The Times and Terror

I admit it’s newsworthy, but how newsworthy does it have to be when there’s a very real risk that printing a news story can get people killed and advance the plans of murderers?

That’s my question on the NY Times publication of fine-point details of how the CIA moves high-value terrorist captures from place to place. I was just starting to think, “it’s as if the Times felt this was a distant and irrelevant brushfire war.” Naturally then, James Lileks found a much better way of saying the same thing:

Would you have trusted these reporters to keep quiet about the fake build-up of troops that made it appear the Allies would invade Calais instead of Normandy? You can imagine a reporter pitching that story to a Perry White c. 1944 ““ boss, it’s a cover-up, a huge deception. Public money is at stake as well, and the people have a right to know how the war’s being conducted.

GEDDOUDDA HEAH! the editor would shout. AND I NEVER WANNA SEE YOUR JERRY-LOVIN’ ASS IN MY PAPER AGAIN!

Like I keep saying, it’s not their war. It’s a war, to be observed dispassionately. And many don’t believe it’s a war at all. I can’t tell you how many emails I get accusing me of mad foamy paranoia for thinking that Iran and / or North Korea would want to slip a teeny nuke to some Islamicist cell so they could drive it up Broadway.

Even when conflict is distant, it’s deeply consequential. But if you live in New York, you can’t even be excused for treating this like a distant war.

As a member of a profession with a unique code of ethics–a code that sometimes leads to morally absurd results–I understand that professional rules often conflict with common sense in the name of a greater good. Yet the rules of legal ethics permit a lawyer to reveal client confidences to save a life, prevent serious bodily injury, and to prevent the intimidation of witnesses and other participants in a trial. This represents the intrusion of common sense to protect the same public good that brought us those professional codes–and the profession itself–to begin with. I’m not suggesting that the object of journalism is to serve the state. I am saying that serving the public should be a substantial factor in a paper’s decision to publish. Just as our rules serve as a check on the lawyer’s temptation to win at any cost, a journalist’s rules should temper the natural journalistic hunger to be first with the story, attract the respect of one’s peers, and sell newspapers.

What do the rules themselves tell us? Reporting news that can get people killed doesn’t seem to conflict with the NY Times’s ethical journalism rules. In fairness, the Times points to another set of ethics rules that turns out to be at a bad link (ouch!). Perhaps the Times has adopted the rules of the Society for Professional Journalists. The good news is that at the SPJ, the quest for the story isn’t everything; there are reasonable limits that protect people. The bad news is what isn’t there:

• Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.
• Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.
• Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.
• Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention.
• Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy.
• Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.
• Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects or victims of sex crimes.
• Be judicious about naming criminal suspects before the formal filing of charges.
• Balance a criminal suspect’s fair trial rights with the public’s right to be informed.

I see compassion, sensitivity, and yes, the right to a fair trial. I even see the some-time recognition of “overriding public need.” In fact, I see nothing listed in here with which I’d quibble; it’s what I don’t see that bothers me. What I don’t see is a rule that protects the public when printing relatively trivial details could advance the plans of those conspiring to commit mass murder. That strikes me as an imbalance.

I did indeed say “newsworthy but trivial”–newsworthy because the greater story is one of public concern; trivial because it’s difficult to see how printing the name of the airlines, number of planes, and locations of the airfields contributes meaningfully to public discourse. Were people e-booking charter flights to Durham, N.C., only to show up at the gate and be gagged, bound, drugged, and rendered to false-flag Uzbek interrogators? I think not. Disinformation? I doubt the Times would play along. Or is this just a case of the Times believing that its job is to reveal every government secret it can learn?

Perhaps the journalists who read this site can enlighten me, because I can’t see why Ayman al Zawahiri and I needed all this detail.