MediaWatch: June 1997
Table of Contents:
What Are You? Switzerland?
Some leading journalists see themselves as independent world players, above any consideration of protecting the U.S., which ensures the press freedom they'd endanger.
A May 26 New Republic "Notebook" item provided an emblematic example. It reported that Washington Post editor David Ignatius, at a luncheon celebrating his new spy novel A Firing Offense, floated a plot line: "In the book, a Washington Post reporter cultivates sources at the CIA, who later ask him for a favor. Will he, while traveling in China, pass a message to a scientist that could not only save the scientist's life, but possibly prevent China from developing a horrific new biological weapon?"
"At the lunch, Ignatius asked Bob Woodward what he would do. Considering the extraordinary circumstances, Woodward said he would pass on the message, as long as his Washington Post bosses approved. It just so happened that one of those bosses, Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., was also at the lunch, and Downie rather passionately announced that, far from approving Woodward's secret mission, he would resign from the paper rather than allow it to go forward. Downie...sees journalists as a priestly class above national security, citizenship, even life and death...'What if it were not the Chinese,' someone asked, but the Nazis? Downie held to his position, if wiltingly: 'Usually we look for alternatives...' Usually? How often does this question come up at the Post?"
Downie's view is hardly an aberration. During a 1989 PBS panel, journalists were asked what they would do if they learned the enemy troops with which they were traveling were about to launch a surprise attack on a U.S. unit. Peter Jennings and Mike Wallace agreed getting ambush footage for the news would come before warning the U.S. troops.
The moderator asked: "Don't you have a higher duty as an American citizen to do all you can to save the lives of soldiers rather than this journalistic ethic of reporting fact?" Without hesitating Wallace responded: "No, you don't have a higher duty ...you're a reporter."
