Imagine for a moment that you're a resident of Northern Virginia during the Fall of 2002. People filling up at the gas pump or just mowing the lawn are being shot dead by an unknown sniper.

Then imagine you open the Washington Post one Sunday morning ... and there is a compelling photo of a man aiming a gun out of the back of a car. There's no indication whether or not this man shot and killed his "target" that day. However, here you have the sniper that all the police in the area are looking for and a photographer found him first, and did nothing to stop him as he fired.

Outrageous? Amoral? Evil?

Would you cancel your subscription. Would you hold the photographer partially responsible for any deaths that resulted that day, or on subsequent days? How about the editor that sent him out on that assignment? The publisher?

I set this up as a hypothetical of the sort that Professor Charles Ogletree did in a famous "Ethics in America" broadcast on public television. Several of these were shown to me during the course of journalism school, and I remember vividly now-retired CBS newsman Mike Wallace's position that he was a journalist first and an American second (or maybe third or fourth). Flowing logically from his position as a "citizen of the world," he would stay silent and walked as American soldiers walked unknowingly into an ambush at the hands of the "North Kosanese."

If there was any doubt, the hypothetical has become real. [via LGF]

Joao Silva for The New York Times

A sniper loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr fires towards U.S. positions in the cemetery in Najaf, Iraq.

Michele McNally: "Right there with the Mahdi army. Incredible courage."

Michele McNally is an Assistant Managing Editor for Photography at The New York Times.

Courage?

Bolshevik Storytelling.

What in the h-e-double hockeysticks is going on in the American media? You can have a high-minded philosophical debate about whether the Times' recent disclosures of American intelligence operations has endangered the country. But how do you excuse this?

He's firing on Americans! Frankly, I think if American troops come across Joao Silva, they ought to shoot him. If he's an American, that photograph is prima facie evidence of treason. If he's not an American, then he's an enemy of the America and the duly elected Iraqi government and he should be shot.

And just for good measure, Ms. McNally should check to see if she has any morals whatsoever.

I can't describe how absolutely insane and evil this is.

Times editor Bill Keller can blow "public interest" out his sphincter all day over the terrorist finance tracking program. But the mere existence of the above photo blows his defense of his patriotism on the Charlie Rose show out of the water.

Charlie Rose: Yeah, of course. Treason, questioning your patriotism, how does that sit with you?

Bill Keller: It does not sit well with me at all. I have a large staff of people who work for me, who are not frivolous about this kind of matter, who are not unAmerican, who are in fact not agnostic or neutral in the War On Terror. We have...when I hear somebody yelling treason in a case like this, I want to have them go over, as I did in May, and visit our Baghdad bureau, where we've got people who put their own lives at risk to keep people informed about what's going on. Not just Americans, we've got a vast network of reporters and support staff who are Iraqis. You know, for us, the War On...

And one of those reporters goes by the name Joao Silva and he takes snapshots as a sniper tries to kill Americans who are trying to defend Iraq.

Journalists should aspire to be held in as high esteem as used car dealers, because it's apparent now that they're currently at the same level as murderers.