"Thanks to its constitution, and especially the first amendment, the United States gives greater protection to freedom of expression than any other country. Free expression generally trumps libel, prejudicial comment about pending court cases, and so-called "hate speech". Even so, claims Peter Osnos, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a New York-based think-tank, since September 2001 the Bush administration's attempts "to intimidate and punish the media, or at least to manipulate and mislead it, represents one of the most concerted assaults on the first amendment since it was written."
Under American law, government documents may be classified only to protect national security. Presidents have at times no doubt stretched the definition, but George Bush has gone further than any. Partly as a result of an executive order of 2003, the number of documents being stamped secret or classified has almost quadrupled?-from 5.8m under Bill Clinton in 1996 to more than 20m last year, according to figures released by the Information Security Oversight Office (part of America's national archives). Peter Galison, a Harvard professor, reckons that "the classified universe...is certainly not smaller and very probably much larger than [the] unclassified one." If true, more is kept hidden than revealed.
A tilt too far
Mr Bush has always had a penchant for secrecy. In 2001 he signed an executive order allowing a president or vice-president to block the release of their papers, perhaps indefinitely, instead of within 12 years of leaving office.
But national security is the commonest justification for the vast expansion of classification. Seeking to explain his 2003 executive order, Mr Bush spoke of the need to strike the right balance between security and open government. "Our nation's progress depends on the free flow of information," he conceded. "Nevertheless, throughout our history, the national defence has required that certain information be maintained in confidence in order to protect our citizens, our democratic institutions, our homeland security and our interactions with foreign nations."
For many constitutional scholars, members of Congress and most journalists, the administration has tilted the balance too far towards maintaining "certain information...in confidence". Congress has repeatedly been denied access to documents; newspapers have been threatened with prosecution for revealing "state secrets" (such as Mr Bush's warrantless eavesdropping programme), and journalists have been jailed for contempt of court after refusing to reveal their sources.
In Britain, too, freedom of expression has been under attack. With its Official Secrets Act, tough libel laws and tight restrictions on post-charge reporting of criminal investigations and trials, Britain has always placed more restrictions on free speech than America. It has now gone further. "
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9958346
