The Truth in Wartime Act.

And it is not just a matter of protecting our own journalists -- it is a matter of protecting local people who supply news to the journalists so that we can help establish an accurate historical record of any given conflict. Mother Jones has a story of one such journalist, Abdul, who is on a mission to provide the truth to the world and who works as a free-lance journalist for news organizations in Iraq.

Before Abdul goes to work for Reuters, his employer since late 2005, he climbs onto his roof. He does this every morning—looks right, looks left, and if there are any cars parked on his street in western Baghdad that he doesn't recognize, he waits to leave. He can't have anyone follow him, because if it's discovered that he helps foreign journalists—American journalists—he's liable to be marked as a traitor and killed.

There have already been journalists killed in the line of conflict, such as Selwan Abdelghani Mehi al-Niemi, one of 60 people who have been killed in the line of duty providing news to the world.

And this is hardly a problem that is unique to Iraq. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that journalists are in danger in places like Cambodia, China, the Democratic Republic of China, and Kenya from arrest, torture, long imprisonments, and threats.

These people risk their own lives because of the mission that they have to tell the truth. Hannah Arendt talks about the unique power of each individual to change the world; Abdul is a person who understands that capability. From the Mother Jones link:

This imbues him with an almost religious sense of mission. "My wife has begged me to quit my job and even to leave Iraq," Abdul says. "But I told her that every day tens of Iraqis are being killed for no reason, and they will be forgotten otherwise. To die as a journalist, I would know that I was killed while I was reporting the truth. I would die proud."

When I ask him what he can report that Western correspondents can't, he turns quiet. "Being a foreign journalist here," he finally says, "It's just like committing suicide."

And this violence is not confined to the other side. Reporters without Borders tells the story of Waleed Khaled, a reporter killed by US troops, along with the Bush administration excuses:

Reporters Without Borders today called for immediate sanctions against the US soldiers who fired on a Reuters TV crew after US army spokesman Gen. Rick Lynch, while insisting they acted appropriately, yesterday acknowledged that US troops did indeed fire the shots that killed soundman Waleed Khaled and slightly injured cameraman Haider Kadhem on 28 August.

Claiming that the US soldiers "took appropriate measures," Gen. Lynch said: "What our soldiers on the scene saw was a car travelling forward at a high rate of speed. [It] looked like cars that we have seen in the past used as suicide bombs... and there were two local nationals inside."

Khaled died as a result of this lack of discernment. Reuters said Khaled had two press cards pinned to his chest at the time, one issued by the US army and the other issued by the British news agency. Both were found covered in blood and one of them had two bullet holes, Reuters added.

As a result, newsrooms are considering coverage of Iraq a liability and cutting back on their crews; one reporter in the MoJo article characterized the reporting crews as a "skeleton crew." As an example of the kinds of expenses that news organizations incur, NPR spent $140,000 for an armored car along with disguises for their reporters so that they can report the news.

Most corporate media outlets take credit for the work of stringers like Abdul, but we must ensure that proper credit and recognition is given, for posterity, if nothing else. To that end, here is what we should do:

1. Convene a summit to ensure safety for journalists in war zones.

In other words, what can we do to help protect journalists in war zones; we can also figure out what US Embassies can do to protect journalists in war zones in which the US is not directly involved.

2. Provide proper training for armed forces.

We must, of course, bring any soldiers to justice who shoot journalists. But prevention is the best cure, and we must train all our troops to be able to identify and recognize journalists so that they will not fire on them and kill them.

3. Fully fund NPR so that they can obtain resources to cover the news.

The NPR is our flagship radio station, and it is vitally important that we operate them primarily for the public interest and not for profit. Therefore, we must give them the resources they need to be able to cover conflicts around the world that others do not cover. We must be able to cover Iraq more in-depth as well as cover places like Congo and China and provide protection for NPR's reporters.

4. Provide security assistance to reporters in war zones.

Because the 1st Amendment calls for Freedom of the Press, it is important that we not just uphold the values of that amendment in peacetime, we must do so in wartime as well. That means that we have a compelling public interest in providing for security for journalists around the world; not just in conflicts that we are involved in.

As history has demonstrated, any war can spread to our shores at any time; the 3,000 miles of sea did not keep us out of World War I or II. And what gave us the moral credibility to fight and win wars was when we upheld our values even in the face of danger. When we strayed from our values, such as in the Japanese interment, it damaged our credibility.

5. Allow journalists to print whatever they want.

Far too often, journalists have been told that they cannot print particular pieces of information. On the other hand, if I am an enemy commander, I would read the press to see if there were clues to what the US military is planning. But prior experience has shown that far too often, rules have been totally ineffective and that mutual cooperation is better to strike the balance between reporting everything and ensuring that our troops fight battles effectively.

In other words, individual journalists and commanders on the ground should be able to work with each other to strike this balance. But it is the journalist's story, and not the commander's; they have the final say.

While I recognize the dangers that an unfettered press brings to a war zone, it is better to err on the side of freedom than it is to err on the side of secrecy. The need for secrecy is outweighed by the need for an accurate historical record so that we can bring the perpetrators of any war crimes to justice.

And the costs of restrictive rules for journalists outweigh the need for secrecy. Far too often, most censors have gone far beyond ordinary censorship of troop movements and battle plans and censored anything that made the Bush administration look bad.

6. Remove all restrictions on military blogging.

The same is the case for military bloggers. Like I stated above, the desire for secrecy has gotten to the point where most Democratic military bloggers are censored and only the ones who are war cheerleaders are heard. This creates a false impression that most soldiers are behind the war effort when that is not the case at all.

The fact of the matter is that military bloggers give the kind of perspective that is not found in journalistic accounts. They show people what soldiers actually go through so that we see them as they actually are, and not some kind of caricature.

When people are out to kill journalists, like Bush's insane proposal to bomb Al-Jazeera headquarters in Qatar, that normally means that they are in the wrong. If our cause is right and just, then what do we have to hide?