If government surveillance expands after Paris, the media will be partly to blame

[Commentary] Hours after the attacks in Paris, Forbes quickly pointed to remarks by a Belgian official who said that Islamic State militants use the PlayStation 4's chat functions as a way to communicate securely. The article also mentioned that a Sony PlayStation 4 was recovered in a police raid connected to the Paris investigation. That report was later undermined by the real facts -- that no PlayStation 4 had been collected and that the Belgian official had been talking about the use of PlayStation technology generally by terrorism suspects. But it was too late. Reports spread across the news industry tying the PlayStation to the attacks (there is a second wave of stories sweeping the Internet trying to undo the damage). On Nov 17, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler suggested that one of the "specific things" Congress could do in response to the Paris attacks would be to revisit the nation's wiretapping laws. Chairman Wheeler even cited the now-debunked reports on the Playstation 4's involvement in the incident, another sign of how the media has played a role in shaping the current policy atmosphere in Washington.

In the wake of any attack, there is always the pressure to do something, anything. Doing nothing until the facts are clear is the politically difficult choice, even if it may be the correct one. The pressure to expand government surveillance predated the Paris attacks. But to the extent that the government now has renewed momentum for those efforts, it's hard to deny that the mainstream media shares some of the responsibility.