Loose lips sink ships

Frankly, you want to skip most of this clip and begin to view it at 2:15 (two minutes and fifteen seconds) into the clip. This is a subject that I have heard brought up by conservative, moderate, and liberal commentators. What are our national journalists thinking?

In World War II, there was a saying that was printed over and over again on many posters, “Loose Lips Sink Ships.” The thrust of that saying was that allowing yourself to drop travel, construction or other details could allow an enemy to see how to better destroy some of our people. So, why am I upset?

I am assuming that you have by now watched the clip from the timing mark I gave you. Here is a question. Why would national journalists dissect what went wrong with the Times Square bomb and give details on how to build it better next time? What possible journalistic reason could there be for revealing that type of detail? Notice in the clip that everyone, from Fox News through MSNBC took a stab at telling the public exactly what went wrong with the bomb and what the bomber could have done to have made it work better.

Here is the sad part. Sadly, we must rely on their personal responsibility in order to not publicize these details. Our freedom of the press means that we have no prior restraint save in times of declared war. Even then, we prefer to make the presumption that we must have clear proof of the plan to divulge information in order to interfere. This is as it should be. But, where is the responsibility of the news media, of whatever stripe?

It could be and has been argued that any would be terrorist can find the same information that they broadcast on the Internet. That may be theoretically true, but it is obvious that the last few terrorists have been rather incompetent in finding that information. For the news media to pull together the information that allows them to analyze why the bomb did not explode, and then to broadcast that information in a neat summary package means that the incompetent terrorist does not have to do his/her own research, but can simply watch the news and know why the previous bomb did not explode.

Sadly, this type of thing gets done regularly by the news media. In the name of embarrassing the government, in both Democrat and Republican administrations since 2001, there have been regular reports about insecure facilities, and ways in which to get into them and damage them. I have seen reports that even show which particular electric facilities to knock out in order to cause a regional blackout that may spread. I know that I am not the first to complain about this. But, I do wish the news media would find a sense of responsibility.