ABSTRACT
The October 1983 intervention in Grenada might just illustrate the deepest and most explicit tension between the press media and the United States government for all of our history. The Grenadian episode may illustrate the Reagan Administration at its worst in terms of low sensitivity for liberal considerations of freedom of information. A very different interpretation of the media's role in the Grenada operation would begin at the opposite extreme, assuming that secrecy and press restraint are indeed necessary by the most high-minded and public spirited of motives. The self-serving goal of guarding one's re-election prospects would always lie suspiciously close to the information-denial policy being imposed. Governments have to keep secrets sometimes, and have to tell lies sometimes, and people should hardly collapse into a state of shock when this occurs. The British commanders in the Falkland Islands recovery seemed to have accepted this "lesson" from Vietnam, as they went quite far in managing, restricting, and using the press.
