My dear, fellow citizens:

I just got a news alert from the "news" organization I'm boycotting this week (so haven't looked at the whole story, because that would mean going to their web site). The news alert read, in part:

A new CNN/Time/ORC International Poll indicates four in 10 Americans say they are willing to give up some civil liberties to fight terrorism, and suggests worries about terrorism have edged up after the Boston Marathon bombings.

So if this is true and 40% or so of you are willing to take a pass on having rights and liberties because a pair of fuckwitted idiots decided to blow up a race in our city, here's what we of Boston have to say: You're cowards. We do not know you. We of Boston are not frightened; we are pissed. We're not giving up our rights. We're not giving up our city. We're not giving up our essential humanity because a pair of losers decided to do an evil act.

Benjamin Franklin wrote, in 1759, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." It is temporary safety. Soon, someone would come along and cause other heinous acts to happen, and we'd just have to give up a little bit more...then a little bit more...then we'd forget the meaning of "liberty," civil or other.

Maybe 40+% of Americans believe it's a good idea to give up their liberties for some illusion of security. But the rest of us - including an amazingly large number of Bostonians? We'll spit at evil and stay free.

Ethics depend on which profession you profess.

In classes about journalism, we talk about what's legal (that's my specialty) for the journalist and what's ethical - and often, these are two different things. About two months ago in my Media Law classes, I discussed a law variously called "The Buckley Amendment" and "FERPA." This law prevents educators and people at educational institutions from talking about certain kinds of things involving their students: academic record, quality of work, anything involving the student's use of our counseling center, student disciplinary matters, and so on. Journalists need to know about The Buckley Amendment so they can understand what educational institutions can and cannot discuss.

When it comes to The Buckley Amendment, we get the clear clash between my current and former professions: as a journalism, I'd want to dig; as a university professor, I want to protect my students and their privacy, particularly in situations which are awkward or uncomfortable for them. At the very least, we don't want to add harm to already volatile situations, especially if there is nothing we can provide to the press which will help understanding.

But the public has a right to know! argue some members of the press. Bull puckey! I reply. The public's "right to know" is a political one; there is no public right to know private information about private persons, even if they *want* to know.

When it began

These conflicting ethics and needs clashed hard for me personally 11 days ago, when I got head's up from my boss 8 minutes before an email came in from CNN. The department had a former student involved in the Marathon Bombing story. From what we know right now, that former student was not connected to the bombing itself, but only to the bombers. (If you know where I work - fairly easy to discover - you can find out who this is and so on.) But everybody wanted to know more about this person, and so they started trying us.

CNN emailed everyone in the department, just in case one or two of us might be willing to be interviewed by Anderson Cooper. That wasn't the first press contact. One of my colleagues with an even more unusual name than mine got a phone call from a newspaper in the UK. Then CNN hit...and the flood gates were opened. For some of us, this included telephone calls at home (because we have unusual names and land lines listed with those names); for all of us, it meant email. And, of course, our office phone numbers were listed on our web page..

On Monday last week, we started comparing notes: who got tagged by whom? Reuters, ABC News, The Boston Globe (which, as the local, knew several of our faculty), the Providence Journal (ditto), the Wall Street Journal (which had two different reporters working on us), the L.A. Times (whose reporter was haunting our hallways in person, having been in town to cover the full story), the New York Times, New York Post, AP, and so on.

Don't play persuasion games with someone who teaches persuasion

Yesterday, a reporter from the New York Times started hitting us all again because a piece of the story heated up. It had to be frustrating that none of us would talk to him. But he made the same mistake that the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post had done: he tried the professional journalism guilt card on me.

That card works like this: but you teach journalism! and I'm a journalist! and you're telling me to talk to the public affairs people! and that's wrong! and you should tell me stuff because we're buds! and not doing that means you don't really care about the field! and FERPA doesn't prevent you entirely! and your journalistic ethics should trump your college professor ethics! blahblahblah.

I didn't take it from the WSJ, nor from the New York Post. But when it came from the NYT, I was pissed and told him so...said that it's one thing from a Murdoch paper, but I had greater hopes for the Grey Lady. Today, the same reporter tried that (and some other fallacious arguments, including "appeal to irrelevant authority," etc.) with my boss. Who stuffed it back at him, too.

Whose ethics win?

Does a journalist have an ethical responsibility to dig for information and to unveil that information to the public? Ayup. And does a university professor have an ethical responsibility to protect their students? Ayup. I've been a university professor for 32 years. Guess which profession wins? For me, it is the one that has paid my wages and delighted my soul for more than 30 years. My students? They win.

This evening, email came in from the Washington Post, which was good to see - I was worried they had missed all of the implications. I gently steered them to public affairs, and they haven't been back (but the night is young).

In all of this, nearly a dozen news organizations have tagged just me. About 2/3 of those were by email. And only one of them has thanked me for directing them to public affairs. Only one of them has thanked me for taking time out of my day (hell, it's finals week this week!) to answer their questions. Only one of them had that level of professionalism and courtesy.

So, if I am ever in the position where I can choose one media outlet to do something nice for? It will be the Associated Press.