As the July Fourth holiday approaches, I can’t help but think about the role of the media in our national life. The New York Times’s tipping terrorist to surveillance techniques ends any lingering admiration for the ladies and gentlemen of the MSM.The press is far more hostile to American interests now (there is a Republican in the White House) than in John Kennedy’s day.
Nevertheless, as Powerline notes:
“On April 27, 1961, President John Kennedy delivered a speech before the American Newspaper Publishers Association at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. He addressed the issue of the press’s role in preserving national security in the Cold War. President Kennedy lamented the fact that secret information about America’s covert operations had routinely appeared in American newspapers, to be read by friend and foe alike. He noted that the Communists had openly boasted of gaining information from American newspapers that they would otherwise have had to use spies to attempt to steal. And he called on newspapers not to publish stories based on the single test, Is it news? but rather to add a second test: How does it affect national security?”
Polwerline has a link to an audeo of Kennedy speaking.
“I would encourage you to listen to the entire speech. It is, in several ways, a relic of a better time,” says John Hindraker.
I hope that Billy and Deanie will listen, too, before they re-write their homework. (Keller may have acquited himself so badly in this matter that he is approaching Howell Raines status. That is high-grade vulnerability.)