The story [Hot Type, June 16] was simple. The U.S. government and several news agencies decided to pay off Dr. Wen Ho Lee over $1.5 million for lawyers’ fees and as a penalty for having published/leaked his name as a suspected Chinese spy at Los Alamos. I guess that’s the going rate for destroying a world-class scientist’s life and career.
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The skew was simple too, summed up in this quote: “[The media companies . . . denied the Supreme Court an opportunity to issue some sort of draconian edict] reducing the media’s right to protect sources to roughly zero.”
There is no law that states you can protect your sources or your reporters when the very publishing of information sensitive to national security is itself the violation of law, not to mention the public’s trust.
Freedom of speech should not mean you don’t have to support what you say. And yes, when free speech becomes libel it becomes illegal. The media, though often without ethics, is not without legal restraint. Relating his name and image and not defending this action in court, simply paying the good doctor off, is not solely an act of the media’s right to protect its sources; it is also an act of cowardice. It is a skew of our freedoms.
