Regarding the journalistic ethics issues raised by the emailer below, I think he’s wrong in his interpretation of my remarks and his analysis generally. First of all, I did not lay the blame for this at CBS, I criticized the person who gave them these pictures.

But, for the record, news organizations make tough calls all of the time. They chose to soften and censor the images of the Fallujah massacre. They chose to censor completely the images of 9/11 victims leaping from the towers within days of the attack. They choose not to show — and report — all sorts of things out of concern for the safety of the troops and countless other things. As I said, CBS was not in a position of shaming the government into doing the right thing. It appears the government was already doing the right thing. Also, they could have very easily done all of their reporting without showing the pictures. The first amendment does not require CBS news to do anything! The first amendment requires the government not to interfere with CBS News except in extreme circumstances. CBS had a wide range of options available to it. It chose to do the (second) most sensational thing it could (apparently they had the pictures a while ago and held off at the army’s request pending an investigation. Couldn’t they have held off longer, pending a trial?) They deserve no praise and they cannot claim they had no choice.