Saturday, March 05, 2005

The American Society of Newspaper Censors?

Colbert I. King's column in today's Washington Post about a dispute between Post writer Marc Fisher and the American Society of Newspaper Editors, titled An Affront to the First Amendment, is well worth reading.

If anything illustrates a moral failure with major media in America today, it is a letter from ASNE lawyer Kevin Goldberg, attacking Fisher for commenting on a court battle between the Baltimore Sun and Maryland Governor Robert Erhlich:
Goldberg wrote last Saturday that Fisher had "done a disservice to his reporting brethren" by "publicly" stating his views. Acknowledging Fisher's right to state his beliefs, Goldberg declared, incredibly, that "the responsibility that accompanies that right mitigates against stating them in this situation." This from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Now who's trying to stifle the free flow of information to the public?


That a professional organization of newspaper editors would be calling for censorship in order to further their own cause fits a pattern that can be seen in the Dan Rather case, Eason Jordan's comments, and so forth. This is troubling for the United States at a time when freedom and democracy are embattled around the world.

As Instapundit might say, the ASNE letter is evidence that they "are on the other side."