James Joyner says: [1]
Ed Driscoll [2], Jonathan Adler [3] and Glenn Reynolds [4] take the New York Times and other mainstream outlets to task for their decision to not republish the stolen emails from climate scientists [5] on the grounds that they were illegally obtained and written with the expectation of being kept private. After all, these outlets famously publish illegally obtained classified national security information at the drop of a hat.
[6]
James Joyner
While that’s a pretty persuasive critique on its face, the comparison is ultimately false. In the case of the East Anglia listservs, the victims are private individuals. By contrast, the Pentagon Papers and various intelligence leaks published during the Bush era were owned by the United States Government and arguably kept secret partly to shield elected leaders from political fallout.
I tell him:
I dare to suggest to you that the real contrast here is who such documents would expose. In every case when the new York times has decided to run with supposedly stolen documents it has been at the expense of the right, and to defend the left and it’s mantra. As such, their cries of morality regards all of this lose all credibility at the off.