New York Times Hypocrits

[BillUCF]

The NY Times doesn't think the government should keep any secrets. I wonder if the NY Times thinks this rule applies to them? If they don't want any secrets then they should publish a list of their sources on the front page of tomorrow's issue.

[ACPlayer]

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The NY Times doesn't think the government should keep any secrets. I wonder if the NY Times thinks this rule applies to them? If they don't want any secrets then they should publish a list of their sources on the front page of tomorrow's issue.

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The NYT does not deny that the govt can have secrets. It just stands by its right to publish whatever it finds out about. THe two are not the same.

The govt cannot and must not be able to gag a private news enterprise.

[jman220]

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The NY Times doesn't think the government should keep any secrets. I wonder if the NY Times thinks this rule applies to them? If they don't want any secrets then they should publish a list of their sources on the front page of tomorrow's issue.

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The NYT does not deny that the govt can have secrets. It just stands by its right to publish whatever it finds out about. THe two are not the same.

The govt cannot and must not be able to gag a private news enterprise.

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Yeah, this isnt a newspaper's fault for publishing that information, its the government's fault for being incompetent and allowing it to leak in the first place.

[Vagos]

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The NYT does not deny that the govt can have secrets. It just stands by its right to publish whatever it finds out about. THe two are not the same.

The govt cannot and must not be able to gag a private news enterprise.


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While I agree with this statement, it seems pointless to print everything simply because they found out about it and it was a government secret. Surely some discretion should be used on each story they discover, no? How does this help the American people in any way? How were we being harmed by not knowing this information? Is more good done by releasing this story or moving on to the next one? I doubt the NYT had any good answers for these questions when they decided to go with the story. The NYT's main agenda is not to exercise a free press in order to help the public. It wants to do whatever it can to break down the Bush administration and the right. *(Note: I'm not a Republican or a Bush supporter)

[ACPlayer]

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The NYT does not deny that the govt can have secrets. It just stands by its right to publish whatever it finds out about. THe two are not the same.

The govt cannot and must not be able to gag a private news enterprise.


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While I agree with this statement, it seems pointless to print everything simply because they found out about it and it was a government secret. Surely some discretion should be used on each story they discover, no? How does this help the American people in any way? How were we being harmed by not knowing this information? Is more good done by releasing this story or moving on to the next one? I doubt the NYT had any good answers for these questions when they decided to go with the story. The NYT's main agenda is not to exercise a free press in order to help the public. It wants to do whatever it can to break down the Bush administration and the right. *(Note: I'm not a Republican or a Bush supporter)

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I think that newspapers should employ good judgement in what the print and generally they do (not always).

The biggest issue with this controversy is not whether they should have printed it or not but that the so called purveyors of freedom have decided to come down hard on the printers of the story.

Regarding the story itself, there appears to be a pattern of secret investigations that are (at a minimum) border line infringing on the rights of the individuals from this administration under the guise of national security. This is a very, very disturbing trend.

I strongly think that the government should investigate electronic transfers but have no right to conduct it in secret and certainly have no biz lambasting the NYT. The investigations must be conducted with due process.

[Chris Alger]

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I doubt the NYT had any good answers for these questions when they decided to go with the story.

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I'm sure they had a ton of answers, and they were probably similar to the other papers (like the LA Times) that also had the same story and were about the break it:

1. The use of SWIFT data wasn't exactly a state secret, as the SWIFT officials whose cooperation was needed obviously knew about it.

2. It's extremely unlikely that any terrorist presumed that records of financial transactions were untraceable.

3. There is no evidence that any anti-terror operation was or would be compromised.

4. Given the White House's record of invading privacy without legal process, the potential for this information to be misused and the President's position of being above and beyond the law during "wartime," the issue was obviously one of public import.

5. There is no evidence that the White House could not have obtained the same or equally good information through formal legal processes, such as subpoenas under seal.

The only that's even interesting about this story was the White House's ability to coordinate a propaganda campaign suggesting without a shard of evidence that the NY Times compromised state security. They saw the story coming -- and not just from the Times -- and alerted Fox, the blogs and all their sympathetic friends eager to help Bush out of another embarrassment by issuing frivolous allegations of "treason" (as O'Reilly called it, without any facts, the day it broke). It's just more proof that Bush's acolytes will believe anything, no matter how absurd, emanating from the White House PR machine.

[ptmusic]

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The NY Times doesn't think the government should keep any secrets. I wonder if the NY Times thinks this rule applies to them? If they don't want any secrets then they should publish a list of their sources on the front page of tomorrow's issue.

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Seems you don't understand the value of a free press.

[Copernicus]

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The NY Times doesn't think the government should keep any secrets. I wonder if the NY Times thinks this rule applies to them? If they don't want any secrets then they should publish a list of their sources on the front page of tomorrow's issue.

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Seems you don't understand the value of a free press.

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Good for you. You can contemplate that value while reading a NYT issue with the next (and possibly preventible with some restraint by the press) terrorist attack that kills someone you care about.

[steve9789]

The truly hypocritical thing about the New York Times is they ran a story on September 24, 2001 criticizing the Bush administration for not doing enough to monitor terrorist financial transactions. Now they criticize him for doing it. Talk about damned if you do and damned if you don't...

[VTDuffman]

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The NY Times doesn't think the government should keep any secrets. I wonder if the NY Times thinks this rule applies to them? If they don't want any secrets then they should publish a list of their sources on the front page of tomorrow's issue.

[/ QUOTE ]

Seems you don't understand the value of a free press.

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Good for you. You can contemplate that value while reading a NYT issue with the next (and possibly preventible with some restraint by the press) terrorist attack that kills someone you care about.

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So, as "fear of terrorist attacks" has been the rallying cry to systematically eliminate many of our Constitutionally-Protected freedoms over the last 5 years...it appears they have finally made it all the way to the 1st. That is just awesome.

Constitutional freedoms are unnecessary anyway, everybody knows the government knows what's best for you.