[MUSIC] The power of information to alert, to divert, and to connect us has ignited battles to control it since the beginning of time. It might seem implausible that a leader who rules thousands of soldiers and government officials would be afraid of a few words, but history is full of examples of that. Over 2,000 years ago, Qin Shi Huang, the Chinese emperor who built the Great Wall, ordered the burning of thousands of books, and executed more than 450 scholars who refused to surrender their libraries. That desire to control information continues to this day. People in power often must suppress ideas that threaten to undermine their authority. And as new communications technologies appear, the terrain of this battlefield shifts. From Johannes Gutenberg's printing press to the telegraph, from radio to television, new technologies have spread information faster and farther, and in new and dramatic ways. The latest communications revolution has given us smart phones. And social media has intensified the seismic shift of the media landscape. Information today can spread to millions of people across the globe in a heartbeat, making it far more difficult to control. But these new ways to communicate have only prompted people in power to increase their efforts to stop the free flow of ideas. Today's leader in China, for example, have followed in the footsteps of Emperor Qin by building their own Great Firewall of China. It is an enormous effort to prevent information from outside the country from reaching Chinese netizens. And perhaps more importantly, to prevent the Chinese people from sharing sensitive information with each other. The government employs more than 200,000 people to monitor and distort social media. To bring the information they uncover to the public, journalists worldwide are often the most obvious targets in the war to control information. Everyday in every country, reporters and editors must overcome threats and intimidation. The independent organization, Committee to Protect Journalists, tracks the number of journalists who have been imprisoned, kidnapped, harmed, and killed. According to CPJ, in the last 25 years almost 1,200 journalists have been killed just for doing their job. These numbers are a grim reminder that the stakes in the battle over information are very high. Among those killed was Sri Lankan journalist, Lasantha Wickrematunge. His story is particularly poignant, because he not only understood the risks he was taking, just days before his murder he wrote his own obituary. It reads in part, “People often ask me why I take such risks and tell me it's a matter of time before I am bumped off. Of course I know that, it is inevitable. But if we do not speak out now, there will be no one left to speak for those who cannot. Whether they be ethnic minorities, the disadvantaged, or the persecuted. Governments and powerful interests find many ways to control information, short of murdering or physically intimidating journalists. In the United States, for instance, where the Constitution protects a free press, the Obama Administration has aggressively monitored the movements of reporters in order to find out where they obtained the information for stories that dealt with national security issues. An editorial by the New York Times said this: “The Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.” More recently, powerful businessmen in the United States have begun to back defamation and libel suits against American news organizations in an effort to influence their coverage. Actions like this can have a chilling effect on journalists, intimidating them, making them think twice before they dig too deeply into a story that could challenge those in power. Why do journalists take risks to bring secret information to light? Many echo the words of Wickrematunge and say they are giving voice to the voiceless. U.S. journalist Marie Colvin, who was killed in a bomb blast in Syria, summed up her motivation like this. “Our mission is to speak the truth to power. We sent home the first rough draft of history. We can and do make a difference in exposing the horrors of war, and especially the atrocities that befall civilians.” [MUSIC]