It was interesting to read that (at least) the New York Times and the Washington Post learned about the covert US military mission to abduct the President of Venezula sometime before it actually happened - not just after Trump tweeted some meandering string full of capital letters about the subject like the rest of us did. . They chose not to publish anything on it though, apparently to avoid putting the US troops involved in more danger than they otherwise would have been.
The decisions in the New York and Washington newsrooms to maintain official secrecy is in keeping with longstanding American journalistic traditions — even at a moment of unprecedented mutual hostility between the American president and a legacy media that continues to dominate national security reporting.
I imagine that was not an entirely trivial decision to make given the current environment in the US and beyond. The mission in question was after all, for all its potential upsides and downsides, very likely an internationally and nationally illegal act that hadn’t yet taken place, being planned and actioned in the absence of any sign of democratic oversight.
It was also interesting for me to realise that there is no official mechanism for the US government to ask the press to stop reporting on whatever the highly sensitive topic of the day is. It sounds like the system simply relies on the media and the government coming to a mutual agreement.
Over here in the UK it is a bit different - we have, for example, the infamous “D-Notices”, or DSMA-Notices as they have now apparently been rebranded to. Our government can issue these to request the media not publish stories that they think will endanger national security . Wikipedia has a short list of a few times we know that these have been issued.
D-Notices aren’t actually legally enforceable, although they are typically adhered to. Beyond that though, we have seen the UK government take out injunctions - or even “super injunctions” - which do legally prevent information being shared. That was how the government covered up the catastrophic data leak which revealed the personal details of the thousands of Afghans who secretly helped the UK’s armed forces for a couple of years.