Opinion:

An opportunity missed

I find this report on ABC news very disturbing:

When a Somali-born computer student was arrested in Minneapolis last December on suspicion of helping al Qaeda, federal counterterrorism officials thought they might finally have found what they desperately need — a way of getting inside Osama bin Laden's shadowy network.

The counterterrorism officials developed a plan to turn the man, Mohammed Warsame, into a double agent working for the United States, ABCNEWS has learned.

"We need people inside al Qaeda, talking to us. We need spies," said Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism official with the Bush administration. "There's only so much you can get from technology, from electronics, from pictures."

Warsame's arrest was supposed to be secret. But within days stories appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about the case — dashing the government's hopes of gaining greater insight into al Qaeda activities against the United States.

Federal officials were furious about the apparent leak, and the Justice Department has launched an investigation to determine how the information about Warsame's arrest leaked to the media. Senior officials told ABCNEWS they are very concerned about the implications of the leak.

I have written elsewhere about "irresponsible journalism", and I wonder if any consideration was given by the reporters or editors of the newspaper that published the story to consult with federal officials to determine if the story should be published.

An insidious and incestuous relationship has developed between journalists and government workers where "leaks" are the currency that the leakers use to advance their personal agendas while journalists use that inside information to advance their careers. There is a fine line between objective, informative journalism and collaboration with the government to hide things that the public does indeed need to know and have a right to know, but the line that demarcates advancing agendas, whether personal or political, is most definitely not a fine one and is crossed routinely by journalists today. I wasn't around to observe first-hand the journalism of the World War II era and the early Cold War, but from what I have been able to read, it appears as if the journalists of the time felt a social responsibility and an obligation to weigh the right to know of the public versus the greater social good in an objective fashion. It seems today that any consideration of social responsibility is completely submerged into the drive for the "scoop" that will get the most eyeballs looking at the advertisements.

Am I just longing for a past that never existed, or have things truly deteriorated?

Posted by Jack at 23:35 on Friday 13 February 2004 | Trackbacks (1)
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