FLORIDA NON-TERROR UPDATE: Donald Sensing and Reid Stott weigh in on false alarms. Here’s an excerpt from Stott’s post:

They didn’t do anything but what citizens have been asked to do repeatedly, especially in a week of heightened terror alert, on the anniversary of the death of thousands due to such terror. Law enforcement officials announced the tip to the media, not Eunice Stone. Only after the men had been stopped in Florida, and the story of her initial tip broken, did the media show up in droves outside Ms. Stone’s house. Did she hold a smiling press conference on her front lawn to boast of what she’d done? No, visibly uncomfortable with all the attention, she go into the family vehicle (followed by a family member politely chastising the media scrum in a true Southern manner: “Y’all mind if ah git in mah truck?”) She said as little as possible, and then left them there (admittedly, partially because Fox had scooped the hell out of everyone and somehow locked her up for a live interview).

And you know what? In the very first phone interview she did, one of the first things she said was ” ‘I hope I haven’t done something wrong,’ Stone had told Fox News. ‘I hope I haven’t caused someone problems that really didn’t do anything … At the same time, I thought, ‘What if they really are doing something and I stopped them?’ ” Does that sound like someone seeking to get others in trouble so that she might glory in the media?

And the media, even today, continues to get her story wrong, as Christiane Amanpour did this morning on CNN when she very snidely said the alert was due to the word of a “fast food waitress,” suggesting the whole episode showed America is out of control. Perhaps one should make certain of at least the known facts before one engages in speculative punditry before millions, like the fact the very very early reports that said the tipster was a waitress at Shoney’s were quickly debunked, long before we even heard the name of “Eunice Stone,” oh, and that little fact that our country had bumped up the alert status 48 hours beforehand. Of course, those facts would tend to tear down both sides of Christiane’s point, but no matter, she’s just a pro with a bully pulpit to millions. No need to get bogged down in accuracy, it dulls the rhetoric.

Well said.

UPDATE: Aziz Poonawalla is rather critical of Donald Sensing’s post. However, Rod Dreher seems to find the same anti-Southern prejudice in media coverage that Sensing complains about — though he concludes, after examining his own assumptions in the matter, that bias goes both ways.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Suman Palit writes that this is why TIPS was a bad idea: Garbage In, Garbage Out. Well, maybe. On the other hand, this was a credible report. The question is, are we better off examining these, or ignoring them? That’s not an easy question to answer, since it depends on the ratio of good to bogus reports, and the costs of acting and not acting. Certainly the tips from the Buffalo, New York muslim community that led to the arrests there seem to have been worthwhile. I do agree with Suman’s main point, though, which is that these defensive efforts are far less important than cutting off the head of the snake.