The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

News of the Tautological

  • “Japan Plant Shutdown ‘May Cause Power Shortage’ “–headline, Agence France-Presse, May 10
  • “Police Launch Investigation After Man’s Body Found”–headline, Jerusalem Post, May 10

Breaking News From 2009
“Attorney General Vows to Close Guantanamo”–headline, Reuters, May 9

Bottom Stories of the Day

  • “President Obama Not Coming to Bridgeport High School”–headline, Seattle Times, May 10
  • “Evanston Businesses Caught Selling Alcohol to a Minor”–headline, Chicago Tribune website, May 9
  • “White House: No One Receiving Reward Money for Finding Osama bin Laden”–headline, CBSNews.com, May 9

Freedom of Information for Me, but Not for Thee
This column has no strong opinion on the question of whether the government should release photos of Osama bin Laden’s dead body. We’re with Peggy Noonan in finding President Obama’s “we don’t spike the football” comment obnoxious and wrongheaded, but we can well imagine that legitimate reasons of taste or national security militate against the release.

The Atlantic reports that Associated Press has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the photos. “This information is important for the historical record,” Michael Oreskes, the AP’s senior managing editor, tells the magazine:

The organization’s FOIA request included a reminder of the president’s campaign pledge and a plea to be more transparent than his predecessor. “The Obama White House ‘pledged to be the most transparent government in U.S. history,” wrote the AP, “and to comply much more closely with the Freedom of Information Act than the Bush administration did.’ ” . . .

A journalist’s prerogative is to ask questions and find answers, said Oreskes. “It’s our job as journalists to seek this material.”

“We’re not deciding in advance to publish this material,” he pledged. “We would like our journalists, who are working very hard, to see this material and then we’ll decide what’s publishable and what’s not publishable based on the possibly [sic] that it’s inflammatory.”

Oreskes is trying to have it both ways, isn’t he? Like the government, he is willing in principle to withhold the photos from the public. He faults the government only for withholding them from journalists. “We’ll decide,” he says. But what gives the AP that right? Who elected Michael Oreskes?

To be sure, part of the job of a journalist is to decide when not to publish information, and this sometimes entails making judgments about what is in the public interest. In this case, however, the AP is demanding specific information on the ground that the public has a right to know it. If the public really has a right to see the photos, the AP has no more business withholding them than the government does.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for thef “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”