Media and civil liberties

Several Western governments have used national security as a justification for limiting certain sorts of public information and public speech. The press itself has been torn: sometimes it has refused to accept limits on its freedom of expression (as when newspapers worldwide published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that were offensive to Muslims); sometimes it has accepted them (as when those newspapers apologised). Meanwhile, the media have managed to continue their normal work, uncovering abuses at the Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib prisons, for example. So what has happened to freedom of expression under the war on terror? More from the Economist here.