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Topic: Letters Sent to Romenesko
Date/Time: 6/26/2006 3:24:26 PM
Title: What if the feds raided NYT newsroom?
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
From DENNIS PERSICA: I realize this is a little far-fetched, but maybe it's time we started thinking about far-fetched possibilities.

What would we as a profession do, and what would the rest of the American citizenry do, if, for example, the U.S. Attorney's office in New York, bolstered by a cadre of armed federal marshals, barged into the offices of The New York Times today?

They could claim that the Times is a threat to national security and that they need to scour the filing cabinets and computers of Times staffers to see if they can find the source of the stories that the administration and its supporters say are threatening national security. And they could also claim that they are trying to protect the nation against future stories that they fear could be a threat to national security.

The rest of us could rail all we wanted about the raid, but if the marshals are in the Times building I think you could accurately say that they have the upper hand.

You can count on the Limbaughs and Malkins of the world to defend the move. Just look at these posters on Malkin's website.

There is a significant portion of their fanbase who couldn't care less if every journalist in the country was simply jailed or gunned down. (Remember Ann Coulter's comments about the New York Times building?)

Even supposedly saner voices, like Bill Bennett and Rep. Peter King, have joined in the chorus.

Perhaps a slight majority of the country would be outraged by such a raid, but again, what could they possibly do? This would be no Pentagon Papers case where the argument is whether or not a newspaper should be allowed to publish. This would be a case where the federal government treats a newspaper as if it were an enemy saboteur, occupies its headquarters and seized its assets. Perhaps eventually, a court might tell the marshals to leave and to give back everything they had taken. But by then serious damage would have been done.

A scary scenario, but it might be time to start thinking about how we would respond to something like that. Or better yet, how we could prevent it. [Permalink]

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