{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.030278232405891982, 'fraction_numerical': 0.027004909983633387, 'mean_word_length': 4.807600950118765, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
ELECTRONIC MEDIA HISTORY

31:280 WAR AND PRESS FREEDOM: THE PROBLEM OF PREROGATIVE POWER by Jeffery A. Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999— $45.00/19.95, ISBN 0-19-509945-1 hard, 0-19-509946-X paper, 324 pp., illustrations, notes, index) brings Smith’s prodigious research abilities to bear on the relationship between war and the First Amendment’s freedom of the press requirement. Smith, a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Iowa, focuses on the conflict between free speech and national security or self-preservation in order to highlight the most common and most dangerous area in which free press difficulties occur. The book covers 200 years of press problems in dealing with war issues, beginning with the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791 and ending with the Gulf War in 1991. It is divided into three parts: intentions and interpretations, dealing with the basic issues of war and the meaning of the press clause; “higher law” in practice, running from the 1798 scare about the French through the Cold War; and the risks of repression, focusing on the role of the mass media in wartime. The study ranges over the familiar—the Espionage Act of 1918—to the less familiar—an episode of suppression during the turmoil on college campuses in the 1960s and 1970s. The author’s essential theme rests in his statement that “the American legal system has failed to clarify whether the sovereign will of the people is embodied in the absolutism of the First Amendment or in the anxieties of the politicians the people choose to represent them.” Indeed, those are the issues that have plagued the discussion of this conflict over the time period covered. Among the more interesting material in the book is his coverage of the Cold War period, and especially the problems that arose with the Korean War. This is, of course, because the Korean War has so little written about it, and Smith’s treatment could help to open that episode to further scholarly research. Although the study is most impressive, the conclusion restates the time-honored argument that all absolutists make: that the nation is safer with a free press than without one. A reader cannot fault Smith for not finding a solution to this intractable problem; after all the conflict has spanned two centuries! Smith’s discussion of the situation, though, is well worth reading and having in one’s library. (Margaret A. Blanchard)