Restraining the media.

• Author: Galex, Michael H.
• Position: Letters

I read Carlos Kelly's article, "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword or Why the Media Should Exercise Self-restraint in Time of War," with great interest. It is always amusing to read a proposal about having any industry regulate itself. It is, however, disturbing that anyone would advocate or condone what amounts to self-imposed censorship. It is bad enough that the media bias (left or right) prevents an honest recitation of the news and leaves the people guessing whether they received the full story; it would be disastrous for the media to farther limit its reporting based upon an undeclared set of rules that vary throughout the industry. Furthermore, such self-regulation would never work because of the competitive nature of the news business and the desire to "scoop" the competition.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kelly never really argues in favor of his conclusion. He just gives a good summation of government authority to restrict media access to military information in times of war. He also gives an excellent summation of how the judiciary, a co-equal branch of government, has over the years abdicated its responsibility to check the trampling of the media's right to report, and the people's right to hear, news about how the government conducts war in our name. The reason Mr. Kelly does not advance any convincing argument about media serf-restraint is that it is indefensible.

The proposal of media "self-restraint" appears designed to avoid any First Amendment implications associated with government-imposed censorship. Nonetheless, assuming self-restraint works, the same result is achieved: a limitation of information about how the government operates in our name. Even without officially sanctioning it, the government would approve. Self-restriction gives the government a blank check to do what it wants in our name...