THE PRESS AND PATRIOTISM

THE PRESS AND PATRIOTISM
May 17, 2005

by Joe Sobran

"Our enemies are nearer the truth in their opinions
of us than we are ourselves," wrote LaRochefoucauld.
Something to ponder when we hear complaints about
anti-Americanism. And there may be even more vanity and
self-deception in the group than in the individual ego.

The White House is upset about the NEWSWEEK story by
Michael Isikoff and John Barry that a copy of the Koran
had been flushed down a toilet at the Guantanamo
detention center. After the report led to protests,
rioting, and numerous deaths in the Muslim world, the
magazine said it was "retracting" the story, whose source
had "backed away" from his first account.

It's a little late for the White House to worry
about bad PR in the Muslim world now. U.S. foreign
policy, two recent wars, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo
itself have already had their effects on America's
reputation in the region. Most Muslims think of us as the
enemy. Are they wrong?

People are always quick to believe the worst about
their enemies. In wartime they don't wait for
confirmation of rumors of even the worst atrocities.
Given what American interrogators have done in the past
to provoke and insult Muslim prisoners, the NEWSWEEK
story seemed plausible even to Americans.

The White House is being disingenuous when it
affects indignation at the very idea that Americans might
abuse the Koran. Once again, it's trying to redirect
passions against the news media as a distraction from the
Iraq war itself. Now it's also demanding that Newsweek
repair the damage it says the magazine has done.

But the Bush administration won't even estimate the
damage it has itself done to our national reputation. It
might start by (for example) telling us approximately how
many Iraqi noncombatants have been killed in the war.
Then it might consider whether making bitter enemies is
the natural price of making war.

Even if the NEWSWEEK story were true, observes the
NEW YORK POST, "printing it would give aid and comfort to
the enemy." That's what the White House wants to hear:
even telling the truth is unpatriotic. Candor in wartime
is treason. That's what giving "aid and comfort" to the
enemy implies. The press should publish only facts that
support the government in its war effort. "Loose lips
sink ships," and so forth.

What does the phrase "aid and comfort" mean? It
appears in the body of the unamended U.S. Constitution;
unless carefully defined, it can easily become a rubber
phrase. Does it mean intentional and material assistance
to declared enemies? Or can it be stretched to mean even
revealing certain facts that might embarrass the
government?

If the latter, is that meaning superseded by "the
freedom of speech [and] of the press" in the First
Amendment? Just what did the First Amendment amend,
anyway? Did it change the meaning of what had gone
before?

If we merely mine the Constitution for convenient
slogans, without bothering to ask how its parts are
related to each other, there's no limit to what it can
authorize (or prohibit). We can wind up reaching
conclusions as rabid as those of the aforementioned POST,
which is so pro-war it seems willing to curtail press
freedom, including its own. More liberal (but in their
way equally rabid) papers take "freedom of the press" to
be an absolute.

If we have to choose between these extremes, we
should prefer the one that gives the government least
power over us. In this case, the liberal side is right.
Unless we are free to criticize the government, we are
not its masters but its slaves. Jefferson said that it
would be better to have newspapers without government
than government without newspapers.

The notion that the press is a "fourth branch of
government" is a particularly insidious cliche. It
implies that the press should have some share in power,
and it invites the three real branches of government to
control it as they are supposed to check and balance each
other.

The press isn't always a good thing, but it is
sometimes a dangerous thing, and its danger is multiplied
when it's controlled by the government. And this danger
is always most acute during wartime, when the press feels
pressure to be "loyal."

Like right now.

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