Page 49 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Anonymous Sources, Leaks, and Nat onal Secur ty

depend on the car radio and the TV set for information and entertainment.
Broadcast media in the public interest remain a goal that the Internet does not
supplant. Indeed, all of the above-mentioned pressures and struggles apply to
the Internet as well. It, too, is being forced to become more commercial; and
media reformers and activists are now fighting a battle similar to those waged
in the past, to secure the Internet’s neutrality so that service providers not be al-
lowed to privilege one source over another. Like broadcast and cable media, the
Internet needs to be held accountable to the public interest.

see also Blogosphere; Conglomeration and Media Monopolies; Embedding Jour-
nalists; Global Community Media; Government Censorship and Freedom of
Speech; Media Reform; Media Watch Groups; National Public Radio; Net Neu-
trality; Pirate Radio; Political Documentary; Public Access Television; Public
Broadcasting Service; Regulating the Airwaves; Sensationalism, Fear Monger-
ing, and Tabloid Media.
Further reading: Atton, Chris. Alternative Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002; Boyle,
Dierdre. Subject to Change: Guerilla Television Revisited. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997; Chester, Jeff. Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy. New
York: The New Press, 2007; Cooper, Mark, ed. The Case against Media Consolidation:
Evidence on Concentration, Localism and Diversity. Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 2007; Couldry, Nick, and James Curran, eds. Contesting Media Power: Alterna-
tive Media in a Networked World. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003; Downing,
John D. H. Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000; Halleck, DeeDee. Hand Held Visions: The Impossible Possibilities
of Community Media. New York: Fordham University Press, 2002; Klinenberg, Eric. The
Battle to Control America’s Media. New York: Henry Holt, 2007; Starr, Jerry. Air Wars:
The Fight to Reclaim Public Broadcasting. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000.
DeeDee Halleck

anonyMous sourCes, leaks,
and national seCurity
Free flow of news is the oxygen of a democracy, and without confidential
sources, a truly free press could not exist. If the press is to perform its watchdog
function, it is essential for a news organization to use information from those
not in a position to identify themselves. But many critics feel that the press mis-
uses confidential sources, particularly in stories where national security issues
are at stake.
This country was founded on the principle that the press be free and fear-
less. The First Amendment to the constitution provides for a press that acts as a
fourth branch of government, endowed with the ability to question those in any
of the three other branches of government—the executive, the legislative, and
the judicial.
When the First Amendment was adopted at the end of the eighteenth century,
journalism was very different from what it is today. There was no television, no
radio, no photography, no Internet, and no large media companies. Instead, in