The President and the Press

From the guys at Powerline: which President do you suppose appealed to journalists and editors to apply two tests when it came to running stories dealing with national security? Consider:

I want to talk about our common responsibilities in the face of a common danger. The events of recent weeks may have helped to illuminate that challenge for some; but the dimensions of its threat have loomed large on the horizon for many years. Whatever our hopes may be for the future--for reducing this threat or living with it--there is no escaping either the gravity or the totality of its challenge to our survival and to our security--a challenge that confronts us in unaccustomed ways in every sphere of human activity.

This deadly challenge imposes upon our society two requirements of direct concern both to the press and to the President--two requirements that may seem almost contradictory in tone, but which must be reconciled and fulfilled if we are to meet this national peril. I refer, first, to the need for far greater public information; and, second, to the need for far greater official secrecy.

In other words:

Every newspaper now asks itself, with respect to every story: "Is it news?" All I suggest is that you add the question: "Is it in the interest of the national security?" And I hope that every group in America-unions and businessmen and public officials at every level--will ask the same question of their endeavors, and subject their actions to this same exacting test.

The press, afterall, has been negligent:

For the facts of the matter are that this nation's foes have openly boasted of acquiring through our newspapers information they would otherwise hire agents to acquire through theft, bribery or espionage; that details of this nation's covert preparations to counter the enemy's covert operations have been available to every newspaper reader, friend and foe alike; that the size, the strength, the location and the nature of our forces and weapons, and our plans and strategy for their use, have all been pinpointed in the press and other news media to a degree sufficient to satisfy any foreign power; and that, in at least one case, the publication of details concerning a secret mechanism whereby satellites were followed required its alteration at the expense of considerable time and money

St. John F. Kennedy himself, "The President and the Press" (April 27, 1961)

Reading Kennedy's speech prompts one of two conclusions for me: either the press doesn't take the threat, this so-called War on Terror, seriously, hence they run every leak that comes their way. And therefore, they need to be appealed to, maybe eventually threatened with legal recourse. Or, ala Eason Jordan (whose website elevates safety of journalist over truth-telling), they are taking the threat quite seriously but are looking to save their own butts by being favorable to an enemy that could easily do to them what they did to Theo van Gogh, RIP.