A couple of years back, San Diego Police released the mug shot and name of a 17-year-old murder suspect to the local media. The kid was on the loose and, in the standard law-enforcement wording, "armed and dangerous."

A journalistic judgement had to to be made. Does the newspaper run the mug shot?

The initial decision was "no." Following a rule that is the standard at many papers, the paper generally doesn't run pictures of juvenile suspects.

This initial call presented another problem. We were running a story that the police were looking for this kid and that he was a danger to the public -- and we weren't giving the public the information they needed to protect themselves. We would look absolutely foolish if we ran this story saying how dangerous this person was and to be on the lookout ... and then didn't run a photo.

The initial call was quickly reversed and the photo ran.

Monday night, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer faced a similar dilemma and made a different choice. Tuesday morning's paper featured this article, without the pictures of the two men made available by the FBI. [Michelle Malkin has posted the pictures here.]

The FBI is asking the public for help in identifying two men who were seen behaving unusually aboard several Washington state ferries.

About four weeks ago, the FBI fielded several reports from passengers and ferry workers about the men, who seemed "overly interested in the workings and layouts of the ferries," Special Agent Robbie Burroughs said Monday.

The FBI also publicized photos of the men, which were taken by a ferry employee, Burroughs said.

The Seattle P-I is not publishing the photos because neither man is considered a suspect nor has either been charged with a crime.

The FBI has no information suggesting that a terrorist attack on the ferry system is imminent, Burroughs said.

For weeks, the FBI has been trying to identify the men through "normal law enforcement channels," she said.

The article, laughably, even included the FBI's phone number if you had any information on the two men that the P-I wouldn't run pictures of.

I can understand the reticence of the P-I to publish the pictures. Yes, these two guys may be completely innocent of any nefarious motives. But P-I managing editor David McCumber's explanation seemed quite weak.

But running a photograph of two men who may as easily be tourists from Texas as terrorists from the Mideast with a story that makes them out to be persons of interest in a terrorism investigation seems problematic, to say the least.

The P-I ran a story about the FBI's alert, but did not run the photographs, because we didn't have enough information to warrant it. I hope that today we are able to get more information on this story, if it exists, from the FBI that would give us a clearer idea of the background behind their request.

Based on what we have, it seemed newsworthy that the FBI was trying to find these guys but it did not seem appropriate to run their photographs.

According to McCumber, the Seattle Times ran neither a story nor a photo -- I think that paper has a better journalistic leg to stand on than the P-I does, because the story without the photos is less than useless.

Despite all of McCumber's protestations, there's one simple fact that really should tip the scales on the issue of the photographs: How many times has the FBI resorted to this tactic to help identify someone?

The answer is very seldom. If this happens more than once every two or three years -- nationwide -- I'd be shocked. The fact that the FBI feels it has to resort to this should tell you that it's something more than idle curiosity on the part of some bored agent.

This may get the P-I an award from the local chapter of the ACLU. But it may also put a lot of journalists out of work if a ferry goes down and the plot can be tied to either of these two men that the P-I refuses to publicize.