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position in the Democratic primary race. Later that year, after the CBS program 60
Minutes reported that President Bush had evaded the draft for the Vietnam War,
conservative bloggers identified the story’s sources as fraudulent. Their attacks led CBS to
conduct its own investigation, which revealed that a number of the source materials had
indeed been fakes. The episode ultimately benefited Bush’s reelection campaign.
Blogs have become an influential part of the American media environment and a feature of
American life. Because of this, and because many blogs espouse radical or controversial
opinions, a number of attempts have been made to regulate the internet. In 1998,
Congress passed the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which made it a crime to publish
anything potentially harmful to minors online (particularly pornography and indecent
language) without the technological capacity to prevent children from accessing it.
However, COPA was quickly blocked by the lower courts, and in 2004 the Supreme Court
ruled that the legislation was unconstitutional.83 According to the Center for Democracy
and Technology, lawmakers are now considering legislation that would make internet
service providers liable for illegal content. One blogger, Josh Wolf (see above), has already
been held in contempt of court and imprisoned for refusing to hand over material
published on his website.

Conclusion

The United States has a strong tradition, grounded in precedent and in the First
Amendment, of protecting freedom of the press and freedom of expression. But this
tradition has faced a variety of threats in recent years. The nation’s intensified focus on
security concerns since 9/11 is a deepening concern, as is the impact of commercialization
and consolidation on media diversity, journalistic independence, and quality of coverage. It
remains to be seen whether issues like increased government secrecy, threats to source
confidentiality, and government efforts to directly influence media coverage are unique to
the current administration, or whether they represent long-term trends. The media’s
continuing ability to publish stories that discomfit the government—such as revelations
about federal surveillance schemes, prisoner abuse in Iraq, or government payments to
columnists—is perhaps the best evidence that the American press remains free and robust.

1 David A. Anderson, “Freedom of the Press,” Texas Law Review 80, no. 3 (200
2 Thomas L. Tedford and Dale A. Herbeck, Freedom of Speech in the United States, 4th ed.
(State College, PA: Strata Publishing, 2001), 24.
3 Ibid., 29.
4 Jodi Icenoggle, Schenck v. United States and the Freedom of Speech Debate: Debating
Supreme Court Decisions (Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 2005), 29.
5 Tedford and Herbeck, Freedom of Speech, 59.

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