Bashing the messenger

U.S. Rep. Peter King is Michelle Malkin's new stud muffin.

King, R-N.Y., is demanding that the New York Times be criminally prosecuted for reporting on efforts by the Bush administration to monitor the banking activities of suspected terrorists.

I don't know which is more outragerous:

That the government might be employing tactics that infringe on the constitutional protections of American citizens, with little or no congressional or judicial oversight.

Or that someone in power would attempt to muzzle reporting on such activities by threatening the media — whose reporting, again, is protected from the government by the Constitution — with jail time.

The Malkinites are besides themselves at the prospect of seeing reporters and editors taken away in shackles.

What they don't realize that long with the journalists, so would go a lot of their liberty.

One of the best investigative reporters in the business is Mark Bowden ("Black Hawk Down.")

He recognizes that in doing his reporting, he sometimes exposes government secrets.

But then again, that's his job, and Americans are better off because of it.

In a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed on Sunday, he writes:

How you feel about the trade-off between press freedom and national security is partly a matter of perception. The staunchest defenders of government power tend to see our leaders as honest, capable and benevolent. Skeptics are more inclined to believe them avaricious, bumbling and concerned primarily with keeping and expanding their own power.

There is truth in both views. Revealing the secret moves of our government sometimes costs us, but it also protects us. When the choice meant more, our Founding Fathers accepted the risks.

The job of guarding secrets belongs to those who hold official titles and who take security oaths. The job of a reporter is, first and foremost, to find out the truth. Because my reporting from time to time has reached behind the official veil of secrecy, friends have asked me, "Aren't you worried about getting in trouble?" I have always told them, "This is America. I have never taken a security oath. My job is to find out what happened."

Publishing the truth is troublesome from time to time, but neither news leaks nor terror attacks are likely to topple the grand edifice of democracy we have enjoyed in this country for more than two centuries. Locking up reporters? That seems a more promising start.