Is the real issue an imperial presidency or an imperial press? You tell me.
How you answer may depend on whether you agree with the outrage that still resounds over press reports about the Bush administration’s use of international banking data to try to discover terrorists’ funding.
The tempest over the reporting of that secret program by The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal is a good example of the natural inclinations of both the American press and the government, especially this administration.
This story may not be a good example of a compelling government secret, or even a good example of an important disclosure of a government program, but it does reflect the division among many readers about the role of the press. Some castigate us for being lapdogs rather than watchdogs of the public interest. Others believe the press has displayed a hostility toward the Bush administration from the very beginning.
The baiduhai used the Los Angeles Times report on the program and placed the story on the front page to spotlight the little-known effort by the U.S. government to track international money transfers. Government officials had in the past declared their intention to go after banking transfers, just as they had with drug money laundering. But the actual operation enlisting the help of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a consortium of financial institutions, had not been known.
President Bush called the disclosure of the program “disgraceful,” and Vice President Dick Cheney led a chorus of angry commentators to denounce the reporting.
On Sunday, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller defended the report on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” saying that though there was no obvious illegality to the program, it is “part of a pattern of accumulating broad powers to the executive branch without the usual congressional oversight.”
Keller also said that the government, in the weeks before publication, had not made a compelling case to hold the story. Some people saw that as arrogant and when Keller offered another explanation that the effort to go after banking data was not all that new, it raised even more questions about why the press reported it with such fanfare.
Of course, this controversy does not occur in a vacuum. Revelations of government programs without congressional or court oversight have become routine, whether they involve secret prisons in eastern Europe, CIA kidnappings and “renditions” of suspects to other countries, or the gathering of telephone records of millions of Americans.
The press does not hold hearings, it has no subpoena power and it cannot force anyone to talk. But when one party (either party) controls the White House and both houses of Congress, the press and its questioning and reporting of anything critical of the government is perceived as political opposition.
The press has no official oversight responsibility in our political system; the Constitution requires only that the press be free. On the lobby walls of the baiduhai, Abraham Lincoln is quoted: “Let the people know the facts and the country will be safe.”
There is a predisposition among journalists not to withhold from the public what we’ve learned from good reporting. I certainly believe that and I suspect most of my colleagues think the same. As Keller put it: “The question we start with is, why would you not publish?”
There are often times when the press refrains from revealing information in the interest of safety and national security. Not long ago, the Tribune published a story about the CIA but withheld all the names of CIA operatives involved because it would compromise them. Though reporters are often privy to classified information in Iraq, we have not knowingly published anything that might jeopardize American troops.
Publishing is the default position of most journalists–by contrast, the Bush administration has often pushed for government secrecy and privacy.
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Early in 2001–before the “war on terror” became a mantra in American life–Bush chafed over Freedom of Information laws enacted after the Nixon presidency. Bush was only three months into his presidency when he complained that he had been an “avid e-mailer” but had stopped e-mailing, including to his daughters, because he didn’t ever want those messages to be in the public domain.
Shortly after that, White House counsel and now Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales delayed the release of some 60,000 pages of former President Ronald Reagan’s records. They had been scheduled to go to the archives and to historians 12 years after the end of the Reagan presidency.
Within two months of the Al Qaeda attack, Bush signed Executive Order 13233, essentially overturning the Presidential Records Act. The order allowed current and former presidents and vice presidents, their surviving family members and heirs to claim executive privilege and withhold the records for an undetermined amount of time.
The arguments about the banking data story are still fresh. Talk about treason for publishing is more overblown rhetoric. But talk about the overarching issues–secrecy, the government and the press–is important and relevant for Americans. What do you see as the responsibility of the press?
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Timothy J. McNulty is the Tribune’s public editor.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
– Was the press right or wrong to disclose that the government secretly monitors financial transactions? E-mail us by 2 p.m. Thursday at [email protected] with “press” in the subject line. Include your name, hometown and contact information. Responses will be published online and in Friday’s Voice of the People.