Some people lob softball questions. Jon Friedman lobs softball arguments. Like this one, where he claims the British press’ blackout of all “Prince Harry is in Afghanistan” news damaged the public’s eroding trust of media.

The argument goes that it was in Britain’s national interest to keep Prince Harry’s whereabouts hidden. What bollocks! Sorry, but this doesn’t seem like a case of national security. I don’t believe the enemy would have tried harder to kill Harry and the soldiers near him if they knew where he was positioned.

And, in a twist of logic straight out of “Catch-22,” are they tacitly saying that Harry’s life is more important than that of any other courageous soldier in combat around the world?

Wrong. And yes. (Does Friedman not realize the much more severe the political impact – and potential rallying point of insurgents – a royal’s death would have?)

Had the situation been an American one – if Jenna Bush were fighting overseas, for example – Friedman wonders how domestic media would’ve handled things.

I wonder how the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, CNN, and MSNBC would have handled this kind of challenge.

True, the American media have been known to protect the privacy of famous offspring, too. Amy Carter, Chelsea Clinton, and the Bush twins were largely kept out of the media because they rarely did anything newsworthy.

Well, ABC has a history of ignoring press embargoes, like it did by reporting the results of a cancer study a day before it was requested; CBS has a history of condemning ABC for doing so (”completely inappropriate” a CBS spokesperson said at the time). And, at least when it comes to trivial matters like book publishing embargoes, the New York Times could give a crap. (For what it’s worth, Matt Drudge, who is falsely credited with breaking the Prince Harry news, ridicules embargoes.)

But of matters of import? As the Times itself reports, when President Bush visited Iraq on Thanksgiving Day in 2003, reporters were asked not to publish reports until after he returned to the U.S. The NYT, and nearly all media outlets we could find, went along with it.

So that about answers your question, Friedman.