Opinion : Journalism has need for keeping secrets, as well as blabbing them

During a conversation with a Washington County law enforcement officer about a decade ago, the officer let it slip that he was going to run for sheriff the next year.

He called me back a minute later.

"Please don't write that," he said. "I am not ready to announce it yet."

I didn't write it. In fact, I told him that when he said that, I knew he was not ready to announce it and had already decided not to include it in the story.

Journalism has always been about blabbing secrets. And in most cases, the secrets should be blabbed. It's the job of journalists to find out what is really happening and to write (or talk) about it.

(Note to inspiring journalists: Two words. Mike Royko. He was considered the best columnist, not only because he was funny, but because he was brilliant at finding secrets and sharing them. Read his old columns, or his book, "Boss," about Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and ask yourself, "How did he get that information?" If you can answer that question, you will learn more than any journalism textbook could tell you.)

There is a time to blab what we know.

And there is a time to not blab.

The best journalists know the difference.

But in this age of instant news, many in the media want to be first, and live in dread of coming in second. This at times inspires them to blab something that is best left un-blabbed.

The officer I mentioned above is now the sheriff of Washington County. At the time that we had the above conversation, he was a narcotics officer. During my three years in Washington County, I had the opportunity to write about several narcotics cases. I even went with officers during a search warrant once as they investigated a man with a history of drug use. I also witnessed a variety of other drills and activities as the officers there trained for shooting situations in school buildings (in the national aftermath of the Columbine shooting) and other situations.

At times, they asked me to not mention specific things, for a variety of public safety reasons. I also knew that there were certain things that I saw and heard that were part of ongoing investigations. Those, of course were also secrets I kept.

So, you may ask: If you were not free to write those things, why did those officers bother telling you? Because they believed (as I do) that sharing those things gave me, as a writer, a better understanding of what was happening, enabling me to write about it more thoroughly, even while leaving out the secrets.

The secrets mostly deal with how officers investigate cases, and the connection between those cases. And those secrets will eventually be non-secrets, as the officers sort out the evidence concerning who may or may not have committed a crime.

I still deal that way with law enforcement on the stories I write. I recently met an officer who has worked in our area for quite some time. I laughed as I asked him a question I knew he could not answer -- at least not, as we say in this business, "on the record." He laughed and answered the question honestly, in a way that kept the secrets that need to be kept.

While most of the "secrets" I know but do not write about involve law enforcement, at times there are other things that I know but cannot yet share. But you can be sure that as soon as I can, I will let you read it here.