MSM Can Keep a Secret--For Whom?

The Washington Post has a couple of interesting columns this morning that you can almost take seriously. Until you start reading them. The first is the most subtle. Penned by Michael J. Berlin, it's entitled "A Secret the Media Kept." (Registraton generally required to read Post links.) In it we discover that it was journalists, not Canadian Embassy officials, who saved a few Americans from the crazed Revolutionary Guards at the outset of the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1979. Who knew?

For those of you who don't remember, six Americans were outside the American Embassy Compound when radical "students" (read, "terrorist thugs") committed the most violent incident of hooliganism against an embassy in recent history. The Canadians hid them out in their own embassy and eventually got them out of the country unscathed in spite of the "students" attempts to find them.

Well, now we find out that the only reason this story wasn't outed before it came to its happy conclusion was that the media, who knew what was going on, kept their mouths shut until the Yanks, and their Canadian counterparts, were out of the Mullahcracy of Persia. Damn, gives you a whole new respect for these journos, doesn't it? Berlin sure thinks so. It even leads him to make this startling statement:

The Canada-hostage story proves that reporters and news organizations can be trusted, en masse, to make the right call on security information they uncover. And neither Iranian officials nor Iranian news media got wind of it.

Wow, what a bunch of heroes, those journos, unlike those Canadian bit players! (Who were working, BTW, for a rare, conservative Canadian PM at the time.) Of course, it was also easy for journalists to be patriotic in 1979, since a Democrat was in the White House, and Carter's White House of Cards had only just begun to tumble toward the rescue attempt disgrace and the hyperinflation that brought that idiot, Ronald Reagan, to the White House. If the Prez had been George W. Bush, Bush Derangement Syndrome would have immediately sealed the doom of those lucky 6 Americans, because it would have made Bush look even worse. But we'll let this pass, because Berlin is obviously not aware that things have changed a little in the MSM since 1979. Or maybe he is:

Do I think that a thousand reporters could be trusted today to make the same call that we did in 1979? I wonder. Even back then, there was the fear that some rogue reporter would ignore the pleas and go with the story. In today's journalism world, I fear that some blogger or counterculture ideologue using journalism as a political tool rather than as a mechanism for dispensing straight information, would make the wrong call. I hope I'm wrong about that.

Gosh, Mr. Berlin, I sure hope you're wrong, too. You can never trust those damned counterculture ideologues, can you. (Note the implied reference to right-wingers here, which is kind of funny, since the counterculture used to belong to the left, didn't it?) Thank God, those patriotic professional journalists in the MSM, like Dan-I'd-Rather-Kerry-Were-President always check their facts impeccably, make sure they're reporting the truth, and only run with the story when they're sure it won't harm anyone.