Withholding information that would get innocent people killed was the right thing to do, not a journalistic sin.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It is the public scandal that offends; to sin in secret is no sin at all.
There is no higher claim to journalistic integrity than going to jail to protect a source.
Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn't have to mean public confessions.
Whistle-blowing and publishing should not be seen as a crime, and certainly not as terrorism.
It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
Whistleblowing and publishing should not be seen as a crime and certainly not as terrorism.
Wouldn't it be better to have a watertight law designed to catch the guilty, rather than a press release law designed to catch the headlines?
In any event, the proper question isn't what a journalist thinks is relevant but what his or her audience thinks is relevant. Denying people information they would find useful because you think they shouldn't find it useful is censorship, not journalism.
It shouldn't take extreme courage and a willingness to go to prison for decades or even life to blow the whistle on bad government acts done in secret. But it does. And that is an immense problem for democracy, one that all journalists should be united in fighting.
I do think that there are gray lines of morality in a newsroom, when it comes to some stories. The best-intentioned journalist still has a difficult mission, to try to boil down people.
No opposing quotes found.