-By Warner Todd Huston
The L.A. Times persists in hiding from the public a 2003 video of Barack Obama attending a party for radical Islamist activist Rashid Khalidi, a video that supposedly features extreme anti-Semitic rhetoric. Yet, with criticism stinging, the Times has issued a rather feeble reason for keeping that important video secret from the American people.
They are “keeping a promise,” we are told, to protect a “confidential source.”
This is what L.A. Times VP for communications Nancy Sullivan told The Blaze this week.
In April 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported first, and in explicit detail about the dinner event and the tape of it. More than six months later, just days before the November 2008 election, the McCain Campaign demanded the public release of the tape. As we stated then, The Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided for review by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not publish the tape itself. The Times keeps its promises to sources and nothing has changed in that regard.
Amusingly, Sullivan also said that as far as she knew, The Blaze was the only ones asking about the tape.
Obviously Sullivan is uninformed. The folks at Breitbart have offered $100,000 for a copy of that video. Are we really expected to believe Sullivan hasn’t heard of this offer?
Not only that, but The Blaze story is chock full of voices scolding the Times for its recalcitrance.
But, let’s review Sullivan’s tenuous reasons for continuing the news blackout of this important video of a sitting president.
Firstly, Sullivan claims that her paper already published “explicit detail about the dinner event.” OK, fine. So, why is the video withheld if it really isn’t protecting any actual information? If the Times already told us all about the video, then why not release it? What could the paper be protecting at this point?
Secondly, the claim that they are protecting their source is a bit odd as it seems more like they are protecting information, not the identity of a source. And if the Times is claiming they don’t want to violate any “privilege” they already did that by publishing all that “explicit detail about the dinner event.”
But it is clear that the Times is not interested in keep private video private and only interested in keeping video of Obama under wraps. This week the paper has been all over the video tape of Romney’s private meeting where he discussed the “47 percent” of America that hews to the Democrat Party. That meeting was supposed to be closed to the public, yet the Times has reported about that video for days.
In the past the L.A. Times has claimed that its duty is to “publish information that our readers need to make informed decisions.” But in the case of President Obama it seems that they want to protect him from those very readers who now can’t get the proper “information” with which to make those “informed decisions.”
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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