On a day like today in 1790...
Maintaining news media that were free to criticize the authorities was a primary concern in Colonial America. Accordingly, at its founding the new United States moved ahead of countries in the Old World by expressly stating in its Bill of Rights that Congress should make no law abridging freedom of the press. Only in extreme rare cases of danger to the State can Congress curtail the freedom of the press. “No government ought to be without censors, and where the press is free none ever will,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. And indeed, those of us living in this era bear witness to this truth more dramatically than Jefferson could have imagined.
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