Note: this was posted as part of my guestblogging at my conservative friend's site, American Princess, so ignore the first sentence.
I know a fair amount of readers here (and the proprietor) heart Michelle Malkin. That's all well and dandy. Once in a while, I even agree with her.
This isn't one of those cases.
As most of you probably know, military recruiters showed up at UC-Santa Cruz (about six hours from my L.A. home) recently and were protested against by UCSC students. All sides were well within their rights in this, although I don't believe protesting the recruiters is a good plan, because it isn't their fault they serve an incompetent Secretary of Defense (as I noted earlier). It's like yelling at the victim of an assault for not stopping the assailant: one person can only do so much.
Anyways, Malkin decided to post the students' press release on her blog, including personal contact information. The students likely made an overzealous mistake by using home phone numbers, however, they likely also didn't know much about press releases.
More after the leap....
Now, Malkin is a professional journalist. I myself have six years of journalism experience as a reporter and an editor. I have seen enough press releases to make me blind (not literally). A responsible journalist is required by their code of ethics to not publish personal contact information. That is there for the press to contact the people who released it so they can ask questions.
Instead, Michelle decided she was going to post the phone numbers of the students, knowing full well that they would be subject to a barrage of calls, most of them unpleasant, to say the least. The students, in a panic after the deluge of deranged death threats they received, contacted Malkin and asked her to take the information down. Her response was vicious, and wholly unprofessional. She reposted the information, along with a very halfhearted attempt to stop the death threats.
Malkin crossed the line. Some bloggers have dropped their links to her, while Captain Ed tried to come to her defense. I don't think it's defensible. I don't think you can defend this behavior. As a professional journalist, and not a "citizen journalist" like most bloggers, she knows the power of the press, the power she holds as a celebrity blogger, and the dangers inherent with that power. She writes for newspapers which have ethics rules about what reporters can and cannot do, and she violated those rules with this behavior. If one wants to get legal, she didn't do it within the space of her employers, but at the same time, most newspapers have rules about how far you can go in public discourse outside the space of the paper itself. This is a textbook example of what a journalist should not do. Her response was petty and personal, ill becoming of a nationally syndicated journalist and author. She really should be ashamed of herself, except reading her over the years, I've seen that she really is without shame, and that itself is a shame.