December 21, 2005

NY Times’ Abuse of Freedom of Speech (& a Definition of What Constitutes the Abuse of that Freedom)

GWB personally asked the NY Times not to publish the state secret that the U.S. government was listening to the overseas communications of suspected terrorists:

The President had made the request in person, nine days before, in an Oval Office meeting with publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., executive editor Bill Keller and Washington bureau chief Phil Taubman, according to Times sources familiar with the meeting.

That Dec. 6 session with Mr. Bush was the culmination of a 14-month struggle between The Times and the White House-and a parallel struggle behind the scenes at The Times-over the wiretapping story. In the end, Mr. Abrams' services were not needed. The piece made it to press without further incident. 

But the story, which began with reporter James Risen and was eventually written by Mr. Risen and Eric Lichtblau, very nearly didn't reach that endgame at all. In one paragraph, the piece disclosed that the White House had objected to the article-"arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations"-and that The Times had "delayed publication for a year." 

But the NY Times concluded that helping those who want to kill Americans was no reason not to publish the story:

"We published the story when we did because after much hard work it was fully reported, checked and ready, and because, after listening respectfully to the Administration's objections, we were convinced there was no good reason not to publish it." 

Notice that the Times doesn't say one word about any considerations that it was helping terrorists by publicizing this information. Did they not care at all about that? Or was it irrelevant to them? 

Does a newspaper deserve credit for breaking a story when doing so endangers American lives? The reason the story is a secret in the first place is to prevent the terrorists from knowing that we're listening to them plot to kill us. What is the benefit of betraying that information to the terrorists?

The argument of the NY Times is that GWB has overstepped his rightful authority. But can that argument be supported, given that past presidents, including Carter and Clinton, have acted as GWB has in this matter?

Too often since Watergate, the history of the use of our freedom of speech, is a history of the abuse of that freedom -- abuse being defined as an action that does harm to the people using that freedom. By helping the terrorists, the NY Times hampers efforts to save American lives.

I would like to see representatives of the Times rigorously questioned along the following lines:

• Do they admit that publishing this story helped terrorists?
• Why did they publish a story that hampered efforts to save American lives?
• Are they not in part responsible now for future terrorist attacks on Americans that could have been prevented, had the NY Times not published this story? 

Let's hold the NY Times' feet to the fire on this.