Originally posted by dbates
The point is that if you hide something you're usually admitting guilt else why would you hide your actions. We know what McCain did. Now let's see
the video that the L.A. times has with Obama in it. Until that surfaces we can only assume the worst (as is human nature).
Trust me. If there was nothing of note in the video it would have already been released.
So your solution would be to throw out the freedom of the press, and their right to protect confidential sources?
As I understand it, the LA Times had a confidential source who informed them of the dinner and its happenings. In the vetting of this source's claims
the source provided them with video evidence under the condition that the video itself would not be made public. The LA Times reported the vetted
story several months ago, and kept their word to protect their source's identity by not releasing the video itself.
Using Occam's razor, it could easily be said that the camera perspective would have revealed the identity of the confidential source (something of
note) to the attendees of the dinner. Thus, what they're "hiding" is the identity of their confidential source since they
did report, in
April, on Obama and Khalidi attending said dinner, and of Obamas kind words. The McCain camp made no issue of it when the story broke months ago, yet
they are drawing it out now out of what appears to be desperation.
As for "guilt", yes, the confidential source was, and is, guilty of violating the confidence of his/her associates; however, he/she still felt that
the public had a right to know such information while at the same time protecting his/her identity.
According to FOX News:
Source
The Los Angeles Times is refusing to release a videotape that it says shows Barack Obama praising a Chicago professor who was an alleged mouthpiece
for the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was a designated terrorist group in the 1970s and '80s.
According an LA Times article written by Peter Wallsten in April, Obama was a "friend and frequent dinner companion" of Rashid Khalidi, who from
1976 to 1982 was reportedly a director of the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA, which was operating in exile from Beirut with the
PLO.
If Khalidi is supposedly a "terrorist" because of his actions from 1976 to 1982, then McCain should be held accountable for who he, as
IRI chairman, was funding in the '90s. This is
especially true if we are expected to believe that Obama is somehow culpable for Ayers's
actions which occurred when Obama was merely eight years old. As it stands Khalidi's "terrorist ties" are not a case of "later actions" (post IRI
funding) like some here would like to believe.
Again from the same article:
The newspaper [LA Times] reported Tuesday evening in a story on its Web site that the tape was from a confidential source.
"The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not
release it," the Times' editor, Russ Stanton, said. "The Times keeps its promises to sources."
How do we expect to get any further information, on anything of a sensative nature, if the press loses their right to protect their sources? Are you
honestly supporting that the U.S. abandon our freedom of press?
[edit on 10/31/08 by redmage]