Freedom of the Press
The Press Clause of the First Amendment protects the freedom to gather and publish the news. It is at its strongest against censorship before publication and against libel suits over good-faith criticism of officials. It is at its weakest as a source of special privileges.
Two ideas do most of the work. First, the government may not censor the press in advance except in the rarest cases. Second, public officials cannot use libel law to punish criticism of how they do their jobs unless they can prove the press knowingly or recklessly lied. Together these give the press room to report and to be wrong at the edges without being shut down or bankrupted.
Just as important is what the clause does not do. It does not give reporters a constitutional right to protect their sources, and it does not give them special access to government information or places. A lot of conflict between a president and the press lives in that gap, where the legal question is not whether the press can publish, but whether the government can subpoena a reporter, pull a press pass, or sue a paper into submission.
Prior Restraint
The strongest protectionThe government almost never gets to stop the press from publishing in advance. A prior restraint, an order forbidding publication before it happens, carries a heavy presumption against it. In Near v. Minnesota (1931) the Court struck down a law used to shut down a newspaper, and in the Pentagon Papers case (1971) it refused to enjoin the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing a classified history of the Vietnam War. The remedy for what a paper prints is a lawsuit after the fact, not a gag before it.
Defamation and the Actual-Malice Rule
Breathing room to criticize officialsA public official cannot win a libel case over criticism of his official conduct unless he proves "actual malice," meaning the statement was made knowing it was false or with reckless disregard for whether it was true. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) set that rule, and later cases extended it to public figures. The point is to leave room for sharp, even mistaken, criticism of the powerful without the threat of ruinous damages.
Reporter’s Privilege
Weaker than most people assumeThere is no First Amendment privilege that lets a reporter refuse to testify before a grand jury about confidential sources. Branzburg v. Hayes (1972) held that the press has the same duty as any citizen to give evidence. What protection reporters do have for their sources comes mostly from state shield laws and internal Justice Department guidelines, not from the Constitution, which is why subpoenas to journalists are a recurring pressure point.
No Special Right of Access
The press is the publicThe First Amendment does not give journalists a special right to enter government places or obtain government information beyond what any member of the public has. But once the government opens a space to the press, a briefing room, a press pool, it generally cannot throw a reporter out because of the outlet’s viewpoint or coverage. The line between "no special access" and "no viewpoint exclusion" is where most modern access fights are fought.
No Punishing or Singling Out the Press
Retaliation is suspectGovernment cannot use taxes, licensing, or selective regulation to punish the press or target particular outlets. Grosjean v. American Press (1936) struck down a tax aimed at large newspapers, and Minneapolis Star v. Minnesota (1983) struck down a tax that fell on only a few papers. The same principle is why using official power to retaliate against a news organization for its coverage raises a First Amendment problem.
The rules above come from a short list of Supreme Court opinions. Near, Sullivan, the Pentagon Papers, and Branzburg are the ones that decide press cases. Read them in full.
These doctrines are being tested right now in the litigation between the current administration and the press: a defamation suit against the New York Times, a Pentagon policy on press credentials, and the exclusion of the Associated Press from the White House press pool.