William Safire knocks this one out of the ball park in a Meet the Press discussion about the latest right wing talking point that the New York Times should be prosecuted for treason for running a story on the U.S. Government sifting through bank records. Bill Bennett got on his high horse, saying, among other things, the Bush administration was elected and “the media” was not:
MR. SAFIRE: Let me respond to what Bill, to the point he’s making, that who elected the media to determine what should be secret and what should not?
MS. MITCHELL: Which is the fundamental point.
MR. SAFIRE: Right. And the answer to that is, the founding fathers did. They came up with this Bill of Rights beyond which the constitutional convention would not move unless there were a First Amendment to challenge the government…
MR. BENNETT: Right.
MR. SAFIRE: …just as the American founding fathers challenged the British government. Now it’s not treasonable, it’s not even wrong for the press to say we’re going to find out what we can and we’ll act as a check and balance on the government. Sometimes we’ll make mistakes. Sometimes the government will mistake.
These threats to stifle the free press are part and parcel of an administration that wants to be able to incarcerate people indefinitely without charges and wants to be able to eavesdrop on its citizens without warrants.
I don’t buy that the Times was doing this because it was best for the USA. It was best for their pockets. If they wanted to do what was best, they could have contacted members of Congress about the issues and simply ran a story about “Government monitoring citizens” without all the details, explaining that they have talked to Mr. XY and Z about the issue and are keeping it confidental for now to see if it will be resolved. Then they could encourage their readers to contact their Congress(wo)men to take action on this. There was a way of doing it without crossing the line.
I think the Framers set up our system of checks and balances with the idea that everybody would be doing what was best for them and that by balancing one against the other, overall we’d end up better off.
So, the media as the “Fourth Estate” will best serve the country by aggressively trying to keep the government transparent, even if the aggressiveness is borne of self-interest.
In this particular case, here is how you know that the indignation is political, not patriotic: all the sound and fury is directed at the New York Times and not the Wall Street Journal which ran the same story.
It’s as a lawyer friend once explained to me: To get justice each lawyer represents one side,and we have to assume justice will be served with each side being presented fully .If one lawyer is better than the other, that’s the breaks.It’s the same with the Press and the Govt.Let’s not question the motives as much as getting out all the facts.Self-interest is assumed.
Let’s step back from the current situation. Regarding classified information during wartime, is it right to disclose that information publicly if the reporter feels it is best? If we follow a survival of the fittest mentality, where the reporters in our country try to find every seceret and the governement tries to hide EVERYTHING, we all lose. Sometimes the reporters will disclose things they shouldn’t, and sometimes the government will without information is shouldn’t.
I remember hearing that some reporters knew about the Manhattan Project, but did not break the story. Would reporters make that same choice now?
As to the WSJ doing it too, I did not know that, but I have not followed this story very much. I’m more speaking to compromising our country’s secrets. If they broke the story, they should be the ones getting this heat. However, I don’t expect any news agency to pretend it doesn’t hear the news that one is spouting. If it was a repeat, so be it.
It’s one of those liberty/security trade off things. The Founders chose liberty over security. The fact is, I don’t trust this administration to be honest about when something is classified because it’s actually a matter of security and when it’s classified simply because it would be politically awkward if people knew about it.
No, Doug, this is not a liberty/security trade off thing. Freedom of the press was guaranteed by the founders to THE PEOPLE, not to your “Fourth Estate.” Your position would grant power to the media that is stated nowhere in our Constitution. The NY Times made a deliberate decision to render useless a perfectly legal program to identify the sources and recipients of funding for terrorism. Members of BOTH parties begged them not to print the story, but they did so anyway in an arrogant decision that put their circulation (and the quest for Pulitzer prizes) above peace and elimination of terrorist networks.
The fact that you don’t personally trust this administration (or that I didn’t trust the last one) does not justify public disclosure of programs such as this one. Moreover, it cripples our ability to obtain confidential assistance from our allies in the future. Some secrets need to be kept.
No offense, but the Times wasn’t giving out new information. This stuff was already out there. Unlike Valerie Plame’s identity…
Valerie Plame – you’re kidding right? Just because she didn’t fit the basic definition of what a covert agent was didn’t seem to matter when the media charged in. The problem with the media is they now want to generate/participate in the making of news. They are no longer capable of reporting the news without bias.