"The Public Has a Right To Know" (sometimes)

In The New York Times today, Eason Jordan, chief news executive at CNN, reveals that CNN has known details of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime for over a decade, but didn't report it for fear of reprisals against its staff in Iraq.

Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.

The News We Kept to Ourselves

Intriguingly, Right Thinking has a story about Scott Ritter, who withheld information about a jail for children in Iraq because "what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I'm waging peace." Read what Lee at Right Thinking has to say on this: here.

Stupid bleeping unwashed American masses - we can't handle the truth.