Paul Murray: Public safety and national security come before a scoop

West Australian

18 hours ago

There are two things that should particularly exercise an editor's mind when deciding on the publication of certain sensitive reports.
Public safety and national security.
Many arguments can be made for providing readers with as much information as possible — that's the business we're in — but some lines are crossed and risk peril when they involve those two areas.
It's a long time since the Australian media had to think about the consequences of operating as a restrained free press when the country is at war and might need to defend itself.
And long may that continue.
But even our Defence Minister just two weeks ago conceded Australia would be dragged in to support the US if it became involved in any Chinese attack on Taiwan.
That's a likelihood some defence experts think could be only several years away.
With the world holding its breath that an all-in conflagration won't break out in the Middle East after America's intervention to end the war between Israel and Iran, questions remain about whether President Donald Trump is the peacemaker he claims to be, or an opportunistic belligerent.
That has caused divisions in Trump's support base because he promised a nation weary of fighting other people's wars that he would not take them into more foreign campaigns.
The so-called 12-day war has also raised other questions about America's politically-riven society.
It again exposed elements in the American intelligence community — what the MAGA movement calls the Deep State — and embedded in the Left media who would rather the USA be seen to fail than Trump be seen to have a win.
That's not just Trump derangement syndrome. That's deeply unpatriotic. And potentially even worse if it led to harm.
The editors at CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times who decided to take on Trump over the bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities based on leaked 'Top Secret' intelligence reports they had not seen, but had only been told about, went out on a limb.
Reporters require very strong faith in a source — and usually need wider confirmation — to rely on what they are told about vital documents without seeing them.
At the time details of this top-secret intelligence was published, America remained on the brink of being dragged into a precipitous war. There were potentially extreme consequences.
The possibility of further American involvement resulting from those assessments of the damage to Iran's nuclear facilities was a live issue.
That is why the intelligence was done. Not for triumphalism, but to investigate the effectiveness of the bombing and the possibility that more might be needed.
In other words, whether more Americans would have to risk their lives to finish the job.
Iran had a strong interest in how much the Americans knew — or what they thought they knew.
But the desire to score points against Trump was greater than the editors' caution to ensure what they might publish did not damage American interests.
They decided it was acceptable to use it to contest Trump's assertion of 'obliteration' without worrying that they were effectively supporting Iran's attempts to make it appear that its nuclear program had not suffered a significant setback.
One effect of supporting Iran in that cause was to weaken the pressure on it to stop fighting. And to suppress dissent against Iran's theocracy.
Another perverse effect of the publication was to encourage people who hate Trump to cheer for America to fail. And Iran — the globe's biggest sponsor of international terrorism — to win?
During the recent conflict, I spent a lot of time watching Qatar-based Al-Jazeera because they had a team of reporters in Tehran providing in-depth reports missing on other cable networks.
The Al-Jazeera coverage was superior.
I continued switching across to Al-Jazeera in the lead-up to Trump's appearance at the NATO meeting in The Hague which also provided an interesting perspective not available from usual news sources.
For instance, there was fascinating live coverage of a joint press conference between the Qatari and Lebanese prime ministers a day after Iran had fired 19 missiles at the US air base just outside Doha.
The swirling middle eastern politics at play between Qatar's friendship with Iran and its alliance with the US and Lebanon's involvement in hostilities with Israel reflected that old story about the scorpion and the frog.
And then I chanced on live coverage of a presser between Trump and NATO chief Mark Rutte — the former longstanding Dutch PM — with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defence secretary Pete Hegseth sitting on the sidelines.
Rutte began with some extraordinary gushing over Trump for his achievement of forcing NATO members to meet to lift their defence spending to five per cent of GDP.
He said Trump had now achieved even more than in his first term when he put the blowtorch on the Europeans which, Rutte claimed, resulted in an extra US$1 trillion being spent on their defence needs. That was news.
Reporters then asked Trump about the reports of the leaked intelligence. He didn't hold back: 'CNN is scum,' he said. 'MSNBC is scum. The New York Times is scum.
'They're bad people, they're sick. They've tried to make this unbelievable victory into something less. They should not have done that. The pilots hit their targets and the pilots should be credited. They're not after the pilots, they're after me.'
Trump then referred a question to Rubio who made a series of important points that need serious reflection by the media.
Firstly, he confirmed the intelligence was marked Top Secret without saying that media sources need to justify releasing such information during hostilities.
Avoiding giving any detail, which he is sworn to protect, Rubio argued intelligence of that kind always contained a range of scenarios especially when the collected information was not conclusive.
Rubio said the leakers had cherry-picked only the most sceptical parts of the assessment, and the subsequent news reports 'mischaracterised' the conclusions.
'I hate commenting on these stories, because often the first story is wrong and the person putting it out there has an agenda,' Rubio said.
'That story is a false story, and it's one that really shouldn't be re-reported because it doesn't accurately reflect what's happening.'
Good point. The farther the media reporting got from the original news reports, the more the 'intelligence' was taken as having been passed on truthfully.
Those regurgitating the CNN-MSNBC reporting did not know the leakers — so could not question their credibility — were unaware of their motives or which parts had been leaked and which concealed.
But the 're-reporting' contained no caveats on credibility, even though everyone knows the febrile animosity of CNN and MSNBC for Trump and his administration.
Hegseth described the assessment as 'a top secret report; it was preliminary; it was low confidence.'
That is completely lost in the re-reporting.
CNN's original report makes it clear the network had not seen the intelligence assessment, claiming it had been 'described by seven people briefed on it.'
The report suggests a patchwork of snippets. But even their sources clearly didn't see the actual document. Briefed? They may have just heard about it. The Times quoted 'officials familiar with the findings.'
'The analysis of the damage to the sites and the impact of the strikes on Iran's nuclear ambitions is ongoing, and could change as more intelligence becomes available,' CNN said, clearly acknowledging, but not being constrained by, its preliminary and inconclusive nature.
'But the early findings are at odds with President Donald Trump's repeated claims that the strikes 'completely and totally obliterated' Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities.'
And that was the only point they wanted to make. What the leakers wanted to achieve. Pure political point-scoring.
'This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN before publication, 'and was classified as 'top secret' but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community.
'The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran's nuclear program.'
Maybe they did. Maybe not. The truth is still out there.
But what is more certain is that the pertinent question about the effectiveness of one of America's most critical armaments — deployed for the first time — should be determined in a less dangerous environment.
And not as part of a blatant political vendetta.
It wasn't always like this. When the mainstream news media was not so partisan, more considered, less willing to trade national security for clicks.
Evaluating the possible impact of a controversial news report is part of an editor's job.
But it escalates from brand protection and reputational damage control to something much more important when the report involves national security, particularly during a conflict with the potential to expand.