Governments want to control information. To do this, they have elaborate systems for promoting themselves via propaganda departments and for ensuring confidentiality with official-secrets laws. There are good reasons for these: people need information, and national security deserves secrecy.

Press freedom has great virtues. It is not about irresponsible scandal-mongering, although that may be part of the picture. It is a means of revealing wrongdoing.

In the U.S., free speech and the press are protected by the First Amendment. It has a clarity unmatched by modern legislators and declares that 'Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or the press.'

Jacob Rees-Mogg Quotes