”—those countries that have the capacity and ability to develop new digitalized networks and those that do not? Will the concentration of economic power in the hands of those who now own quite different segments of media—from books to motion pictures and from cable to satellite—endanger individual freedom? Will the opportunity of choice, offered to individuals, mean that the field of choice will be genuinely widened? May we not have more and more of the same thing?
It is logical to separate out questions relating to technological developments from questions relating to ownership and control, but, in practice, visions of the future world involve bringing them together. It is difficult in present circumstances to avoid the blurring of “image” (seeing the world as it is presented to us or as we present it to ourselves) and “reality.” Can “truth” survive? The media in their mediation can create what has come to be called “virtual reality”; and Internet can offer fantasy ways of escaping from the restraints of life as it is lived to a world of cyberspace. Cyber words have multiplied during the 1980s and 1990s—from “cybernaut” to “cyborg” through a whole new vocabulary.
It may well be that through an effort to chart the words that we use, and the dates when they were first used, we can achieve a greater understanding of a continuing historical process that encompasses the future as well as the past.

About the author: Asa Briggs is a historian, broadcaster, and author of the five-volume History of Broadcasting.

Protection of the press

From New York Times Co. v. United States
In June 1971 the New York Times and the Washington Post began publishing the top-secret study of United States involvement in Indochina known as the Pentagon Papers. The administration of President Richard Nixon, claiming the papers contained information that would endanger U. S. military efforts in Vietnam, got court orders forcing the Times and the Post to stop publishing the papers. On June 30, the Supreme Court of the United States voted 6 to 3 to reverse the orders and allow the newspapers to resume publishing. The justices issued a per curiam ruling, which is a brief statement of the court’s decision. Justice Hugo Black’s opinion supported the newspapers’ claims of freedom of the press. Chief Justice Warren Burger’s dissenting opinion decried the situation under which the justices issued their ruling.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Per Curiam Opinion
We granted certiorari in these cases in which the United States seeks to enjoin the New York Times and the Washington Post from publishing the contents of a classified study entitled 'History of U.S. Decision-Making Process on Viet Nam Policy.'
'Any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this Court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity.' Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan (1963); see also Near v. Minnesota (1931). The Government 'thus carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint.' Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe (1971). The District Court for the Southern District of New York, in the New York Times case, and the District Court for the District of Columbia and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in the Washington Post case, held that the Government had not met that burden. We agree.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is therefore affirmed. The order of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded with directions to enter a judgment affirming the judgment of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. The stays entered June 25, 1971, by the Court are vacated. The judgments shall issue forthwith.
So ordered.
* Together with No. 1885, United States v. Washington Post Co. et al., on certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Black, J., Concurring Opinion
Mr. Justice Black, with whom Mr. Justice Douglas joins, concurring.
I adhere to the view that the Government's case against the Washington Post should have been dismissed, and that the injunction against the New York Times should have been vacated without oral argument when the cases were first presented to this Court. I believe that every moment's continuance of the injunctions against these newspapers amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment. Furthermore, after oral argument, I agree completely that we must affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for the reasons stated by my Brothers Douglas and Brennan. In my view, it is unfortunate that some of my Brethren are apparently willing to hold that the publication of news may sometimes be enjoined. Such a holding would make a shambles of the First Amendment.
Our Government was launched in 1789 with the adoption of the Constitution. The Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, followed in 1791. Now, for the first time in the 182 years since the founding of the Republic, the federal courts are asked to hold that the First Amendment does not mean what it says, but rather means that the Government can halt the publication of current news of vital importance to the people of this country.
In seeking injunctions against these newspapers, and in its presentation to the Court, the Executive Branch seems to have forgotten the essential purpose and history of the First Amendment. When the Constitution was adopted, many people strongly opposed it because the document contained no Bill of Rights to safeguard certain basic freedoms.
They especially feared that the new powers granted to a central government might be interpreted to permit the government to curtail freedom of religion, press, assembly, and speech. In response to an overwhelming public clamor, James Madison offered a series of amendments to satisfy citizens that these great liberties would remain safe and beyond the power of government to abridge. Madison proposed what later became the First Amendment in three parts, two of which are set out below, and one of which proclaimed:
The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments, and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.
(Emphasis added.) The amendments were offered to curtail and restrict the general powers granted to the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches two years before in the original Constitution. The Bill of Rights changed the original Constitution into a new charter under which no branch of government could abridge the people's freedoms of press, speech, religion, and assembly. Yet the Solicitor General argues and some members of the Court appear to agree that the general powers of the Government adopted in the original Constitution should be interpreted to limit and restrict the specific and emphatic guarantees of the Bill of Rights adopted later. I can imagine no greater perversion of history. Madison and the other Framers of the First Amendment, able men that they were, wrote in language they earnestly believed could never be misunderstood: 'Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom … of the press.…' Both the history and language of the First Amendment support the view that the press must be left free to publish news, whatever the source, without censorship, injunctions, or prior restraints.
In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.
The Government's case here is based on premises entirely different from those that guided the Framers of the First Amendment. The Solicitor General has carefully and emphatically stated:
Now, Mr. Justice [Black], your construction of … [the First Amendment] is well known, and I certainly respect it. You say that no law means no law, and that should be obvious. I can only say, Mr. Justice, that to me it is equally obvious that 'no law' does not mean 'no law,' and I would seek to persuade the Court that that is true.… [T]here are other parts of the Constitution that grant powers and responsibilities to the Executive, and … the First Amendment was not intended to make it impossible for the Executive to function or to protect the security of the United States.
And the Government argues in its brief that, in spite of the First Amendment, [t]he authority of the Executive Department to protect the nation against publication of information whose disclosure would endanger the national security stems from two interrelated sources: the constitutional power of the President over the conduct of foreign affairs and his authority as Commander-in-Chief.
In other words, we are asked to hold that, despite the First Amendment's emphatic command, the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary can make laws enjoining publication of current news and abridging freedom of the press in the name of 'national security.' The Government does not even attempt to rely on any act of Congress. Instead, it makes the bold and dangerously far-reaching contention that the courts should take it upon themselves to 'make' a law abridging freedom of the press in the name of equity, presidential power and national security, even when the representatives of the people in Congress have adhered to the command of the First Amendment and refused to make such a law. To find that the President has 'inherent power' to halt the publication of news by resort to the courts would wipe out the First Amendment and destroy the fundamental liberty and security of the very people the Government hopes to make 'secure.' No one can read the history of the adoption of the First Amendment without being convinced beyond any doubt that it was injunctions like those sought here that Madison and his collaborators intended to outlaw in this Nation for all time.
The word 'security' is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic. The Framers of the First Amendment, fully aware of both the need to defend a new nation and the abuses of the English and Colonial governments, sought to give this new society strength and security by providing that freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly should not be abridged. This thought was eloquently expressed in 1937 by Mr. Chief Justice Hughes—great man and great Chief Justice that he was—when the Court held a man could not be punished for attending a meeting run by Communists.
The greater the importance of safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means. Therein lies the security of the Republic, the very foundation of constitutional government.…
Mr. Chief Justice Burger, dissenting.
So clear are the constitutional limitations on prior restraint against expression that, from the time of Near v. Minnesota (1931), until recently in Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe (1971), we have had little occasion to be concerned with cases involving prior restraints against news reporting on matters of public interest. There is, therefore, little variation among the members of the Court in terms of resistance to prior restraints against publication. Adherence to this basic constitutional principle, however, does not make these cases simple. In these cases, the imperative of a free and unfettered press comes into collision with another imperative, the effective functioning of a complex modern government, and, specifically, the effective exercise of certain constitutional powers of the Executive. Only those who view the First Amendment as an absolute in all circumstances—a view I respect, but reject—can find such cases as these to be simple or easy.
These cases are not simple for another and more immediate reason. We do not know the facts of the cases. No District Judge knew all the facts. No Court of Appeals judge knew all the facts. No member of this Court knows all the facts.
Why are we in this posture, in which only those judges to whom the First Amendment is absolute and permits of no restraint in any circumstances or for any reason, are really in a position to act?
I suggest we are in this posture because these cases have been conducted in unseemly haste. Mr. Justice Harland covers the chronology of events demonstrating the hectic pressures under which these cases have been processed, and I need not restate them. The prompt setting of these cases reflects our universal abhorrence of prior restraint. But prompt judicial action does not mean unjudicial haste.
Here, moreover, the frenetic haste is due in large part to the manner in which the Times proceeded from the date it obtained the purloined documents. It seems reasonably clear now that the haste precluded reasonable and deliberate judicial treatment of these cases, and was not warranted. The precipitate action of this Court aborting trials not yet completed is not the kind of judicial conduct that ought to attend the disposition of a great issue.
The newspapers make a derivative claim under the First Amendment; they denominate this right as the public 'right to know'; by implication, the Times asserts a sole trusteeship of that right by virtue of its journalistic 'scoop.' The right is asserted as an absolute. Of course, the First Amendment right itself is not an absolute, as Justice Holmes so long ago pointed out in his aphorism concerning the right to shout 'fire' in a crowded theater if there was no fire. There are other exceptions, some of which Chief Justice Hughes mentioned by way of example in Near v. Minnesota. There are no doubt other exceptions no one has had occasion to describe or discuss. Conceivably, such exceptions may be lurking in these cases and, would have been flushed had they been properly considered in the trial courts, free from unwarranted deadlines and frenetic pressures. An issue of this importance should be tried and heard in a judicial atmosphere conducive to thoughtful, reflective deliberation, especially when haste, in terms of hours, is unwarranted in light of the long period the Times, by its own choice, deferred publication.
It is not disputed that the Times has had unauthorized possession of the documents for three to four months, during which it has had its expert analysts studying them, presumably digesting them and preparing the material for publication. During all of this time, the Times, presumably in its capacity as trustee of the public's 'right to know,' has held up publication for purposes it considered proper, and thus public knowledge was delayed. No doubt this was for a good reason; the analysis of 7,000 pages of complex material drawn from a vastly greater volume of material would inevitably take time, and the writing of good news stories takes time. But why should the United States Government, from whom this information was illegally acquired by someone, along with all the counsel, trial judges, and appellate judges be placed under needless pressure? After these months of deferral, the alleged 'right to know' has somehow and suddenly become a right that must be vindicated instanter.
Would it have been unreasonable, since the newspaper could anticipate the Government's objections to release of secret material, to give the Government an opportunity to review the entire collection and determine whether agreement could be reached on publication? Stolen or not, if security was not, in fact, jeopardized, much of the material could no doubt have been declassified, since it spans a period ending in 1968. With such an approach—one that great newspapers have in the past practiced and stated editorially to be the duty of an honorable press—the newspapers and Government might well have narrowed the area of disagreement as to what was and was not publishable, leaving the remainder to be resolved in orderly litigation, if necessary. To me, it is hardly believable that a newspaper long regarded as a great institution in American life would fail to perform one of the basic and simple duties of every citizen with respect to the discovery or possession of stolen property or secret government documents. That duty, I had thought—perhaps naively—was to report forthwith, to responsible public officers. This duty rests on taxi drivers, Justices, and the New York Times. The course followed by the Times, whether so calculated or not, removed any possibility of orderly litigation of the issue. If the action of the judges up to now has been correct, that result is sheer happenstance.
Our grant of the writ of certiorari before final judgment in the Times case aborted the trial in the District Court before it had made a complete record pursuant to the mandate of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
The consequence of all this melancholy series of events is that we literally do not know what we are acting on. As I see it, we have been forced to deal with litigation concerning rights of great magnitude without an adequate record, and surely without time for adequate treatment either in the prior proceedings or in this Court. It is interesting to note that counsel on both sides, in oral argument before this Court, were frequently unable to respond to questions on factual points. Not surprisingly, they pointed out that they had been working literally 'around the clock,' and simply were unable to review the documents that give rise to these cases and were not familiar with them. This Court is in no better posture. I agree generally with Mr. Justice Harlan and Mr. Justice Blackmun, but I am not prepared to reach the merits.
I would affirm the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and allow the District Court to complete the trial aborted by our grant of certiorari, meanwhile preserving the status quo in the Post case. I would direct that the District Court, on remand, give priority to the Times case to the exclusion of all other business of that court, but I would not set arbitrary deadlines.
I should add that I am in general agreement with much of what Mr. Justice White has expressed with respect to penal sanctions concerning communication or retention of documents or information relating to the national defense.
We all crave speedier judicial processes, but, when judges are pressured, as in these cases, the result is a parody of the judicial function.
1. As noted elsewhere, the Times conducted its analysis of the 47 volumes of Government documents over a period of several months, and did so with a degree of security that a government might envy. Such security was essential, of course, to protect the enterprise from others. Meanwhile, the Times has copyrighted its material, and there were strong intimations in the oral argument that the Times contemplated enjoining its use by any other publisher in violation of its copyright. Paradoxically, this would afford it a protection, analogous to prior restraint, against all others—a protection the Times denies the Government of the United States.
2. Interestingly, the Times explained its refusal to allow the Government to examine its own purloined documents by saying in substance this might compromise its sources and informants! The Times thus asserts a right to guard the secrecy of its sources while denying that the Government of the United States has that power.
3. With respect to the question of inherent power of the Executive to classify papers, records, and documents as secret, or otherwise unavailable for public exposure, and to secure aid of the courts for enforcement, there may be an analogy with respect to this Court. No statute gives this Court express power to establish and enforce the utmost security measures for the secrecy of our deliberations and records. Yet I have little doubt as to the inherent power of the Court to protect the confidentiality of its internal operations by whatever judicial measures may be required.

Limitations of Press freedom

From New York Times Co. v. Sullivan
In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), the Supreme Court of the United States set a new burden of proof for plaintiffs in libel cases, requiring public figures suing for libel to prove that the defendant acted against them with “actual malice”—that is, reckless disregard for the truth. In 1960 the New York Times ran an advertisement signed by several African-American clergymen that criticized public officials in Montgomery, Alabama, for their handling of civil rights protests. L. B. Sullivan, a Montgomery city commissioner, filed suit against the Times and the clergymen, claiming that incorrect statements in the ad were libelous and damaged his reputation. An Alabama jury ruled in Sullivan’s favor, awarding him $500,000. The Times appealed to the Supreme Court, and the justices voted 9 to 0 to reverse the ruling. Justice William J. Brennan wrote the opinion for the court.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Justice Brennan delivered the opinion of the Court.
We are required in this case to determine for the first time the extent to which the constitutional protections for speech and press limit a State's power to award damages in a libel action brought by a public official against critics of his official conduct.
Respondent L. B. Sullivan is one of the three elected Commissioners of the City of Montgomery, Alabama. He testified that he was Commissioner of Public Affairs, and the duties are supervision of the Police Department, Fire Department, Department of Cemetery and Department of Scales.
He brought this civil libel action against the four individual petitioners, who are Negroes and Alabama clergymen, and against petitioner the New York Times Company, a New York corporation which publishes the New York Times, a daily newspaper. A jury in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County awarded him damages of $500,000, the full amount claimed, against all the petitioners, and the Supreme Court of Alabama affirmed.
Respondent's complaint alleged that he had been libeled by statements in a full-page advertisement that was carried in the New York Times on March 29, 1960 Entitled 'Heed Their Rising Voices,' the advertisement began by stating that,
As the whole world knows by now, thousands of Southern Negro students are engaged in widespread nonviolent demonstrations in positive affirmation of the right to live in human dignity as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
It went on to charge that, in their efforts to uphold these guarantees, they are being met by an unprecedented wave of terror by those who would deny and negate that document which the whole world looks upon as setting the pattern for modern freedom.…
Succeeding paragraphs purported to illustrate the 'wave of terror' by describing certain alleged events. The text concluded with an appeal for funds for three purposes: support of the student movement, 'the struggle for the right to vote,' and the legal defense of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of the movement, against a perjury indictment then pending in Montgomery.
The text appeared over the names of 64 persons, many widely known for their activities in public affairs, religion, trade unions, and the performing arts. Below these names, and under a line reading 'We in the south who are struggling daily for dignity and freedom warmly endorse this appeal,' appeared the names of the four individual petitioners and of 16 other persons, all but two of whom were identified as clergymen in various Southern cities. The advertisement was signed at the bottom of the page by the 'Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South,' and the officers of the Committee were listed.
Of the 10 paragraphs of text in the advertisement, the third and a portion of the sixth were the basis of respondent's claim of libel. They read as follows:
Third paragraph:
In Montgomery, Alabama, after students sang 'My Country, 'Tis of Thee' on the State Capitol steps, their leaders were expelled from school, and truckloads of police armed with shotguns and tear-gas ringed the Alabama State College Campus. When the entire student body protested to state authorities by refusing to reregister, their dining hall was padlocked in an attempt to starve them into submission.
Sixth paragraph:
Again and again, the Southern violators have answered Dr. King's peaceful protests with intimidation and violence. They have bombed his home, almost killing his wife and child. They have assaulted his person. They have arrested him seven times—for 'speeding,' 'loitering' and similar 'offenses.' And now they have charged him with 'perjury'—a felony under which they could imprison him for ten years.…
Although neither of these statements mentions respondent by name, he contended that the word 'police' in the third paragraph referred to him as the Montgomery Commissioner who supervised the Police Department, so that he was being accused of 'ringing' the campus with police. He further claimed that the paragraph would be read as imputing to the police, and hence to him, the padlocking of the dining hall in order to starve the students into submission. As to the sixth paragraph, he contended that, since arrests are ordinarily made by the police, the statement 'They have arrested [Dr. King] seven times' would be read as referring to him; he further contended that the 'They' who did the arresting would be equated with the 'They' who committed the other described acts and with the 'Southern violators.' Thus, he argued, the paragraph would be read as accusing the Montgomery police, and hence him, of answering Dr. King's protests with 'intimidation and violence,' bombing his home, assaulting his person, and charging him with perjury. Respondent and six other Montgomery residents testified that they read some or all of the statements as referring to him in his capacity as Commissioner.
It is uncontroverted that some of the statements contained in the two paragraphs were not accurate descriptions of events which occurred in Montgomery. Although Negro students staged a demonstration on the State Capitol steps, they sang the National Anthem and not 'My Country, 'Tis of Thee.' Although nine students were expelled by the State Board of Education, this was not for leading the demonstration at the Capitol, but for demanding service at a lunch counter in the Montgomery County Courthouse on another day. Not the entire student body, but most of it, had protested the expulsion, not by refusing to register, but by boycotting classes on a single day; virtually all the students did register for the ensuing semester. The campus dining hall was not padlocked on any occasion, and the only students who may have been barred from eating there were the few who had neither signed a preregistration application nor requested temporary meal tickets. Although the police were deployed near the campus in large numbers on three occasions, they did not at any time 'ring' the campus, and they were not called to the campus in connection with the demonstration on the State Capitol steps, as the third paragraph implied. Dr. King had not been arrested seven times, but only four, and although he claimed to have been assaulted some years earlier in connection with his arrest for loitering outside a courtroom, one of the officers who made the arrest denied that there was such an assault.
On the premise that the charges in the sixth paragraph could be read as referring to him, respondent was allowed to prove that he had not participated in the events described. Although Dr. King's home had, in fact, been bombed twice when his wife and child were there, both of these occasions antedated respondent's tenure as Commissioner, and the police were not only not implicated in the bombings, but had made every effort to apprehend those who were. Three of Dr. King's four arrests took place before respondent became Commissioner. Although Dr. King had, in fact, been indicted (he was subsequently acquitted) on two counts of perjury, each of which carried a possible five-year sentence, respondent had nothing to do with procuring the indictment.…
Under Alabama law, as applied in this case, a publication is 'libelous per se' if the words 'tend to injure a person … in his reputation' or to 'bring [him] into public contempt'; the trial court stated that the standard was met if the words are such as to 'injure him in his public office, or impute misconduct to him in his office, or want of official integrity, or want of fidelity to a public trust.…' The jury must find that the words were published 'of and concerning' the plaintiff, but, where the plaintiff is a public official, his place in the governmental hierarchy is sufficient evidence to support a finding that his reputation has been affected by statements that reflect upon the agency of which he is in charge. Once 'libel per se' has been established, the defendant has no defense as to stated facts unless he can persuade the jury that they were true in all their particulars.… His privilege of 'fair comment' for expressions of opinion depends on the truth of the facts upon which the comment is based.… Unless he can discharge the burden of proving truth, general damages are presumed, and may be awarded without proof of pecuniary injury. A showing of actual malice is apparently a prerequisite to recovery of punitive damages, and the defendant may, in any event, forestall a punitive award by a retraction meeting the statutory requirements. Good motives and belief in truth do not negate an inference of malice, but are relevant only in mitigation of punitive damages if the jury chooses to accord them weight.…
The question before us is whether this rule of liability, as applied to an action brought by a public official against critics of his official conduct, abridges the freedom of speech and of the press that is guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Respondent relies heavily, as did the Alabama courts, on statements of this Court to the effect that the Constitution does not protect libelous publications. Those statements do not foreclose our inquiry here. None of the cases sustained the use of libel laws to impose sanctions upon expression critical of the official conduct of public officials.… Like insurrection, contempt, advocacy of unlawful acts, breach of the peace, obscenity, solicitation of legal business, and the various other formulae for the repression of expression that have been challenged in this Court, libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations. It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment.
The general proposition that freedom of expression upon public questions is secured by the First Amendment has long been settled by our decisions. The constitutional safeguard, we have said, 'was fashioned to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people.' Roth v. United States,
The maintenance of the opportunity for free political discussion to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes may be obtained by lawful means, an opportunity essential to the security of the Republic, is a fundamental principle of our constitutional system.
'[I]t is a prized American privilege to speak one's mind, although not always with perfect good taste, on all public institutions,' Bridges v. California, and this opportunity is to be afforded for 'vigorous advocacy' no less than 'abstract discussion.' NAACP v. Button. The First Amendment, said Judge Learned Hand, presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many, this is, and always will be, folly, but we have staked upon it our all.…
Thus, we consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials. See Terminiello v. Chicago; De Jonge v. Oregon. The present advertisement, as an expression of grievance and protest on one of the major public issues of our time, would seem clearly to qualify for the constitutional protection. The question is whether it forfeits that protection by the falsity of some of its factual statements and by its alleged defamation of respondent.
Authoritative interpretations of the First Amendment guarantees have consistently refused to recognize an exception for any test of truth—whether administered by judges, juries, or administrative officials—and especially one that puts the burden of proving truth on the speaker.… The constitutional protection does not turn upon 'the truth, popularity, or social utility of the ideas and beliefs which are offered.' As Madison said, 'Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of every thing, and in no instance is this more true than in that of the press.'…
Injury to official reputation affords no more warrant for repressing speech that would otherwise be free than does factual error. Where judicial officers are involved, this Court has held that concern for the dignity and reputation of the courts does not justify the punishment as criminal contempt of criticism of the judge or his decision.… This is true even though the utterance contains 'half-truths' and 'misinformation.'… Such repression can be justified, if at all, only by a clear and present danger of the obstruction of justice.… If judges are to be treated as 'men of fortitude, able to thrive in a hardy climate,” surely the same must be true of other government officials, such as elected city commissioners. Criticism of their official conduct does not lose its constitutional protection merely because it is effective criticism, and hence diminishes their official reputations.
If neither factual error nor defamatory content suffices to remove the constitutional shield from criticism of official conduct, the combination of the two elements is no less inadequate. This is the lesson to be drawn from the great controversy over the Sedition Act of 1798, which first crystallized a national awareness of the central meaning of the First Amendment. That statute made it a crime, punishable by a $5,000 fine and five years in prison, if any person shall write, print, utter or publish … any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress … or the President … with intent to defame … or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States.
The Act allowed the defendant the defense of truth, and provided that the jury were to be judges both of the law and the facts. Despite these qualifications, the Act was vigorously condemned as unconstitutional in an attack joined in by Jefferson and Madison. In the famous Virginia Resolutions of 1798, the General Assembly of Virginia resolved that it doth particularly protest against the palpable and alarming infractions of the Constitution in the two late cases of the 'Alien and Sedition Acts,' passed at the last session of Congress.… [The Sedition Act] exercises … a power not delegated by the Constitution, but, on the contrary, expressly and positively forbidden by one of the amendments thereto—a power which, more than any other, ought to produce universal alarm because it is leveled against the right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right.…
A rule compelling the critic of official conduct to guarantee the truth of all his factual assertions—and to do so on pain of libel judgments virtually unlimited in amount—leads to a comparable 'self-censorship.' Allowance of the defense of truth, with the burden of proving it on the defendant, does not mean that only false speech will be deterred. Even courts accepting this defense as an adequate safeguard have recognized the difficulties of adducing legal proofs that the alleged libel was true in all its factual particulars.… Under such a rule, would-be critics of official conduct may be deterred from voicing their criticism, even though it is believed to be true and even though it is, in fact, true, because of doubt whether it can be proved in court or fear of the expense of having to do so. They tend to make only statements which 'steer far wider of the unlawful zone”.… The rule thus dampens the vigor and limits the variety of public debate. It is inconsistent with the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The constitutional guarantees require, we think, a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with 'actual malice'—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.…
It is of the utmost consequence that the people should discuss the character and qualifications of candidates for their suffrages. The importance to the state and to society of such discussions is so vast, and the advantages derived are so great, that they more than counterbalance the inconvenience of private persons whose conduct may be involved, and occasional injury to the reputations of individuals must yield to the public welfare, although at times such injury may be great. The public benefit from publicity is so great, and the chance of injury to private character so small, that such discussion must be privileged.…
Reversed and remanded.

Wendell Phillips Champions Freedom of the Press

On November 7, 1837, American abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy was shot and killed in Alton, Illinois, while trying to defend his printing press from an angry mob. In response, abolitionists in Boston, Massachusetts, arranged a protest meeting at Faneuil Hall. State attorney general James T. Austin spoke at the meeting in support of the proslavery mob, comparing the riot to the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Boston abolitionist Wendell Phillips delivered this scathing reply, in which he refutes Austin’s comparison and vigorously defends Lovejoy.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------December 8, 1837
Elijah Lovejoy was not only defending the freedom of the press, but he was under his own roof, in arms with the sanction of the civil authority. The men who assailed him went against and over the laws. The mob, as the gentleman (a previous speaker) terms it—mob, forsooth! Certainly we sons of the tea-spillers are a marvelously patient generation! —The 'orderly mob' which assembled in the Old South to destroy the tea, were met to resist, not the laws, but illegal enactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea tax and stamp act laws! Our fathers resisted, not the King's prerogative, but the King's usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our revolutionary history upside down. Our state archives are loaded with arguments of [American statesman] John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British Parliament unconstitutional—beyond its power. It was not until this was made out that the men of New England rushed to arms. The arguments of the Council Chamber and the House of Representatives preceded and sanctioned the contest. To draw the conduct of our ancestors into a precedent for mobs, for a right to resist laws we ourselves have enacted, is an insult to their memory. The difference between the excitements of those days and our own, which the gentleman in kindness to the latter has overlooked, is simply this: the men of that day went for the right, as secured by the laws. They were the people rising to sustain the laws and Constitution of the province. The rioters of our days go for their own wills, right or wrong. Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which place the murderers of Alton side by side with [James] Otis and [John] Hancock, with [Josiah] Quincy and [John] Adams [all colonial patriots], I though those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American—the slanderer of the dead. The gentleman said that he should sink into insignificance if he dared to gainsay the principles of these resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments he had uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up.
Some persons seem to imagine that anarchy existed at Alton from the commencement of these disputes. Not at all. 'No one of us,' says an eyewitness and a comrade of Lovejoy, 'has taken up arms during these disturbances but at the command of the mayor.' Anarchy did not settle down on that devoted city till Lovejoy breathed his last. Till then the law, represented in his person, sustained itself against its foes. When he fell, civil authority was trampled under foot. He had 'planted himself on his constitutional rights, appealed to the laws, claimed the protection of the civil authority, taken refuge under the broad shield of the Constitution. When through that he was pierced and fell, he fell but one sufferer in a common catastrophe.' He took refuge under the banner of liberty—amid its folds; and when he fell, its glorious stars and stripes, the emblem of free institutions, around which cluster so many heart-stirring memories, were blotted out in the martyr's blood.
It has been stated, perhaps inadvertently, that Lovejoy or his comrades fired first. This is denied by those who have the best means of knowing. Guns were first fired by the mob. After being twice fired on, those within the building consulted together and deliberately returned the fire. But suppose they did fire first. They had a right so to do; not only the right which every citizen has to defend himself, but the further right which every civil officer has to resist violence. Even if Lovejoy fired the first gun, it would not lessen his claim to our sympathy, or destroy his title to be considered a martyr in defense of a free press. The question now is, Did he act within the Constitution and the laws? The men who fell in State Street, on the 5th of March, 1770 [during the clash of British troops and Boston citizens known as the Boston Massacre], did more than Lovejoy is charged with. They were the first assailants upon some slight quarrel, they pelted the troops with every missile within reach. Did this bate one jot of the eulogy with which Hancock and [American patriot Joseph] Warren hallowed their memory, hailing them as the first martyrs in the cause of American liberty? If, sir, I had adopted what are called peace principles, I might lament the circumstances of this case. But all you who believe as I do, in the right and duty of magistrates to execute the laws, join with me and brand as base hypocrisy the conduct of those who assemble year after year on the 4th of July to fight over the battles of the Revolution, and yet 'damn with faint praise' or load with obloquy, the memory of this man who shed his blood in defense of life, liberty, property, and the freedom of the press!
Throughout that terrible night I find nothing to regret but this, that, within the limits of our country, civil authority should have been so prostrated as to oblige a citizen to arm in his own defense, and to arm in vain. The gentleman says Lovejoy was presumptuous and imprudent—he 'died as the fool dieth.' And a reverend clergyman of the city tells us that no citizen has a right to publish opinions disagreeable to the community! If any mob follows such publication, on him rests its guilt. He must wait, forsooth, till the people come up to it and agree with him! This libel on liberty goes on to say that the want of right to speak as we think is an evil inseparable from republican institutions! If this be so, what are they worth? Welcome the despotism of the Sultan, where one knows what he may publish and what he may not, rather than the tyranny of this many-headed monster, the mob, where we know not what we may do or say, till some fellow citizen has tried it, and paid for the lesson with his life. This clerical absurdity chooses as a check for the abuses of the press, not the law, but the dread of a mob. By so doing, it deprives not only the individual and the minority of their rights, but the majority also, since the expression of their opinion may sometime provoke disturbances from the minority. A few men may make a mob as well as many. The majority, then, have no right, as Christian men, to utter their sentiments, if by any possibility it may lead to a mob! Shades of Hugh Peters and John Cotton [Puritan clergymen], save us from such pulpits!
Imagine yourself present when the first news of Bunker Hill battle reached a New England town. The tale would have run thus: 'The patriots are routed,—the redcoats victorious,—Warren lies dead upon the field.' With what scorn would that Tory have been received, who should have charged Warren with imprudence! who should have said that, bred a physician, he was 'out of place' in that battle, and 'died as the fool dieth.’ How would the intimation have been received, that Warren and his associates should have merited a better time? But if success be, indeed, the only criterion of prudence, Respice finem—wait till the end!
Presumptuous to assert the freedom of the press on American ground! Is the assertion of such freedom before the age? So much before the age as to leave one no right to make it because it displeases the community? Who invents this libel on his country? It is this very thing which entitles Lovejoy to greater praise. The disputed right which provoked the Revolution—taxation without representation—is far beneath that for which he died. One word, gentlemen. As much as thought is better than money, so much is the cause in which Lovejoy died nobler than a mere question of taxes. James Otis thundered in this hall when the King did but touch his pocket. Imagine, if you can, his indignant eloquence had England offered to put a gag upon his lips. The question that stirred the Revolution touched our civil interests. This concerns us not only as citizens, but as immortal beings. Wrapped up in its fate, saved or lost with it, are not only the voice of the statesman, but the instructions of the pulpit and the progress of our faith.
Mr Chairman, from the bottom of my heart I thank that brave little band at Alton for resisting. We must remember that Lovejoy had fled from city to city—suffered the destruction of three presses patiently. At length he took counsel with friends, men of character, of tried integrity, of wide views, of Christian principle. They thought the crisis had come; it was full time to assert the laws. They saw around them, not a community like our own, of fixed habits, of character moulded and settled, but one 'in the gristle, not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.’ The people there, children of our older states, seem to have forgotten the blood-tried principles of their fathers the moment they lost sight of our New England hills. Something was to be done to show them the priceless value of the freedom of the press, to bring back and set right their wandering and confused ideas. He and his advisers looked out on a community, staggering like a drunken man, indifferent to their rights and confused in their feelings. Deaf to argument, haply they might be stunned into sobriety. They saw that of which we cannot judge, the necessity of resistance. Insulted law called for it. Public opinion, fast hastening on the downward course, must be arrested.
Does not the event show they judged rightly? Absorbed in a thousand trifles, how has the nation all at once come to a stand? Men begin, as in 1776 and 1640, to discuss principles, to weigh characters, to find out where they are. Haply, we may awake before we are borne over the precipice.
Source: The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches. MacArthur, Brian, ed. Penguin Books, 1996.