Not All News Is Fit To Print

Is the Pulitzer Prize becoming the journalistic version of the Nobel Peace Prize? To win either honor, you must do two things: embarrass a republican administration, and be the approximate cause of trouble in the world.

How else can you explain the two Pulitzer Prize winning journalists potentially facing an investigation by the Justice Department for printing leaked classified information? One reporter for the Washington Post wrote about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and another for the New York Times reported on the government listening in on suspected terrorists’ conversations without warrants. Both stories were leaked to the reporters by government officials who had their own personal reasons for doing so. The reasons may have been valid, but each leak is still damaging to the U.S. and each is illegal.

The reporters and editors may have their own reasons or personal bias for printing the leaks, but they have a slightly different legal -- and ethical -- standard than the leakers. Before deciding to go to print, they had to weigh national interest, the potential to be criminally liable for printing the leaks, and their own self-interest to report a juicy story. The juicy story won out in both cases.

But the fan occasionally hits something that doesn’t smell all that good and consequences have to be paid. One suspected leaker has just been fired from the CIA after failing a polygraph test about contact with a Washington Post reporter named Dana Priest. Mary McCarthy, the now fired CIA employee, once worked for Clinton’s National Security Advisor Sandy Berger (he of leaking things out his Jockey shorts fame) and is an admitted Kerry supporter. It's only worth mentioning her affiliations because it's important to know that not everyone working at the CIA is friendly with the Administration. McCarthy allegedly told Priest about the existence and general location of secret CIA interrogation prisons in Eastern Europe. In doing so, she violated an oath she signed the day she began working for the CIA that forbids her to pass along classified information. Her alleged loose lips carry a stiff penalty for failing to uphold that oath.

Priest and her editors decided to run the story, presumably without regard to potential costs (even if they didn’t care about their own country, they could have spiked the story out of concern for the countries terrorists might have targeted for housing the prisons), won a Pulitzer Prize and now McCarthy is looking at a likely jail sentence.

The facts of the story are true, I have been assured by my former drunk Irish partner who is heading up the European Union investigation, but was the printing of the story necessary? Are we really better off knowing the President made an attempt to shelter prisons where interrogations may lead to saving American lives but at the cost for the report are damaged relationships with our allies?

Compare the statements of CIA Director Porter Goss and that of the Washington Post story reporting on the firing of the employee. Goss said, "the damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission.” The Post, after acknowledging that “the story caused an international uproar, and government officials have said it did significant damage to relationships between the U.S. and allied intelligence agencies,” still felt compelled to quote its editor Leonard Downie, "The reporting that Dana did was very important accountability reporting about how the CIA and the rest of the U.S. government have been conducting the war on terror," Downie said. "Whether or not the actions of the CIA or other agencies have interfered with anyone's civil liberties is important information for Americans to know and is an important part of our jobs."

Really. It must be comforting for some to know the Post has made itself the arbiter of what’s really, really important to print and that they care so much about the civil rights of others, including terrorists who are plotting to kill their subscriber base. I suppose if the truth is the all-important factor in the job of a journalist, why didn’t the Post force Priest to subject herself to an interview to the general press or even her own newspaper? Has the cat got her tongue all of a sudden?

Leaking to the press is as old as leaky faucets and an integral part of ensuring that government officials are behaving as they should. But the recent leaks of classified information are a new paradigm in reporting and journalists need to apply some form of restraint. Can you imagine the consequences of a reporter running a story on the plans for the Normandy invasion in 1944 or plastered the drawings for the first Atomic Bomb on the front pages of the New York Times? It’s not that far of a slippery slope to get there from where we are now.

Journalists like to hide behind the false curtain of the right to protect their sources. However, the right doesn’t exist and the protection is fantasy. Oh, journalists will howl as they did in the Valerie Plame case, but it’s a safe bet they will have to reveal their sources or face a jail sentence. Since I believe there is an applicable movie quote for every story, I will include this line spoken by Wilford Brimley in the movie Absence of Malice: “We can't have people go around leaking stuff for their own reasons. It ain't legal. And worse than that, by God it ain't right.” Sooner or later the reporters and editors will learn that it just ain’t right.