The freedom of the press is absolute. Or at least should be. Even if the press obtains a document that is highly damaging to this country and publishes it, they should be able to.

Risk is part of having a Constitution and if the rights are not fundementally protected, it might as well not exist at all.

The person who leaked the documents is guilty of a crime, if they can be found and prosecuted. Any media outlet that publishes those documents is not.

The very day we proscute the media for printing supposedly classified information it the day we have NO freedom of press.

The reason is simple. The government can classify anything and there is no recourse or standard by which they have to meet. Therefore any document about anything the government does can be classified and if published or reported on, the media can be prosecuted.

That simply cannot happen, no matter the cost.

The constitution actually has a provision to allow the government to protect itself and the people in extreme circumstances, such as a declared war. Those circumstances are very temporary. And since our government has declared no war and hasn't since 1941, it has no privlage to suspend the rights of the press.

No other country on earth can appreciate this or what we are protecting, because no other country on the planet has a true constitution that protects the people from the government.

Every other government that pretends to be democracy or republic has rights that a derived from the government and allocated to the people, which means that government can take those right away anytime and often do.