Place yourself in these circumstances: You are an American, and you are a journalist.

It’s been tough to be you these days. Since the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent bombings in Afghanistan, some journalists have felt a mixture of emotions as to how exactly to cover a story involving military engagements.

Say you have a piece of information from an unnamed, credible Pentagon source. Military troops are within 100 feet of al-Qaeda headquarters. They know for a fact that Osama bin Laden is in there, and they are planning to engage in an assault and capture or kill bin Laden. Bin Laden’s cohorts have no idea that troops are close to them and are planning to strike.

You have it before any of your respective competitors, and publishing it would add to the credibility of your publication.

Yet if you turn the information into a story, you will be running the risk that al-Qaeda will find out about it and possibly sabotage the entire operation. The lives of American servicemen and servicewomen will be put at risk, and the state of our operation could be put in jeopardy.

What should you do?

Situations like this invoke a supposed pull between patriotism and journalism. Impartiality vs. duty. Or even the question: If you are a journalist should you even be rooting for the United States to win in this operation against terrorism?

Yes, you should.

Journalism essentially is the reporting of facts and information designed to better equip the person/community/state/country that the newspaper/station/Web site serves. Impartiality is usually the essence of the cause. When reporting a story, the person the journalist is relaying the information to has an expectation that the reporter is not giving them the info with a Democratic, Republican or any other special-interest spin.

But these issues are limited to how the country is run, not the country itself. Those issues are limited to election, governmental policy, social issues and not the lives of military personnel who are engaging in a war against those who attacked us.

As stated before, this country was and is being attacked by forces that specifically are designed to neutralize our place of power in the world and even to overthrow our way of life. This includes the spectre of journalism. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives the American media freedom and power that are virtually unknown anywhere else. What is so wrong with wanting the country that gave you those freedoms to win? Note that most journalists during World War II did not have debates or express concerns of impartiality when writing about the enemies of the U.S. in Europe or the Pacific.

If we want to write commentary that criticizes American military action or our leaders’ position regarding that action, we can do that without the threat of incarceration or even death, with the exception of the short-sighted editors of papers in Texas and Oregon that fired two columnists that criticized the president’s actions in this war on terrorism.

These are values the media should be the first to rally behind, not be hesitant. And it’s important to note that impartiality does not mean that you cannot take one side or the other. When there is corruption, the media exposes it and rallies against it. When there is exploitation, the media takes the side of the exposed. When there are lies, the media sides with the truth.

In this case, a great wrong was done to our nation. It should only be natural for the media to side with the nation that the wrong was done against. Does that mean we should follow our leaders blindly and not question any of their actions? Certainly not. Does that mean we should not take into account all the factors that may have led to Sept. 11, even if it does not show our nation in the best light? No.

But it does mean that media needs to practice certain restraint when it comes to certain issues within this operation. In the above circumstance, the obligation of the journalist is to not run the story and save the lives of the servicemen and servicewomen.

Some, however, do not think so.

Recently a reporter for National Public Radio was given a circumstance similar to the one above and asked if he would run the story. He responded the he would because his obligation was not to the U.S.A. and his obligation was “to history.”

That is ridiculous. While in principal, the NPR man is right, he is wrong everywhere else. Would you have that same obligation to history, as he puts it, if this country did not give him the freedom to write in a way that would be acceptable to history? Notice that TASS, the news service of the Soviet Union, who’s government put them under tight restrictions, has not been cited for history as anything other than an example of a governments repression of its media.

What the question for journalists boils down to is which are you: an American first and a journalist second or vice-versa? And unless you are a journalist that sides with selfishness and doesn’t take into account all the freedom and leeway that this country gives you, the right choice should be obvious.