They did
From the article ...
Steve Lovelady of Columbia Journalism Review e-mailed his verdict to New York University professor and blogger Jay Rosen: "The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail."
"We all, journalists and non-journalists, have information that we 'release' and information that we keep to ourselves. There are cases aplenty in which journalists, quite properly, recognize a higher interest at stake than informational freedom. If you had information about, say, upcoming troop movements in a time of war, would you print it? We hope not. Bob Novak recently took heat for publishing information that outed a CIA operative. The criticism was justified, in our view, even though there was no indication that his action put lives at risk. Others, offered that scoop, refused to publish it. Given that journalists make exceptions to the 'information freedom' imperative, why should protecting the legitimacy of the democratic process not qualify as one of those exceptions?"