Missing-the-point-gate.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills - Press freedom - Brief article

As a caution against the media's tendency to overreact, let us not forget the firestorm of journalist indignation aroused by the Justice Department's recent investigations of the Associated Press and Fox News. You would have thought that reporters had been arrested or jailed, or actually shot, as they are in many other countries. In fact, of course, none of these terrible things happened and, as these stories prove, we still have a press remarkably free to criticize the government.

It can be argued that the Justice Department's investigations have not been conducted wisely, but not that they were unwarranted. Genuine national security issues were at stake. Both stories tipped off our enemies--North Korea and terrorists in Yemen--that our intelligence agencies had obtained a window into their secrets.

In the case of North Korea, the Fox News story by James Rosen, based on a leak from a State Department contract employee, reported that the North Koreans planned to conduct another nuclear test. Since that decision had only...