"Hazarding Personal Opinions in Public Can Be Hazardous for Journalists"
—The New York Times, October 8, page 12 of the Week In Review

Seems Linda Greenhouse, the "New York Times's much-honored Supreme Court reporter for 28 years," has been reprimanded by the paper for "hazarding a personal opinion in public."

Seems "back on June 7, Ms. Greenhouse gave a luncheon speech before about 800 people at Harvard University," where she was getting an award, and she "hazarded" that the U.S. government "had turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, other places around the world, the U.S. Congress, whatever. And let's not forget the sustained assault on women's reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism."

I really wonder if Ms. Greenhouse would have been reprimanded if she had "hazarded" that the Bush administration was "doing just great, upholding civil liberties, winning the war in Iraq, and whatever."

I wonder if her being reprimanded had anything to do with those same people in the White House who call up the Times's editors at regular intervals, by the Times's own admission, to tell them not to print stuff about them that they don't like. Those people who warned, for example, that the Times would have "blood on its hands" if it reported that the Bush administration was engaging in illegal, domestic spying.

So the Times sat on the story. For a year.

It's called "censorship." And it's the hallmark of every dictatorship, totalitarian, fascist state or otherwise repressive regime. It was the thing the Founding Fathers made sure to protect us against in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Good and honest journalists everywhere are against it, fight against it, thumb their noses at it, and give it the raspberry whenever possible.

Just because a reporter has opinions (and I haven't met one yet that doesn't) doesn't mean he or she can't report a news story in an unbiased fashion. It's like being a doctor; you might not like the patient, but you're still going to treat him fairly, because it's your job. And it's also what's right.

Sometimes the passion of many opinions can be exactly what spurs a reporter on to greatness. Take the case of Anna Politkovskaya, reporter for Moscow's “Novaya Gazeta” and fearless chronicler of human rights abuses in Chechnya, as well as a passionate critic of Vladimir Putin.

Last Saturday, Anna Politkovskaya was murdered. According to Reuters, she "was killed by two shots when leaving the lift [in her building]. Neighbors found her body," a police source told Reuters. Police found a pistol and four rounds in the lift." She was about to deliver a report to her newspaper on torture in Chechnya.

"Politkovskaya, a 48-year-old mother of two, won international fame and numerous prizes for her dogged pursuit of rights abuses by Putin's government, particularly in the violent southern province of Chechnya.

"'The first thing that comes to mind is that Anna was killed for her professional activities. We don't see any other motive for this terrible crime,' said Vitaly Yaroshevsky, a deputy editor of the newspaper where Politkovskaya worked."

May she rest in peace; and may every reporter in the world fight that much harder to report the truth, to avenge her brutal killing. But I ask you: Are there any similarities between what someone did to Anna Politkovskaya and newspapers telling their reporters they can't express their opinions?

Linda Greenhouse is still alive, thank God, even if she isn’t allowed to "hazard” her opinions in public, which the Times says may be "hazardous to journalists." (Is that as in "hazardous to their health"?) Both Anna Politkovskaya and Linda Greenhouse were silenced; for their opinions.

Mark Twain had a lot of opinions. So did Hunter S. Thompson. And John Dos Passos, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau (all journalists at one time). And all seemed hell-bent on "hazarding" them in public whenever possible.

The right to express one’s opinions is a righteous, joyous freedom inherent in being an American—inherent in being a human being, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in 1775: "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

So here's an opinion for you: You go, Linda Greenhouse.