In last Sunday’s Washington Post, on Page A16, investigative reporter Jim McGee provided a fascinating look inside the FBI’s Strategic Information Operations Center in downtown Washington. The facility, greatly expanded and modernized after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, is the command post for the massive federal investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Its vast, 40,000-square-foot space allows teams from all of the nation’s intelligence gathering agencies — plus the latest high-tech data storage and processing equipment — to work together inside a 21st century operations center.
Along with the story was a large graphic depicting the command center floor plan. A number of readers objected to this drawing. “This was absolutely irresponsible and stupid — not to mention dangerous for anyone living in the headquarters area of 9th [St.] and Pennsylvania Ave. Do you really believe that the First Amendment protects you from the consequences of giving aid and comfort to our enemies?” Another wrote: “With all of the experts telling us to be vigilant, art like that doesn’t help improve our sense of security. If nothing else, it adds to our perception that the media doesn’t give a hoot about security and just wants to be first with the worst.”
There were other e-mails and phone calls. But I quote from these because the media, in this case The Post, did indeed give a hoot.
The Post reporters who were allowed to visit the center are believed to be the first invited by the FBI to tour beyond some general areas that reporters were invited to see when it opened two years ago. When the reporters arrived, FBI officials handed them schematics of the center’s layout. As the story was being prepared, Post reporters called the FBI to tell them the paper might use the floor plan to illustrate the key point: the consolidation of multi-agency efforts in one place. Editors here repeatedly questioned whether the FBI had agreed to publication of the schematic.
Reporter McGee then met again with a senior FBI official and went over the draft graphic that The Post prepared from the original material. McGee also contacted the FBI’s public affairs office about the graphic; the office gave its okay as long as the center’s authorities approved. A revised version of the graphic was then faxed to the FBI. The FBI asked for a couple of deletions, and The Post made them. There were no government complaints after publication, and The Post’s drawing clearly listed, in small type in the corner, that the FBI was the source of the material.
Some readers may still be annoyed at The Post, or maybe now they’ll be upset with the FBI. But if you assume that the FBI was confident that it wasn’t giving away any secrets, then perhaps this explanation helps change some readers’ minds about the paper and how it operates.
Newspapers, as a rule, do not explain themselves very well to the public, nor do they seem to feel the need to do so. They run corrections, though probably not as many as they should. A few have ombudsmen who may or may not choose to explain something. But readers basically are never told much, if anything, when it comes to internal policies or decisions affecting the news — such things as why the race of suspects is sometimes omitted in published crime stories or why publication of a long-awaited election recount analysis is being postponed, for example.
In these truly troubled times, the stakes are much higher. If there is one thread that runs through the complaints I’ve received since Sept. 11, it is the sense among some readers that the paper is giving away secrets to some unseen enemy. That is rarely true, yet the perception, left unexplained, leaves damaging scars on the allegiance of readers to their local paper and to the press generally.
