[4] Knoll began his journalistic career working with The Washington Post, and from 1963-1968 as the White House Correspondent for the Newhouse National News Service.
"[4] In 1979, soon after Knoll took over The Progressive, the magazine became the first publication to be ordered not to print an article by a federal court due to national security.
"[5] Judge Robert W. Warren of the U.S. District Court in Milwaukee enjoined publication, but the U.S. Department of Justice dropped the action after a local newspaper, the Madison Press Connection, "printed a letter that the Government said also contained secret information about the bomb.
"[5] Speaking to the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association in Chicago in January 1982, Attorney General William French Smith referred to the epigram "Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge" as "Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy.
Knoll was against the Strategic Defense Initiative, arguing in 1983 that the Reagan Administration's assertion that SDI could be the "key to a decent, humane and peaceful future" was "to tell the biggest lie.