From this documentary it would seem that there are only a couple simple rules for deciding when and how to report political stories, without compromising import secrecy. The most important of these ideas is one that could be applied to any news story published: make sure that all facts are present, and true. If one is unsure that the entire story is present, or that parts (or all) of the story might be untrue, don’t publish it yet. One must wait until the whole story, or the truth, is exposed, and then publish that story instead. An example from the video that shows the problems which can come about because of not heeding this advice is the story about WMD’s that Judith Miller covered. The story claimed that the government knew about WMD’s in Iraq, and that we should go to war to protect ourselves and any others involved with Iraq. The story came out as being false information within the year, but the “damage” had been done, as people had showed their support for the war and the Bush administration had launched an attack. Judith Miller tried to defend herself, and though the whole thing may not have been her fault, she should have made sure that all her facts were checked a couple times so that she wouldn’t be influencing people with lies. A second very important rule is to asses what type of impact the story will have on everyone involved. If the story seems to put many people at risk, then it is probably not a great article to publish. If the impact on people is purely that their feelings might be hurt or that a negative view of a leader is going to be exposed, then it is probably a fine article to publish, as everyone will be better informed and no one is going to die from the coverage. One way to make sure that one or two specific people aren’t put in danger is to take out names and publish the article as a basic story that doesn’t call anyone out. That said, it is important not to withhold too much of the story or it will just leave the public more confused, because they know that something big is happening but not what the whole story is. One example of too much editing is the video that was posted by wikiLeaks, they edited out much of the thirty minute film so that it only showed the military killing civilians. In the actual video, that was very hard to find, there was evidence that the people killed were not simply civilians as they had rocket launchers and such. Thus the NYT decided that they didn’t want to publish too much about the video, and instead ran a story about how wikiLeaks was affecting the media world. It seems that most decisions about what to publish, and how to publish, in terms of highly political matters can be boiled down to these two rules. If the story definitely reliable and won’t cause too many people to be at physical risk (though maybe only after removing their names), then the story can and should be published, otherwise either move on or continue following the story until a clear answer develops.
