Palm Beach Post fingers sheriff deputy for planned gang hit...

...and is proud of the fact that they printed his name to make it easier for the biker gang to hunt him down.

An irate reader wrote this to Pravda in Paradise's ombudsman:

“I was very disturbed by the lack of concern for the deputy’s safety,” a reader e-mailed regarding “Sheriff says deputy who shot biker in danger,” which ran Monday in the Martin and St. Lucie counties’ edition.

“Your writer quoted (St. Lucie County Sheriff) Ken Mascara as saying he was concerned about 'potential response’ from the biker club. Why is it that the PB Post thought it newsworthy to sabotage the effort to protect the deputy and put him in danger? I certainly didn’t need to know his name,” the reader said, adding, “This article reeked and reflected poorly on the PB Post.”

So the Post responds with:

“It’s our job to report the news, of course,” he said. “But it always gets sticky when a question of safety is raised. Then we have to try to balance the public’s right to know with concerns over personal safety and with a law-enforcement agency’s explanations of why they would like us not to publish something.
“In this case, there was a very public shooting in a very public place with a lot of people present,” said Mr. Rose. “We asked the sheriff’s office for the name of the deputy who fired to protect people at the event, but were denied. Then we asked the state attorney’s office, and they released the name to us.”

Laying the "blame" at the feet of the state attorney's office. Ohhh, the state AG spilled it, so that makes it OK?

This is the same thing as a child who's mother says "no" shopping for a "yes" with their father.