The Wall Street Journal Wasn’t Part Of The Swift Outing
One thing that irks me a lot about the debate surrounding the media outing of the Swift terror finance tracking program - and it happens during this Larry King interview with the President (which is worth a watch as the President is in good form) - is how often leftists use "the Wall Street Journal broke the story too" argument. As though the fact that the Wall Street Journal has a conservative opinion page changes the fact that the outing of the Swift program did untold amounts of harm to our efforts to stop terrorism.
But that isn't the part that bugs me. What really bugs me is that the Wall Street Journal didn't report anything that wasn't provided to them openly by properly-authorized, non-anonymous government officials. When it became clear to the Bush administration that the New York Times and L.A. Times were going to print stories about the Swift program they went to the Wall Street Journal and pre-emptively released details on the program to ensure that at least some of the reporting done was relatively even-handed.
The original Journal article is only available if you are a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal's online edition (I am), but I quoted from the article in this post and it is clear from what I quoted that the Journal did not do what the New York Times and L.A. Times did.
Larry King and others who are using this argument need to get their facts straight.
But that isn't the part that bugs me. What really bugs me is that the Wall Street Journal didn't report anything that wasn't provided to them openly by properly-authorized, non-anonymous government officials. When it became clear to the Bush administration that the New York Times and L.A. Times were going to print stories about the Swift program they went to the Wall Street Journal and pre-emptively released details on the program to ensure that at least some of the reporting done was relatively even-handed.
The original Journal article is only available if you are a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal's online edition (I am), but I quoted from the article in this post and it is clear from what I quoted that the Journal did not do what the New York Times and L.A. Times did.
Larry King and others who are using this argument need to get their facts straight.
