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I recall many years ago a forum that was aired on television. One of the journalist asked, "If you were with the Vietcong during one of their missions and they were ready to ambush American soldiers, would you warn them?"

The consensus was it would be against the rules of journalism to do so.

Against the rules of jouranlism....isn’t that incredible?

But, we’re not supposed to question their patriotism?

This is truly beyond sick for ABC.

That was Ethics in America (I and II) (Annenberg CPB).

As I recall there was a Marine Major on the show who really chafed upon listening to Mike Wallace’s mealy-mouthed BS about the “duty of a journalist”.

The media turds came off looking like the clymers that they are.

good memory..check out Col. Connell's reply:

On an edition of the PBS panel series Ethics in America, devoted to war coverage, which was taped at Harvard in late 1987, Wallace proclaimed that if he were traveling with enemy soldiers he would not warn U.S. soldiers of an impending ambush.

"Don't you have a higher duty as an American citizen to do all you can to save the lives of soldiers rather than this journalistic ethic of reporting fact?", moderator Charles Ogletree Jr. suggested.

Without hesitating, Wallace responded: "No, you don't have higher duty...you're a reporter."
When Brent Scrowcroft, the then-future National Security Adviser, argued that "you're Americans first, and you're journalists second,"

Wallace was mystified by the concept, wondering "what in the world is wrong with photographing this attack by [the imaginary] North Kosanese on American soldiers?"

George Connell, a Marine Corps Colonel, reacted with disdain: "I feel utter contempt. Two days later they're both walking off my hilltop, they're two hundred yards away and they get ambushed. And they're lying there wounded. And they're going to expect I'm going to send Marines up there to get them. They're just journalists, they're not Americans." The discussion concluded as Connell fretted: "But I'll do it. And that's what makes me so contemptuous of them. And Marines will die, going to get a couple of journalists."