Clap On, Clap Off: Security, News, and ABC's Gotcha

Obama Administration Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was caught with his pants down in an interview with Diane Sawyer: she asked him about terror suspects arrested in London, and  he had not been briefed on the matter. 

Why it doesn't matter: 

The news networks have an agenda of selling the news, and can afford to pick and choose what will do that.

Security agencies have to concentrate on the relevant, and to prioritize that.

The public is worried about terrorism suspects because they don't want to get on one of the four hundred daily flights across the Atlantic and die on an airplane.

Sure, it's important news in its way that a plot was stopped.  No denying that. 

But that's news that can travel a little more slowly to the ear of the DNI, who has a more urgent, and even more important, story that the networks cannot sell so easily: North Korea. 

I only mention this because it's part of a quandary we have in a free society with instant digital communication.  We choose what we care about by how it affects us.  Twelve terrorism suspects?  In London?  Am I safe?  

And in the politics of digital news-gathering there is a wonderful democracy: we can (in fact we must) care very selectively about what matters.  While few people would say North Korea doesn't matter, it matters half a world away, and there are only so many hours in the day to inform oneself and give a damn.

Is there anything wrong with that?  No.  But there would be a great loss of perspective in losing confidence in the DNI because he was interested in the urgent things that matter in the long run, and not the things the president couldn't do anything about anyway.  At least not until the five o'clock briefing.

Comments

[Victoria]

For Christmas, I asked for something I found online: a pair of underwear with a fig leaf on it designed to stop the radiation from the new scans in the airport from seeing your junk. My mama says she ordered me some, but they didn't come in in time for my flight.