Freedom of the Press

Grant Giske wrote an article for the American Thinker recently, in which he questioned the Obama administration's handling of Bin Laden's death; specifically, he lamented the decision to share so many details of the raid that led to the terrorist's death.

I would hope there are enough brains at work in the administration to think through whether sharing all that information was a good idea.  Even if you don't like their politics, it is hard to dispute that there are some smart people working for the Prez.  But I think that Mr. Giske is generally onto something. This article hit on an idea that I've been pondering for years, although mine is a hard argument to articulate because it's difficult to figure out exactly where to draw the line.  You'll see what I mean.

Let me start out by saying this: freedom of the press is a good thing.  I'm glad we have it, and I wouldn't want to live somewhere that doesn't.

But I'm also not sure we're ready to handle everything we're going to find out if we really start digging.  (Patronizing, I know.  But I think it's true, at least for me.  Can you be patronizing towards yourself?)  War is ugly.  People die, and there are blood and guts splashed everywhere.  Maybe it seems to fit into our culture of violent media, but these are real people, not digital video game dummies.  And they die.

K and I were out riding our bikes a few weeks ago and we rode past a squirrel that had been hit by a car.  The force of the impact pushed its guts out its mouth.  It looked like he died while he was in the middle of vomiting up his (or her) intestines.  They had gotten kind of dried out in the sun and were dried to its face.  Gross, right?  And that was just a squirrel.

Journalists, like attorneys, do have a code of ethics.  The Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics is here, if you'd like to look at it.  I don't know enough about journalism (so maybe I should shut up) to know the ins and outs, but there are limits to what will be - or should be - broadcast.  I hope they wouldn't actually broadcast images on the news of someone who looked like that squirrel, but you never know.  Shock value equals interest, and interest equals money.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is pretty simple, but it's simply not pretty. As a nation, we do a lot of nasty things, fighting wars foremost among them.  Some of that nastiness is probably necessary; some of it probably isn't.  If we want to continue living like we have been, we have to deal with it.  But we can't expect a total sea change in how we as a nation do business, while also expecting nothing about our way of life to change.  That's having your cake and eating it too, and grandparents everywhere will tell you that's not possible.

This conundrum leaves us with options: either toughen up and accept the nitty gritty consequences of our behavior, or change.  I'm not sure we're willing to, or maybe able to, do either, at least not in the short run.  And I'm not sure we should want to.  So what do we do?