Wednesday, May 17, 2006

This news could be good news

ABC News headlines:

FBI Acknowledges: Journalists' Phone Records are Fair Game
The story begins:
The FBI acknowledged late Monday that it is increasingly seeking reporters' phone records in leak investigations.

"It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in the Bush administration," said a senior federal official.

The acknowledgement followed our blotter item that ABC News reporters had been warned by a federal source that the government knew who we were calling.

The official said our blotter item was wrong to suggest that ABC News phone calls were being "tracked." [...]
Wow! It sounds like the FBI may be acting to find out who leaks national security secrets to MSM news organizations like the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Isn't that going to make it harder for such outfits to take national security secrets and turn them into Pulitzer Prize winning stories that help prop up the newspaper companies' sagging stock prices?

Won't what the FBI is doing make it harder for al-Qaeda to learn what the government's doing to defend us?

What ABC News says the FBI is doing sounds a lot like what it did during WW II.

I'm sure most MSM news organizations are worried the next thing the FBI will do is try to catch journalists who break into our private records. For example, the way the NY Times did when it illegally got into the sealed adoption records of the children of then Appellate Court Judge John Roberts and his wife, Joan.

Folks, if that's what the FBI is doing, I have a question: how can I help?

I hope there's a plan to put reporters who disclose national security secrets in jail? And their editor and publishers too.

How do we punish news organizations that snoop illegally in citizens private affairs?

What are your ideas?

MSM journalists comments are especially welcome.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd vote to let most minor felons out to make room for 'em!

-AC

Anonymous said...

"How do we punish news organizations that snoop illegally in citizens private affairs?" JinC

We don't. If the revelations they make are good for society we applaud them, however, for those instances where they are just scurrilous conveyances of harm just for readership enhancement, we repeal the laws prohibiting dueling and recognize provocation as justifiable exculpatory cause for assault.

Anonymous said...

All illegal collection of personal information would fall under justifiabel exculpatory cause.

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