Among the challenges of sustaining democracy in wartime involves reconciling the watchdog role of the news media and prerogative of the government to act in secret. Tensions between the news media and government over national security secrecy have reached a peak in the last decade, a contest sharpened and shaped by the nature of a war fought largely in the shadows and the transformation of the news media in the digital age.
Patterson Professor Philip Bennett explored the role of secrecy in the news media’s reporting on national security in a series of Rutherfurd Living History interviews in 2009 and 2010. Journalists, Sy Hersh, Dana Priest and Jane Mayer were interviewed as part of this project.
