Interview with Kristen Taylor of Free Republic (7/3/06)
Isis: All right, go ahead. Kristen, tell me
exactly what was your specific purpose of the rally this afternoon in front of the New
York Times.
Kristenn Taylor (Free Republic):
Well, now you know under the Geneva Convention I’m only required to give you my name, rank, and serial number. Anything else you’re going to have to torture me for.
Isis: Don’t tempt
me. [laughter] C’mon.
KT: We were, we were down
the New York Times at noon, express to them our anger at their betraying our national
security over and over again and putting American lives at risk, and we want them to be prosecuted by the Justice Department
for treason.
Isis: Now what about the
term ‘Freedom of the Press’? I mean sometimes I’ve been hearing
around a lot lately that the press is not giving and reporting enough information about what’s happening. and here they
are, they’ve stepped out on a limb, and they printed something that’s very big and very risky, but maybe it’s
something that they see their duty to do.
KT: With rights come responsibilities. Like I said at the, demonstration, we’ve got our second amendment rights to
keep and bear firearms, but that doesn’t mean that we can go wantonly, uh, killing people with our guns, by exercising
our rights, and it’s the same thing with the New York Times. They don’t have the right to wantonly put American lives at, risk.
Isis: So do you believe
the government should control the media?
KT: No, but on the other
hand the government has to enforce the laws. You know, reporters are not an exempt
class of citizenry. They’re citizens just like everybody else, and we all
need to be held accountable to the same standards. If I had done what the New York Times did, they’d prosecute me, but because they’re a big media
corporation, eh, they’ve got to think about it. I think, you know, they’ve
thought long enough about it, get down to business, and start protecting this country against our enemies within.
Isis: Can you understand,
perhaps, the inner struggle of journalists who find out information, and, feel that perhaps it’s their responsibility
to report it to the public and yet, you know, struggle with whether they should or shouldn’t.
KT: Well, you know, if
the Bush administration were doing what the Kennedy brothers were doing, bugging Martin Luther King’s hotel rooms and
then trying to, you know, blackmail, him and his family, that’s wrong and that should be exposed, but that’s not
what the Bush administration’s doing. The Bush administration is trying
to keep the terrorists from attacking us again like they did on 9/11, and the New York
Times, the other media that’s going along doing with their kind of reporting, uh, is making our job a lot harder
by telling the terrorists what we’re doin’ to keep them from, uh, making their, uh, plans happen.
Isis: All right. Thank you, Kristen, and this is Kristen Taylor speaking on the rally outside the New York Times . . .
