Description

During the Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon imposed the tightest re¬strictions on battlefield press coverage in American military history. They did this through two techniques; primarily, through the use of pre-publication re¬view by subjecting all news gathered to a security review before it could be published, and secondarily by restricting media access to the battlefield through the use of press pools. This censorship unarguably made the Persian Gulf war the most undercovered conflict in American military history. Despite the claim of the unconstitutionality of these press restrictions, they are not patently unreasonable considering both the case law behind them and the virtual revolution in warfare and communications technology in the past few years. Therefore, this paper will assert that the press restrictions placed upon the media during the Persian Gulf war did not violate the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.