When Do We Publish a Secret? - New York Times

When Do We Publish a Secret? - New York Times

The NY & LA Times editors continue to circle their wagons in the face of the withering criticism against their decision to publish their stories about the U.S. government's selective surveillance of international financial transactions.

I wonder why the Wall Street Journal, which also published similar information that day, did not join these two.

After reading their defense of the decision to publish the SWIFT surveillance stories, I continue to believe they were wrong to do so. Perphaps it's because I trust my government more than I trust the media that reports on it. Or perhaps it's because I believe the liberal media, particularly the NY Times ( I know less about the LA Times) is so virulently against the Bush Administration that they may very well cloak in higher motives their intent to denigrate it at every opportunity .

Their dismal track record on fairness fails to persuade me. I think most Americans expect our government to fight the terrorist bastards in every possible way so as to prevent another catastrophe on American soil and to find and neutralize their leaders who are intent on our detruction. By their decisions the media either help or hinder that effort. My observation is they mostly hinder, to their great discredit.

Note this from a Fox News poll on June 29:

"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).

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).
More Americans blame government employees for leaking the classified info (51 percent) than the media for reporting it (28 percent).

Furthermore, almost all (87 percent) [emphasis mine] think the employees who leaked should face criminal charges and two-thirds think the news organizations should. Even so, only 43 percent are willing to call what the media did treason, and almost as many think the organizations that published the information were
operating for the public good (37 percent)."