The other night I saw a movie that I actually had to watch again. Why? Because of the great acting, scenes, and also controversial message of the movie, which was fiction yet inspired by true events.

In the movie Nothing But The Truth, a reporter of a prominent Washington D.C. newspaper finds out from a source that a neighbor of hers was actually a CIA operative in Venezuela during a controversial time when the White House was potentially involved in an assassination attempt there. According to the movie, U.S. Federal Laws prohibit an individual (the reporter’s source) from revealing the names of CIA operatives, as this potentially represents a breach in national security (again, according to the movie).

So, the majority of the movie is a battle between the federal government (Department of Justice, who has a special prosecutor on the case, played by Matt Dillon) and the reporter who is not willing to disclose her source. The prosecutor does not want to jail the reporter, but only wants to get the name of the source, but due to her strict confidentiality per the code of journalism of non-disclosure, she does go to jail and faces some tough times.

Ultimately, the message of the movie is about the First Amendment Right of Speech and how this stands up to issues of National Security and whether the federal government can successfully compel a journalist to reveal his or her sources, thereby forcing the journalist to breach his or her professional ethics code because of a potential breach in national security. In the movie, the journalist’s attorney, played by Alan Alda, was able to present the case to the Supreme Court, but they eventually ruled 5-4 in favor of national defense, thereby supporting the federal prosecutor’s efforts to force the reporter to reveal the name of the source.

I do not have any definitive answers to this issue, but it certainly was a movie that compelled me to watch twice. One of the greatest rights of a human being in the United States is the freedom of speech. However, does this Constitutional Right lose its status of “inalienable right” if there is a serious matter of National Security? Food for thought, especially when you consider just how the Mass Media is a main aspect of our modern society and culture.