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Pity The Poor Media (or Don't)
R. Alex Whitlock
NPR does a rather
self-indulgent piece on how the media is "afraid of doing their jobs" or something to that effect.
I'm not sure why reporters should be afraid to do their jobs. It's their sources that have something to fear. Without the possibility of facing consequences, anonymous sources will simply use the media as a bat in intradepartmental disputes, which compromises what they're doing. That may be a good thing if they're doing something I disagree with, but it could compromise things that most of us find acceptable measures to take in the name of national security.
I thought Walter Pincus had a good point at the end that when a story is big enough, people will take chances to do what's right. The government has a legitimate interest in keeping all kinds of covert operations covert. Maybe the current administration is using legitimate rationales for illegitimate behavior; I really don't know. Not all information should be available to us at all times, particularly when it comes to law enforcement, intelligence, and military matters. There are reasons that some thing and there are some things that we shouldn't know about because we don't want terrorists to know about them.
One reporter wondered if things were going to have to go back to the big, bad days where they had to actually go somewhere and meet their sources. Heaven forbid. The non-existent constitutional right to anonymity includes a clause preventing people from being forced to leave their house to get a story, I suppose. Whatever the case, the media's whining here is quite unseemly.
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Observations
The piece was too general to really know whether subpoena-ing reporters' phone records was appropriate or not. One hopes that it 1) involved a case of legitimate state secrets that really shouldn't be leaked, 2) doesn't have politically-based revenge as a motive, and 3) isn't part of a more comprehensive surveillance program.
I'm guessing that NPR put this piece on the air solely because of the current concerns about domestic surveillance. There seems to be no real indication of a link, however.
My main concern is the overall pattern of this administration being less forthcoming with the media, "silencing" government employees who say (non-sensitive) things that conflict with current policy, and punishing those who speak out anyway.
Linus,
I agree. There are always reasons to be concerned with secrecy with this administration or any other, though this administration in particular requires a degree of loyalty that has been quite helpful in the past but is backfiring on a number of fronts lately.
"I'm not sure why reporters should be afraid to do their jobs."
Probably because the Administration keeps talking about their right to prosecute journalists and jail them, because certain Republicans in Congress <A href="
http://amygdalagf.blogspot....">are advocating that in hearings</a>, because reporters can no longer safely keep notes or records for fear of them winding up in court, and because reporters are being bugged so as to see if they're getting classified leaks, I should think.
According to the article at hand (that makes the comment about reporters being afraid to do their jobs), the target of the bugging that it refers to are not the reporters but the leakers.
Had the spot mentioned the AG's comments, it would make more sense in the context of the article. As it is, the article and my post came before those particular comments were made and (as I mentioned in the post) they considered the notion of having to actually go out and meet their sources some sort of attack on the institution of journalism.
As far as what Gonzalez said is concerned, I disagree that reporters themselves should be prosecuted for publishing classified information. On the other hand, I do not believe in a journalistic shield when it comes to source confidentiality and if they refuse to testify as to who an anonymous source is, the government should be able cite them with contempt and jail them as they did with Ms Miller.
So in your estimation, does that make me a communist (and/or communist-sympathizer) or not?
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