Since Nov. 29, confidential U.S. diplomatic cables have been published daily by WikiLeaks and five newspapers, The Guardian (Britain), El Pais (Spain), Le Monde (France), Der Spiegel (Germany) and The New York Times.

U.S. Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, who allegedly provided WikiLeaks with the 250,000 embassy documents, has been arrested and faces prosecution. Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, has been charged with sex crimes in Sweden, which is seeking to extradite him from Britain. It is rumored that a secret grand jury has been convened in Virginia to indict Assange on espionage charges related to WikiLeaks.

In the past few weeks, commentators and politicians, including Conn. Senator Joe Lieberman, have called for The New York Times to be prosecuted for publishing the details of the cables.

He has argued, and some Americans believe, that the publication of secret government documents is a threat to national security. Foreign officials who speak to our diplomats in confidence may not be so candid in the future if they fear being exposed by future leaks. Less informed foreign policy could cause costly mistakes.

We disagree with Senator Lieberman. The purpose of a newspaper is to inform its readers, a duty which includes exposing the inner workings of government. American citizens must not be kept in the dark about their government’s dishonest conduct, or else there is no way to prevent future misdeeds.

Lieberman apparently forgets that the Times’s editorial freedom, like that of all other American press institutions, is protected by the First Amendment. In the landmark 1971 case “New York Times Co. v. United States,” which dealt with the publication of the confidential Pentagon Papers, the Supreme Court ruled that press freedom superseded the government’s need for secrecy. The Nixon Administration was unable to prove that revealing the documents in The New York Times and The Washington Post would represent a “grave and irreparable” danger.

Publication of the diplomatic cables represents arguably less of a threat. Unlike the Pentagon Papers, which revealed secret bombing campaigns in Laos and Cambodia, some of the information in the cables, like Saudi Arabia’s fear of Iran, is public knowledge that has been previously discussed by diplomats on the condition of anonymity. Thus far, no specific examples of the documents’ ill effects have been furnished.

We do not live in a country where the government censors and indicts newspapers, nor do we wish to live in such a country. The New York Times, other newspapers and WikiLeaks have acted well within their rights in publishing these cables.