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thedrifter
01-12-06, 10:23 AM
THE PRESS' PECULIAR 'PATRIOTISM'
New York Post

You wouldn't know it from mainstream press coverage of the War on Terror, but journalists are actually capable of withholding news when human lives are on the line.

Reporters' lives, that is.

American soldiers, Marines and others fighting the terrorists are on their own.

Take the case of Christian Science Monitor freelance reporter Jill Carroll, 28, who was kidnapped over the weekend in Baghdad.

Carroll was abducted from a Sunni Arab neighborhood Saturday morning — but U.S. papers didn't carry their first accounts of her kidnapping until Tuesday.

At the Monitor's request, major U.S. news outlets, including — no surprise here — The New York Times, observed a "news blackout."

The blackout was only broken because foreign press outlets were running the news and it was becoming embarrassing for the American media to keep ignoring it.

Let's be clear: We don't wish Carroll any harm. If keeping the news bottled up aided efforts to rescue her, these news organizations did the right thing.

Press attention for kidnapping victims in Iraq can give terrorist abductors extra leverage in extracting ransom or propagandizing to the rest of the world.

And operational secrecy for the Iraqi and American forces working to recover Carroll can't hurt.

What's galling, frankly, is that the American press seldom — if ever — seems to care when their activities place non-journalists in grave danger.

A few examples:

* In December, The Times disclosed classified information revealing that the White House had secretly engaged in warrantless eavesdropping on U.S.-based international phone calls and e-mail.

That is, the paper blew the lid off what President Bush rightly calls "a vital tool in our war against the terrorists." Indeed, the administration says the program had uncovered several terrorist plots — but, obviously, that tool is now compromised.

Has that cost American lives?

Will it cost American lives?

Does The Times even care?

* Last May, the paper revealed — in great detail — how the CIA uses its own airline service, posing as a private charter company, as the "discreet bus drivers of the battle against terrorism."

These civilian planes are used to go places where military planes wouldn't be welcome — but now such CIA operations have been compromised.

It's not just the Times, of course.

* On Sept. 28, 2001, USA Today became the first paper to break the story that U.S. Special Forces were operating inside Afghanistan — even as the Knight Ridder news organization, to its credit, held back the information so as not to endanger the commandos.

* Then there's that 1989 PBS debate. The question: If you were covering a war and traveling behind enemy lines and found out about a planned ambush on American troops, would you warn the troops or film the ambush?

Peter Jennings said he'd try to warn the Americans.

But Mike Wallace proclaimed himself "astonished" by his colleague's response. "No. No," he said "You're a reporter!"

Would that Wallace's arrogance was unique. It's not:

* As U.S. troops were being deployed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Paul Steiger told a gathering of journalists that his paper "will aggressively seek to learn — and, when newsworthy, publish — more than U.S. officials want us to know," adding that when it came to publishing information that could jeopardize American troops, he'd make the decision "on a case-by-case basis."

Again, we wish Jill Carroll well — and if a press blackout helps recover her healthy and whole, then we say, turn out the lights for as long as it takes.

But American service personnel need to catch a break every now and then, too.

Ellie