U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., is showing some senatorial wisdom.
He is admonishing the media to “chill out” regarding its coverage of the Boston bombing. Good idea.
But the freshman Democrat needs also to admonish his congressional colleagues and other so-called “experts” from speculating aloud as to who did the deed. The FBI, along with state and local investigators are trying to piece together some vital information they hope will lead them to the bomber or bombers.
“Let the investigators do their work. Hopefully they have some leads here that are going to get them somewhere, but I don’t think we want the public information to get ahead of the private information,” Murphy said on MSNBC.
Indeed, one of the keys to any criminal investigation is to keep some information private so that the good guys don’t let the bad guys know what they know. Yes, that’s a mouthful. But there must be some privileged information that only law enforcement and the perpetrators can know and the more guarded that information remains the better chance the cops have of linking that information with whoever committed the crime.
Sen. Murphy is right to scold the media. He also ought to counsel his Capitol Hill colleagues to keep their own mouths shut.