Singing Potatoes
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Monday, 8 October 2001
Freedom of the Press

I'm all for freedom of the press. I think it's a good thing, and a necessary thing for a country which calls itself the "Land of the Free".

But with freedom comes responsibility, and I think our press is being exceptionally irresponsible. Just because we can do something, is doesn't necessarily mean that we should.

For example, just because "freedom of the press" implies that a newspaper could declare to the whole world the precise location of the command center running Operation Enduring Freedom, it doesn't mean that it has to paint a big red target on a map and tell our enemies, "Hey, here's the nerve center of our entire campaign against you!"

Now, I'm not trying to say the editors and reporters at the Tampa Tribune are morons (even though they don't seem to have the intellectual capacity to run their articles through a spell-checker, let alone have a literate human actually proofread them). But for crying out loud, what kind of idiot does the enemy's intelligence work for them?

Admittedly, part of the reason I find this lapse of security frightening is because I only live a few miles away from MacDill AFB -- but even if the operation was being run from the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, I'd still think it was irresponsible journalism.

Posted by godfrey (link)
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