Global War on Terror Watch: New York and Los Angeles Times – “When Do We Publish a Secret?”

New York Times: When Do We Publish a Secret?

SINCE Sept. 11, 2001, newspaper editors have faced excruciating choices in covering the government’s efforts to protect the country from terrorist agents. Each of us has, on a number of occasions, withheld information because we were convinced that publishing it could put lives at risk. On other occasions, each of us has decided to publish classified information over strong objections from our government.

Last week our newspapers disclosed a secret Bush administration program to monitor international banking transactions. We did so after appeals from senior administration officials to hold the story. Our reports â€” like earlier press disclosures of secret measures to combat terrorism â€” revived an emotional national debate, featuring angry calls of “treason” and proposals that journalists be jailed along with much genuine concern and confusion about the role of the press in times like these.

Bill Keller and Dean Baquet MUST be feeling the heat in order for these elitists to pen this response. Keller took the heat from a fellow MSM publication, the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Read the WSJ’s piece, Fit and Unfit to Print here.

The WSJ piece lays out in plain English the duties of the Press:

“Not everything is fit to print. There is to be regard for at least probable factual accuracy, for danger to innocent lives, for human decencies, and even, if cautiously, for nonpartisan considerations of the national interest.”

Fox News has a new poll which shows strong public support for the U.S. Treasury Department’s SWIFT Bank Data Anti-Terror Program:

The poll shows there is strong support for the Treasury Department program tracking financial transactions in search of terrorist funding. Seven of 10 Americans support the program, including majorities of Republicans (83 percent), independents (67 percent) and Democrats (58 percent).

And the same poll shows overwhelming belief that the New York and Los Angeles Times did more to help the terrorists by publishing information about the SWIFT Program than the public.

The Bush administration asked the New York Times not to publish information about the secret program, but the newspaper went ahead because it felt it was in the public interest to do so. By publishing the story, a 60 percent majority thinks the Times did more to help terrorist groups than the public (27 percent).

Allah has the graphics of the poll results here.

And the second poll – note well the Independent voter totals…..

The PDF of the poll is here.

Back to Keller’s and Baquet’s Op-Ed piece:

After paragraph upon paragraph about the Pentagon Papers, the right of the public to know, banal apologia, finally, this:

Finally, we weigh the merits of publishing against the risks of publishing. There is no magic formula, no neat metric for either the public’s interest or the dangers of publishing sensitive information. We make our best judgment…..

We understand that honorable people may disagree with any of these choices â€” to publish or not to publish. But making those decisions is the responsibility that falls to editors, a corollary to the great gift of our independence. It is not a responsibility we take lightly. And it is not one we can surrender to the government.

These jokers made a bad call to publish the information about the SWIFT Progam. The MSM and its bias makes biased/prejudiced calls all of the time and the public is getting sick of it – note the decrease in circulation of newspapers, particularly the Los Angeles Times.

The House of Representatives on Friday passed H. Res. 895 condemning the New York and Los Angeles Times, even though it did not mention them by name.

As long as Editors like Keller and Baquet put their OWN self-interests above that of the public, the public will vote with their feet and leave (with circulation and decreased advertising dollars).

Baquet and Keller are “rogue journalists” and the United States Department of Justice should open investigations into the government employees who leaked the information to their newspapers. Keller, Baquet, Risen, Lichtblau, McManus should be subpoenaed to reveal their sources.

And when they refuse, held in contempt of court.

For as the public knows, newspaper editors/reporters are NOT above the law.