Fox News’ Howard Kurtz: Media Printing Name of Whistleblower Would Send ‘Chilling Message to Future Whistleblowers’
There have been increased calls from President Donald Trump and allies for the press to report on the name of the whistleblower who raised concerns about the now-infamous Ukraine call. Rand Paul called for the press to print his name at Trump’s rally Monday night, and not too long afterwards Sean Hannity was hinting he knows but will “play the game” for now, claiming he’s been threatened with a lawsuit.
This afternoon on Fox News, Brit Hume — anchoring Fox News Reporting — started off a segment on this by saying, “We here at Fox News do not know for sure the identity of the whistleblower. We have read some reports that give a name, we haven’t confirmed it, so we’re not saying it now.”
He spoke with Judge Andrew Napolitano about the legal issues around releasing the name. Napolitano said, “The law does not prohibit the revelation of the whistleblower’s name except by people in the chain of command to whom the whistleblower reported his complaint, in this case the inspector general and the intelligence community, but the law does assume that if someone in the executive branch revealed the whistleblower’s name, that that was retaliatory and the law prohibits retaliation.”
As for the media question, Howard Kurtz argued that there’s good reason why media outlets wouldn’t print the whistleblower’s name:
“Here is the reason that nobody in the press who knows it has revealed it, and that is this is a government official, in my view — I’m not defending the whistleblower, I don’t know his motivation — who went through official channels, who didn’t leak it to the press, who went to an inspector general, who went to a committee of Congress, and with the expectation he’d remain anonymous, it would send a very chilling message to future whistleblowers, including in Democratic administrations, including people who have information on scandal, if they thought they could be turned into a political piñata if somebody just leaks the name to a reporter.”
Hume asked, “Isn’t it our obligation, broadly speaking, to print the news without fear or favor? There seems little doubt that this is a newsworthy event. Should we really concern ourselves with the internal government matters that don’t pertain to us? Aren’t we supposed to publish the news?”
Kurtz said publishing the whistleblower’s name would be huge news, but added, “There are all kinds of people who we don’t name although we could and we have legal the power to do. First of all, we protect our confidential sources. We don’t name people who are intelligence agents, in a covert capacity, we don’t name rape accusers, so I think you have to balance the news with it.”
Hume offered a hypothetical scenario in which “we knew that what the whistleblower had said was false.” Kurtz said, “ThatI think you would have much more justification to publish ,because you’d have a reason to try to demonstrate that this person acted unethically as opposed to just throwing the name out there and, again, turning this person into a front-page controversial figure.”
You can watch above, via Fox News.
