Do As We Say We Do, Not As We've Done

Kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll is now safe, thank God for that. But the mainstream media is playing this story completely different than they would if it were a non-journalist.

Remember when the New York Times violated our safety by printing classified information, all because it is the right of the people to know everything? Remember how every MSM talking head and editorial criticized the White House for being secretive? Do you recall the MSM ranting that nothing is so important that it should be kept from the public?

Read this quote from Editor and Publisher: "

But new speculation arose today that money might have been the initial demand... Cook would not comment, and other reporters in Baghdad said only that such speculation had been growing. "There are indications that [the demand] was for money, but we don't know if any changed hands," said Steve Butler, Knight Ridder foreign editor who had been in touch with his reporters in Baghdad today. He said learning too much about what occurred behind the scenes could be harmful. "These things are sometimes better left unresolved," he added. "It could harm the next one or close off options in the future if too much is known."

So in this case MSM thinks it is best that the public not know anything about the actions behind this story, because they might be able to do the same thing again in the future, whatever it is that this was. Perfect. By the way, that doesn't count for US secrets that might save the lives of US soldiers or average citizens.

It reminds me that here we are two months after Bob Woodruff was blown up while the cameras were rolling, and we still haven't seen the footage. I've seen lots of US soldiers being blown up, I've seen other victims barely clothed, barely alive, tubes out of their arms and faces in the most visually vulnerable way, but no Bob Woodruff. I bet there hasn't been hundreds of TV remote trucks parked on the front lawn of Woodruff's house either, waiting for the family to take the garbage out and give a soundbite.

It must be nice to be a journalist with all the special rights afforded to them that the rest of us somehow don't deserve.