The Age of National Security Journalism: Why the Free Press Reigns Supreme Over the Espionage Act

The U.S.’s Espionage Act, a remnant of wartime struggles to hold morale in the face of anti-American sentiment, still stands as federal law today. With its history of restricting the communication of classified materials to the American public, the Espionage Act poses a threat to national security journalists, who face unique challenges when assessing the actual legality of the information they publish. While no modern-day journalists have been prosecuted under Espionage Act charges yet, their sources and they, themselves, have both faced scrutiny and threatened jail time by presidential administrations for collaborating in the leak of classified information. Through analyzing the legal discourse on the Espionage Act’s speech restrictions, this article argues that the Act actually prohibits itself from being weaponized against journalists. Lacking references to the act of publication as prosecutable, the Espionage Act leaves journalists outside of its authority, instead placing trust in the free press to hold government officials accountable for actions, both popular and unpopular, undertaken in the name of American national security.