Let’s expand on that a bit. If we were to have had the footage of the My Lai massacre, or a reporter had foreknowledge of dropping a nuclear weapon on Hiroshima because of an intelligence leak, would that be participation in a war crime if they did not publish and make public the upcoming attack? If we look at the civilian deaths inflicted by Western countries, do reporters have a moral obligation to conduct what are essentially intelligence operations to disclose to the enemy that an attack is going to occur, or is it a passive obligation, or does it not apply because the army in question is on the reporter’s side?
You do know that there were US policies in place that any male between the ages of about 16-18 and 50-60 (very much just visually determined by the responsible units) who was killed as the result of an encounter was classified as an enemy combatant? Similar practices were performed in Vietnam and in other wars, and that does not count the deliberate or indiscriminate targeting of civilians done by overly enthusiastic methods of engagement. If we know that a Pashtun village has an Al Qaeda presence but also houses civilians, is it a war crime not to tell them that the Marines are coming and will be opening with a large scale airstrike (with a 100% chance civilians will be killed in both that and the ground action), or is that espionage or treason?
My point is that, as someone who was previously involved, the lines are much fuzzier than we sometimes think. Personally, I do think we need more control over public speech - hate speech in particular - and I believe that people tend to over interpret aspects of the first amendment as much as they do the second, but I have been trying to keep this as neutral as possible with regard to specific laws so that we can look at the moral rather than the legal issues. In other words, I am not philosophically a free speech absolutist, but I do think that the ability to report what is literally a both sides news story shouldn’t be compromised without very careful attention to the ramifications.