37 of 45 - Journalistic Privileges My Ass

   So I was leafing through the paper today and came a cross an editorial about the Times reporter who exposed a CIA operative and is being charged for refusing to name her source. The editorial of course talked about "public right to know," "noblist of journalistic traditions," and "journalistic priviledge," and urged readers to mount a letter writing campaign in favour of the journalist.

   The stupidity of coverage of this issue has been offending me for quite some time now. When a criminal or other individual voluntarily divulges information about a crime or criminal activity that had already occurred or was currently occurring, there is no reason to persecute the journalist, because they are in no way facilitating the crime. In this case however, the crime IS the journalist's revealing of information.
   And all this "public right to know" is out the window because its in "the public"'s interest NOT to have the identities of secret agents working for them to be revealed. This information only compromised American intellegence operations and endangered our agent's life.

   And I think in general the American population at least senses these aspects of the situation, but unfortunately, this is also a case where all major media is inherently biased. Its about a member of the media and alleged media "rights," so what one reads in newspapers and suchforth is overwhelmingly biased in favour of the journalist in question.

   In conclusion the journalist has committed a serious crime, a crime that has compromised United States national security. The journalist should be summarily shot for treason.
   "Journalistic privilege" by no means extends to a right for journalists to commit crimes.


In other news: Nothing works on my laptop now except for internet browsing, but even mozilla crashes every five to ten minutes. Fortunately I've evacuated nearly everything from it onto this computer.


Picture of the Day

   I figured on the 4th of July every other aspiring photographer would be trying to get nice shots of fireworks in action, so I looked for something more unique... 4th of July traffic!
   This shot is looking north up Olympiad (directly to the right of Lake Mission Viejo here!), also see looking south from same point. To appreciate how slow those cars are moving, consider that the picture was taken at a 1/2 second exposure time and the cars have negligible speed-blur.

Previously on Emosnail
   Two Years Ago Today: Skanking at Diedrichs - which is the act of rocking out to ska music, not the act of being a skank.