Press Freedoms and Responsibilities

Apropos my comments below on media bias and truth, Jonnah Goldberg has a column on journalists' fear that, during wartime, their peers will find them guilty of patriotism. His best paragraph quotes Mike Wallace:

"In 1987 . . . Peter Jennings and CBS' Mike Wallace explained on a PBS show that they wouldn't warn American troops they were about to be ambushed. When Wallace was asked if saving American lives might be a higher duty than getting 30 seconds of videotape, he snapped back: 'No. You don't have a higher duty. No. No. You're a reporter!'"

Think of Ernie Pyle's performance in WWII, says Goldberg, and you'll be reminded just how different the profession has become. He's dead on, of course, but take time to think of the late Michael Kelley, who also died in war, or Robert Kaplan, whose reporting from Iraq I outlined earlier today. As Goldberg implies, patriotism isn't taught as a virtue at Columbia Journalism School, but it's still esteemed by some practitioners of the craft.