LA Times: "We are not out to get the president"

It's truly a sad state of affairs in a democratic country when a major newspaper has to make an assertion like that, but that's exactly what the editor of the LA Times, Dean Baquet, wrote in an editorial today in response to reader and government pressure against its reporting of the bank records story last week.

In his piece, 'Why We Ran the Bank Story", Baquet offers the public his reasoning for publishing the facts about the Bush administration's tracking of bank records using the SWIFT program - a measure that is now being investigated by Belgian government.

Baquet writes:

We sometimes withhold information when we believe that reporting it would threaten a life. In this case, we believed, based on our talks with many people in the government and on our own reporting, that the information on the Treasury Department's program did not pose that threat. Nor did the government give us any strong evidence that the information would thwart true terrorism inquiries. In fact, a close read of the article shows that some in the government believe that the program is ineffective in fighting terrorism.

In the end, we felt that the legitimate public interest in this program outweighed the potential cost to counterterrorism efforts.

The aspect of 'legitimate public interest' has been outweighed in the US by an administration that values secrecy above all and too many people are willing to forego their civil rights in order to comply with a government that only has its own interests in mind.

It's astonishing that, in the year 2006, a newspaper must explain to the public the role of a free press:

...we also have an obligation to cover the government, with its tremendous power, and to offer information about its activities so citizens can make their own decisions. That's the role of the press in our democracy.

The founders of the nation actually gave us that role, and instructed us to follow it, no matter the cost or how much we are criticized. Thomas Jefferson said, "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government." That's the edict we followed.

That edict has been crushed by constant government efforts to keep a country of almost 300 million people living in a constant state of fear.

If the freedom of the press is lost, along with a congress that has already surrendered its obligation to act as a check on the president, it is the fault of the people who would allow such an atmosphere to take hold in what ought to be an open democracy.

And, for a people so in love with the wisdom of their forefathers, the words of Ben Franklin must be heeded:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.