Here's n unusual editorial from the managing editor of Time magazine, Richard Stengel. In discussing the New York Times decision to publish details of the Swift money tracking program, Stengel does not give a knee-jerk blanket approval for what the Times did. There are the now familiar invocations of the Pentagon Papers and the really tired issue of Watergate, but Stengel does not hand the blank check to the NYT.
There's not an editor in America who didn't wonder what he or she would have done in the case of the National Security Agency spying story and the recent Treasury revelations. It's impossible to say unless you had all the information before you and could hear the case the government made against publishing. But I believe the moral calculus of whether or not to publish is a basic one: Does the potential harm to public security outweigh the likely benefit to the public interest? If it does, hold fire. Attempting to answer that question isn't easy, but that's our responsibility not only as journalists but also as citizens.
This sometimes bitter crossfire between the government and the press is not a bad thing. In fact, such a rough-and-tumble debate is at the heart of American democracy, a 218-year-old seesaw over competing values that will and should continue for as long as we are a nation.
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But I would urge you to listen closely to that debate. The government's assertion that it must be unhindered in protecting our security can camouflage the desire to increase Executive power, while the press's cry of the public's right to know can mask a quest for competitive advantage or a hidden animus. Neither the need to protect our security nor the public's right to know is a blank check. So listen carefully because, after all, you are the judge. It is the people themselves who are the makers of their own government. "The best test of truth," as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote, "is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market."
One wonders how long it will be before the media senses that the New York Times is in serious trouble and begins to pile on them. It already appears that some in the media are actively distancing themselves.
Stengle’s remarks represent as levelheaded a reaction by an MSM major player to the NY Times outrageous betrayal of the public trust as I’ve yet encountered. Although he can’t quite bring himself to draw the obvious conclusions, he at least acknowledges that journalists have some responsibilities to the public, and he doesn’t try dodge the issue, like the dissemblers on Meet the Press yesterday. My, what a shameful display of mendacity that was.
Allah over at Hot Air didn’t much like Stengel’s words, but I thought they were the least slanted ones I’ve heard. I think some cracks are starting to show here.