"[D]on the mantle of a journalist for a moment," Nicholas D. Kristof writes in his op-ed column in today's New York Times, inviting readers to take a quiz about three difficult hypothetical situations in which a reporter would have to balance the public's interest in learning about a crime investigation with the damage that might be done by reporting inflammatory information.
The column comes more than two months after the Justice Department settled a lawsuit filed by Steven J. Hatfill, who was wrongly implicated in the 2001 anthrax-mail murders--the false accusations having been jump-started by Kristof columns demanding to know why investigators weren't paying more attention to a shady scientist. It comes 27 days after an alternative suspect, Bruce E. Ivins, killed himself, and 20 days after the Justice Department grudgingly exonerated Hatfill. (It's also, while we're counting, six weeks since Hatfill's libel suit against Kristof and the Times was dismissed.)
So don the mantle of a columnist for a moment, and think about where you would put the following sentence, if you were in Kristof's position:
