TOP SECRET TALKS
THE REPORT ON TOP SECRET TALKS
 |
|
TOP SECRET TALKS: Complete Report of Findings Exploring the Tension Between the Public's Right to Know and the Government's Need to Keep Information Secret The impact of Top Secret Talks on the public debate sponsored by the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy, TOP SECRET TALKS was a 2010 discussion series that brought together leading journalists, scholars, and academics as well as current and former government officials to reflect on the questions raised by the story of The Pentagon Papers. |
 |
|
Freedom's Balancing Act: How the Pentagon Papers Changed the Modern Dynamic Between the Press and Government In telling the stories of how their papers had handled recent national security stories, New York Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson, Washington Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli, and others revealed that in recent years, the trend has been for the media to solicit and consider input from the government before publishing information or documents that may impact on national security – a step seen as anathema in Top Secret. |
 |
|
The New Dynamic: "Care to Comment..." Review of the Media's Response to the 2005 Warrant-Less Wiretapping Scandal Rather than publishing those stories without any notice to the government, as the Post was so committed to doing with the Pentagon Papers, Abramson described how her paper, after its journalists put their story together, went to the government for comment and, thereafter, repeatedly listened to government officials’ requests that the paper not make its information public — a process that resulted in a long delay between the paper’s discovery of the program and its making the program public. |
 |
|
Supplanting the Courts: Editors as Judge & Jury Recent Evidence Suggests Media Acts as Chief Decision Maker in National Security Matters The TOP SECRET TALKS panels show that, rather than the government’s arguments about national security being evaluated by a court as they were at the time of the Pentagon Papers case, the new process of negotiation has the government making its arguments about national security directly to the press, and gives the press – not the Executive Branch or the courts –ultimate decision-making power about whether or not publication of certain information will actually threaten national security. |
 |
|
The Fourth Branch: Media's Close Ties to Government Decreased Public Disclosure Consequence of Close Relationships Between the Press & Government Although pre-publication consultation with the government certainly gives the media more information on which to base publication decisions, the process was not without its critics on the TOP SECRET TALKS panels, in large part based on a perceived closeness between the media and the government that could lead to a decrease in public information. |
 |
|
Media Competition: The Need to Get the Story First How Media Competition Serves as a Check Against Government & Press Collusion One possible check on over-closeness between the government and the media is the availability of some stories to multiple media outlets, which can then challenge each other’s decisions on what information truly needs to remain confidential. |
 |
|
WikiLeaks: The Game-Changer in Public Disclosure Why Julian Assange's Experiment with Internet Disclosure is Both Ground-Breaking and Traditional Rather than representing a totally new approach to the evaluation and publication of national security related information, the Wikileaks example in many ways shows a continuation of the dynamic between the traditional media and government described in TOP SECRET TALKS. |
