It’s not the press’s job to make sure government secrets stay secret. If the newspapers hear something that they shouldn’t have heard, that means the information is compromised, even if the paper declines to publish it. If the newspapers can learn this stuff, then terrorists or drug runners or whoever the bad guy of the day is can also learn it. Looked at this way, the papers are going the gov. a service. If the CIA is reading details of their latest operation on the front page of the NYT, they know they’ve got a security problem and need to revise how they keep a lid on these sorts of things.
They’ve been freezing assets and transactions for the last couple of years. I think they already knew the transactions were being tracked. I propose that programs like this SHOULD be made public. The monitoring of routine communications and transactions (if permitted) needs to have public oversight. Everyone should know about it, including the terrorists. Use it to your advantage. By making this information public you push them further underground, having to resort to cash transactions and organized crime to raise the funds. Forcing them into the fringes of society makes busting them that much easier. They can’t just pickup a 9-5 job anymore and wire the proceeds to their leader or whatever AND THEY KNOW IT.
Everything that our government does to protect us should be public knowledge, especially when it involves tracking personal communications and transactions. If we don’t know and can’t review the processes, these tools can just as easilly be used for bad purposes (harassing political enemies, social misfits etc) as they can for good (tracking down terrorists). Thats why we need oversight and a transparent system. Its part of living in a FREE society.
First, let’s get some basic facts straight:
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There is no “War on Terror.” You can’t make war on an emotion.
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There is no “War on Terrorism.” You can’t make war on a tactic.
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There might, arguably, be such thing as a “War on Terrorists.” (Al-Qaeda is not a sovereign state, but neither was the Viet Cong.) However, that is not the war our government has been fighting for the past five years.
Second – we’re talking about what journalists should or should not do. Now I’m a former newspaper reporter and a journalism-school graduate. Journalists are instilled with a rigorous code of ethics – which, like any code of professional ethics, is in some respects at variance with what most people would think of as conventional ethics. It is unethical to make up a story. It might be unethical to publish it with insufficient verification, although there’s a lot of gray area there. But it is never, ever ethical to sit on a story for fear of the political repercussions. E.g., the Abu Ghraib photos – you could make a case (such arguments were made in this forum) that publishing them put our troops in even greater danger; if true, that does not change the fact that it was an ethical decision, by journalistic standards, for the media to publish them. There was, indeed, no other ethical decision they could have made.
I’m biased on this topic, as I’m a member of the press, but I’m very glad that the press allows me (as a citizen) to find out things the government doesn’t want me to know. I don’t think the government should get perfect secrecy. If it did, it would only try to do more things in secret. It’s better for the public to know more.
You make a good point. No doubt that the classification process is abused, but the fact remains that there some things that are legitimate national security concerns. I guess, as most posters have stated, that there has to be this healthy suspicion of the government by the press. But I was intrigued by this particular case as it seemed to not have a downside. It was of value, leasding to arrests. I am not aware of any abuse of it. In fact, the government proactively put safeguards in place. Now that tool is of zero value. And for what? So more newspapers can be sold?
But on the “publish it”: side, a few posters have made the point that if journalists have the info, the cat’s probably out of the bag anyway, so it’s probably not such a big deal.
I understand, as some have said, how they don’t trust the governement. I’m wary of them also, but I’m not so comfortable with the press either. They, too, have an agenda.
All in all, I guess it makes sense that the papers publish the stories. Even though, as an editor, I would be more inclined to not be party to something that would weaken our resources in the fight against terrorism, terrorists, radical Islamic Fundemantalists who wish to do us harm, etc.
But what do you do if you come upon info that you believe, if published, will result in the death of Americans. I know this is a vague hypothetical, but it is so intentionally. What do you do in an instance when your duty as a journalist conflicts with your duty as a citizen or a patriot?
The problem is, how do you know if the government is actually following those safeguards, if no one knows what the government is doing?
You publish. TV stations in the Los Angeles area might well have anticipated that broadcasting the video of the Rodney King beating might lead to a riot, but that would have been no excuse not to broadcast it.
We hold our officials accountable. Because as long as there are any secrets, you run into the problem you identify. And I think you’d agree that there will always be secrets concerneing national security. Personally I hope the government is doing a whole bunch of stuff that I and those who wish to do us harm do not know.
Can you think of any scenario in which you would come to the opposite conclusion?
Damn, you beat me to it.
No, and neither could any ethical journalist. It’s like asking a lawyer (I’m also a lawyer) to envision a situation that would justify betraying a client, or a doctor to imagine a situation that would require murdering a patient.
How could you be aware of abuses of the program before you even know that it existed? Now that people know about the program, it may be that 500 or a thousand, will be able to look back and say something like: “hey, when I got my identity stolen a couple years ago, wasn’t that just after I sent some cash to cousin Bob in Almaty?”
We’ll have to wait and see how things shake out, but secret safeguards on a secret program don’t really inspire me with a lot of confidence.
I think any reasonable media outlet will voluntarily comply with a reasonable request to pull a story if they’re told it would be a real threat to national security or likely to cause somebody’s death. As for the duties of citizenship and patriotism, most people in the media feel an obligation to protect the United States and the Constitution.
But the current administration is learning that you reap what you sew. Having repeatedly demonstrated that they’re willing to mislead the public, they’re now unsurprisingly finding that the public mistrusts them. And having repeatedly tried to use citizenship and patriotism as a smokescreen to advance the partisan agenda of one political group, they’re finding these appeals are also being viewed with greater skepticism.
I disagree. Security is more effective when it’s out in the open. Why do stores make a point of having their security cameras visible? If they hid the cameras, they’d arrest more shoplifters, but arresting shoplifters isn’t the point. The goal is changing the behavior of potential shoplifters.
Similarly, pouring over thousands of financial transactions and making a few arrests will certainly help, but not as much as letting every terrorist organization in the world know that their money is being watched and forcing them to change their methods.
Prevention isn’t as sexy as retaliation, but it’s where the real work gets done.
This is a very good point. But, infortunatley, I think while security cameras do dissuade teenagers and petty criminals from trying for easy pickings, that those who have concluded that their purpose on earth is to blow people up aren’t so easily encouraged to move on to other things.
Considering the still unresolved questions about the legality and Constitutionality of the massive database of telecommunications information on private American citizens, the press would probably be particularly concerned with keeping the public informed of other similar breeches of privacy.
Further, it’s helpful to remember that the Executive Branch is only part of the government.
I’d lean toward publishing, but I think I’d really have to be in a situation with specifics to know I would do. I disagree with some other posters that that’s the only option for an ethical journalist. As a human being, you do have to be aware that you don’t exist in an academic world and that there are consequences to your decisions.
Another way of phrasing this issue is: Should the government be able to tell the media what it can or cannot say about the government?
Put that way, the right answer is obvious to most people.
No Dick, secretly and illegally spying on Americans is offensive. Claiming the press should just shut up about it when they find out is offensive.