Even if you accept for argument’s sake the bunk about honoring the “source’s” supposed wishes, the newspaper wouldn’t need to release the tape in order to give us a more comprehensive account of what happened that evening. So it’s not that the
Times is simply withholding
the tape. The
Times is trying to suppress
the story. Not the story as Wallsten spun it back in April. The
full story. The full story couldn’t be more relevant. Barack Obama
says he is a staunch supporter of Israel. The importance of the Khalidi festivities isn’t simply that Obama lavished praise on a man who was an Arafat apologist — although that is troubling in itself. What also matters is that many speakers (no doubt including Obama’s good friend Khalidi himself) said extremely provocative things about Israel and American policy.
While that went on, Obama apparently sat there in tacit acceptance, if not approval. He didn’t get up to leave. He wasn’t roused to a defense of his country. He didn’t deliver a spirited condemnation of Islamic terror. He just sat there. And when it came his turn to speak, he spoke … glowingly … about Khalidi. He was clearly comfortable around the agitators and, equally crucial, they were clearly comfortable spewing their bile in front of him — confident that they were certainly not giving offense.
Why would the
Times think it’s not newsworthy to tell us in detail what Obama sat through and chose not to refute? He
says he supports Israel, but shouldn’t we get a peek at what he actually
does when Israel is under attack. After all, he wants to be in charge and soon the attacks may be more than just verbal.
All of that could be made known by the publication of a transcript, without breaching any purported promise to the purported source.
But, the
Times sputters, we’ve already done that news story back in April. The material facts have already been publicized thanks to our crack reporting.
Really?
Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn were at the party. Given the controversy over their extensive relationship with Obama — sitting on boards together, doling out millions of dollars together, lauding each other’s writings, joint appearances at conferences, Obama’s introduction to Chicago politics in the Ayers/Dohrn home, etc. — didn’t the
Times think their attendance together at a party for Khalidi was worth reporting?
Given that Obama now preposterously claims he and Ayers barely know each other, didn’t the
Times think it was worth mentioning that guest-of-honor Khalidi, a very close friend of Obama, just happens also to be a very close friend of Ayers?
No.
The party was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) — an organization founded by Khalidi and his wife (who also worked for the PLO’s press agency) and lavishly funded by Obama and Ayers when they sat together on the board of the Woods Fund. Did the
Times think
that was newsworthy?
Again, apparently not. Wallsten’s article does not mention the AAAN’s role in the party. He describes the AAAN “
a social service group” which is headed by Khalidi’s wife and was given a $40,000 grant by the Woods Fund when Obama sat on the board. In fact, AAAN is an activist Palestinian organization that regards Israel as illegitimate and supports driver’s licenses and welfare benefits for illegal aliens. Further, it was founded by both Khalidi and his wife, it actually received almost twice as much Woods Fund support as the Times said (i.e., $75,000, not $40,000), and, at the time of those grants, one of Obama’s partners on the board was Bill Ayers. Besides Obama and Khalidi (about whose speeches the Times tells us precious little), who else spoke at the party? What was said? What was written in the commemorative book prepared for the occasion? The Times doesn’t tell us. In fact, though the Times’s story runs 2000 words, very little of it is about the party the Times now contends it covered adequately. Most of it is dedicated to probing what Wallsten frames as the alluring mystery of Barack Obama’s position on the Israeli/Palestinian dispute. Is he really a strong Israel supporter? Do anti-Israeli Palestinians really have good reason to regard him as a friend? Would he shift away from the strong U.S. alliance with Israel to a more “even-handed” approach—as one Chicago Palestinian-rights activist claims to have heard Obama say he favored (Obama denies it)? We don’t know. The Times raises these and other questions, acknowledges that they are vexing, but then withholds from us critical information by which we might draw our own informed conclusions. The mainstream press, of course, is urging Congress to enact a “shield law,” protecting reporters from government subpoenas. To a former prosecutor, that’s worth noting. You see, in matters of great public importance, prosecutors have ethical obligations, too. One of them says that if you provide an incomplete or misleading version of an event to the public’s courts, and you have information in your file that would clarify the situation, you are duty-bound to disclose that information. That way, the factfinder is equipped to make an intelligent, informed decision about what the truth is. By contrast, the mainstream media want the right to mislead you, to provide you with a woefully incomplete record, but to deprive you of clarifying information even when it is readily at their disposal. You just have to take their word for what happened, and never you mind the details. Are you comfortable taking the Obamedia’s word for it? Or do you think you ought to have a look at what Los Angeles Times has unilaterally decided not to show you? The time for a newspaper to start worrying about journalistic ethics is when it publishes the story, not six months later when, in the stretch run of a crucial election, it gets called on an obviously incomplete report. Ethics, furthermore, are about fair and honest treatment. If the videotape at issue involved John McCain rubbing elbows with radicals or the CIA trying to protect national defense secrets, the Times would publish it and revel in the inevitable Pulitzer for its “courage” in doing so. Let’s see the tape … or at least a transcript. — National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy chairs the FDD’s Center for Law & Counterterrorism and is the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books 2008).< Back 1 2 
