Oppression of Journalists in the US

[Ivo Skoric]

I think we are done writing about Serbia and Croatia for a while, 
with this disturbing news abound: Eight journalists on trial in the 
US for doing their job. And with the fantasy-based White House 
counsel Gonzales - the one that wrote that Geneva Conventions are now 
obsolete - now becoming the US Attorney General, the situation of 
freedom and justice does not seem to be on tre road to recovery in 
the U.S.
ivo

------- Forwarded message follows -------
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/opinion/10kris.html

November 10, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Our Not-So-Free Press
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Paging China! Help us! Urge the U.S. government to respect freedom of
the press!

It does sound topsy-turvy, doesn't it? Generally, it's China and
Zimbabwe that are throwing journalists in prison, while the U.S.
denounces the repression over there.

But now similar abuses are about to unfold within the United States,
part of an alarming new pattern of assault on American freedom of the
press. In the last few months, three different U.S. federal judges,
each appointed by President Ronald Reagan, have found a total of 
eight journalists in contempt of court for refusing to reveal 
confidential sources, and the first of them may go to prison before 
the year is out. Some of the rest may be in prison by spring.

The first reporter likely to go to jail is Jim Taricani, a television
reporter for the NBC station in Providence, R.I. Mr. Taricani 
obtained and broadcast, completely legally, a videotape of a city 
official as he accepted an envelope full of cash.

U.S. District Judge Ernest Torres found Mr. Taricani in contempt for
refusing to identify the person he got the videotape from, and the
judge fined him $1,000 a day. That hasn't broken Mr. Taricani, so
Judge Torres has set a hearing for Nov. 18 to decide whether to
squeeze him further by throwing him in jail.

Then there's Patrick Fitzgerald, the overzealous special prosecutor
who is the Inspector Javert of our age. Mr. Fitzgerald hasn't made 
any progress in punishing the White House officials believed to have
leaked the identity of the C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame to Robert
Novak. But Mr. Fitzgerald seems determined to imprison two reporters
who committed no crime, Judith Miller of The New York Times and
Matthew Cooper of Time, because they won't blab about confidential
sources.

Federal District Judge Thomas Hogan is threatening to send them to
prison; a hearing is set for Dec. 8. As for Mr. Novak, he is in no
apparent jeopardy, for reasons that remain unclear.

Then there's a third case, a civil suit between the nuclear scientist
Wen Ho Lee and the government. Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson held 
five reporters who are not even parties to the suit in contempt for
refusing to reveal confidential sources.

In yet another case, the Justice Department is backing a prosecutor's
effort to get a record of telephone calls made by two New York Times
reporters - uncovering all their confidential sources in the fall of
2001. Put all this together, and we're seeing a broad assault on
freedom of the press that would appall us if it were happening in
Kazakhstan.

Responsibility lies primarily with the judges rather than with the
Bush administration, except for the demand for phone records and for
the appointment of Inspector Javert as special prosecutor. But it's
probably not a coincidence that we're seeing an offensive against
press freedoms during an administration that has a Brezhnevian
fondness for secrecy.

We journalists are in this mess partly because we're widely seen as
arrogant and biased, and we need to wrestle seriously with those
issues. But when reporters face jail for doing their jobs, the
ultimate victim is the free flow of information, the circulatory
system of any democracy.

The Chinese government recently arrested Zhao Yan, a research
assistant for The New York Times in Beijing, and the Bush
administration has been very helpful about protesting the case. Maybe
Colin Powell can work out a deal: the Chinese government will stop
imprisoning journalists if the U.S. government will do the same.

Protecting confidential sources has been a sacred ethical precept in
publishing ever since John Twyn was arrested in 1663 for printing a
book that offended the king. Twyn refused to reveal the name of the
book's author, so he was publicly castrated and disemboweled, and his
limbs severed from his body. Each piece of his body was nailed to a
London gate or bridge.

So, on the bright side, we have evidently progressed.

In May, Iran's secret police detained me in Tehran and demanded that 
I identify a revolutionary guard I had quoted as saying "to hell with
the mullahs." My interrogators threatened to imprison me unless I
revealed my source. But after a standoff, the Iranian goons let me 
go.
Imprisoning Western journalists for protecting their sources was too
medieval, even for them. Let's hope the U.S. judicial system shows 
the same restraint as those Iranian thugs.

E-mail: nicholas at nytimes.com

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Ivo Skoric
19 Baxter Street
Rutland VT 05701
802.775.7257
ivo at balkansnet.org
balkansnet.org