TALKING BACK
THE PRESS AND PATRIOTISM
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 because its 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 cliché. 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.