As the Obama administration looks for big ideas to shape its foreign policy, officials should consult a new book that argues, in effect, that America's "Manifest Destiny" in the 21st century is to extend to the world the standards of our own First Amendment.
This press-freedom manifesto carries the zesty title "Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open" and was written by Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University. I teased him at a symposium last week that if journalists were to write their own description of the media landscape, it would carry a gloomier moniker such as "Nervous, Broke and Hunkered-Down." Bollinger's point is that in a globalized economy, we need rules that ensure open access to information. What we're seeing instead, from China to Iran, is a drive by authoritarian governments to manipulate those information flows. This squeeze affects private companies such as Google and news organizations such as The Post. But, as Bollinger says, there's a compelling public interest for the U.S. government in keeping the information flows as unhindered as possible.
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