To put it mildly, the Obama administration’s attempt to intimidate and, indeed, to shut down any investigative journalistic effort it doesn’t like makes a mockery of President Obama’s pledge at the beginning of his first term to head the most transparent administration in history.
Transparency means not only an open administration, but more so — much more so — an administration that is appreciative of the place of a free press in a free society.
Are you cynical about the press?
Ask citizens in Syria what they wouldn’t give for an open investigation — in Syria, in Arabic, by Syrian journalists, in Syrian newspapers — into the crimes of the current Syrian regime.
Ask the families of the “disappeared” in Argentina and elsewhere what they wouldn’t give for a full accounting of their never-seen-again relatives.
Ask citizens of the former Soviet Union what they would not have given for an open, uncensored exposé of the intentional famine imposed by Communist bureaucrats that starved millions; or for an exposé of the standard banishment to Siberia without benefit of a genuine judicial proceeding.
Excesses of a free press notwithstanding, the alternative is to give a free reign to the regime to murder or pillage or punish at will.
Make no mistake, in the current Obama administration’s attempt to stifle the free press, there are no excesses on the part of the press. The administration would have us believe that when a government official leaks secret information that compromises the allies of American intelligence agencies and results in the abortion of an important anti-terrorist mission, the onus is on the journalist who printed the information.
Not so. The government official who leaked the information committed a crime. The journalist was doing his job. Plus, ask yourself: How is the journalist supposed to know what is classified (and to what degree) when that information is closed to him, and when his government source isn’t telling?
It’s kind of like punishing Mr. Average Joe for not figuring out the ins and outs of the 501(c)4 tax exempt status when the IRS experts themselves admit that they don’t fully understand these regulations. The journalist cannot know more than the expert.
Yes, the job of journalists is to ask questions.
If you don’t want that, you don’t want a press that discovers when a policemen has committed a crime of violence.
You don’t want to know when a corporate executive has swindled investors.
You don’t want to know when a politician has lied to his constituents.
You don’t want to know whether reports of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq are accurate.
If you’re a journalist, you don’t know where you’re going when you ask a question — that’s why it’s a question.
So, if in the process of asking about a national security issue, an official in the Obama administration says something he’s not supposed to, finger the criminal, not the questioner. The journalistic question is doing the most valuable job in a democracy. If you thinks that’s an exaggeration, consult Thomas Jefferson.
Since the administration is making a big deal about the damage done by the journalists who exposed details of an anti-terrorist plot in Yemen, we repeat: If the journalist were told nothing by a government source legally bound not to leak, no damage would have occurred.
The idea of the Justice Dept. snooping into the private emails or phone logs of anyone, let alone an agent of the free press, is frightening. For Justice to say that the only way to get to the criminal is to spy on the journalist is tantamount to a breakdown in government morale, not just moral clarity.
The administration puts up this defense: A journalist printing classified information is like a person receiving stolen merchandise. But what if the recipient doesn’t know the merchandise is stolen? What if the journalist has no way to determine whether the information is classified or dangerous? What if there is a pattern of administration officials not being truthful about information because it’s embarrassing? What level of trust, then, is a journalist supposed to have if asked to sit on an important story?
An administration that releases a made-up story about some video causing a riot in Libya — however irrelevant that untrue information may have been for the ultimate disposition of events in Benghazi last Sept. 11 — is an administration that loses credibility. Not to mention, transparency.
This administration would have us believe that a journalist who prints information that a government source gave him illegally is a — to use the government’s term — “co-conspirator” in crime. On that very broad basis, any classified or embarrassing information that a journalist releases opens him up to prosecution. That isn’t transparency. Not to mention, it’s not America.
Copyright © 2013 by the Intermountain Jewish News
