ABC to the Terrorists: Come On Down!

Greetings from the Left Coast. As I was driving home this afternoon, through the first serious wind storm of the season, I heard something on the ABC radio newscast that caught my attention. They were reporting that the TSA agents at Los Angeles International Airport and Chicago O'Hare had missed up to 75% of the phony "bombs" during recent test runs by federal agents.

Am I the only one who thinks that it was pretty stupid to broadcast this story? I didn't need to know this, and neither did you. What we needed was for the government to quietly get to work on solving whatever the problem was. What we most emphatically didn't need was a major news network saying, in effect, "Yo, terrorist dudes, come on down! Now's your big chance - the odds are 3:1 in your favor at the moment!"

Yeah, yeah, freedom of the press, blah blah blah, public has the right to know, etc., etc. I'm sick of journalists hiding behind those cliches to justify their own irresponsible behavior. There are lots of things in life that I have the right to do, but I don't do them - just because I can doesn't mean I should. What a concept. But I suspect that they don't spend a lot of time talking about that in your modern school of journalism.

How about some common sense, folks? How about actually putting the welfare of your own country ahead of breaking a story? Oh, wait, I forgot - the TSA is part of the Executive Branch of government, and Bush is still the President, so any story that might reflect badly on the administration takes precedent over any other concerns. Besides, if ABC hadn't run the story, they'd just look bad because CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, etc., etc., would surely run it, and then ABC might look....like what, exactly? Like they were showing some leadership in responsible journalism? Like they were maybe rooting for their own country? Like they were actually concerned about the possible consequences of the stories they broadcast? Can't have that!

OK...deep breath...flame off...put down the soapbox and back away slowly...

Thanks for listening.