Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. ~~First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Those words are a portion of one of the most important documents in America's history, the Bill of Rights. Within this document are civil rights and liberties, which afford the citizens of the United States freedoms and rights that cannot be removed. However for all its virtues this manuscript is somewhat ambiguous. Along with this ambiguity comes the debate over whether or not certain bits of this immortal text should be taken less literally.
One of these pieces belongs to the ideals of the first amendment "freedom . . . of the press." Ideally freedom of the press is the liberty to print or to otherwise distribute information, in print, by broadcasting, or through electronic media, without prior restraints such as licensing requirements or content review and without later punishment for what is said. Freedom of the press, which has been limited not only by governments but at times by churches, is absolute in no country. Today it is rarely attacked by explicit forms of censorship, but is often compromised by the government's ability to withhold information or by selective government "leaking" of information or disinformation.
So the question becomes whether or not there ought to be these certain situations where this power should to be narrowed? Most agree that there are and should be limitations to this right. One of these exceptions involves government secrecy. In times of war it is said that media should not be able to broadcast information that could put soldiers in any kind of danger, which in actuality makes perfect sense. The military itself believes that the media should not release anything that might bring down the troops moral.