Free Press

Happy Birthday: Freedom of Information Act Is 41 Today

Posted by on July 4, 2007 at 3:47 pm. NO Comments :

July 4, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Its purpose was to ensure the public’s right to access information from the federal government. For the first time, the government would bear the burden for certifying why requested information should not be released, and any refusal to release information could be challenged in court.

The FOIA was nearly stillborn as Johnson was bitterly opposed to the legislation. His press secretary, Bill Moyers, described LBJ as having to be:

“…dragged kicking and screaming to the signing ceremony. He hated the very idea of the Freedom of Information Act; hated the thought of journalists rummaging in government closets and opening government files; hated them challenging the official view of reality.”

In 41 years, the presidential impression of the FOIA has actually declined. the Bush administration has been cited as the most secretive in history. Moyers enumerates many examples in a speech he gave before the Society of Professional Journalists. BushCo intelligence agencies have also been busy re-classifying tens of thousands of documents that were previously available for years.

With regard to actual compliance, Bush and his Secret Society associates have assembled a disgraceful record of non-performance. The Knight Open Government Survey published by the National Security Archive of George Washington University, finds systematic failures in tracking, processing, and reporting on FOIA requests. In January 2007, the Archive itself filed FOIA requests with the 87 leading federal agencies to identify the ten oldest pending requests in each agency. Fifty seven of the agencies responded. Out of more than 500 pending requests, only twenty were still within the 20 day period agencies have to respond. All ten of the State Department’s oldest were more than 15 years old. The survey also found that agencies misrepresented their FOIA backlogs to Congress as well as discrepancies between this year’s audit and previous audits.

Any sense of surprise at this administration’s obsession with obfuscation and deceit should have worn off long ago. There are just too many examples to list. But on this holiday celebrating freedom, perhaps the best example occurred just a couple of days ago when Bush issued his payoff (commutation) to Scooter Libby. This is another transparent effort by the crime bosses in the White House to buy the silence of a compromised accomplice. Despite this brazen abuse of executive authority, the Congress still seems incapable of demanding accountability:

“Bipartisan Congressional efforts to solve some of the problems exposed in the Archive’s “ten oldest” audits have stalled in the Senate, with Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona personally holding S. 849 from an up-or-down vote. The bill would impose penalties for agency delay, mandate accurate and timely tracking and reporting of FOIA requests…”

Sometimes it only takes one corrupted soul to throw a roadblock in front of a whole nation, but the result is the same.

As we celebrate that other anniversary that everybody seems to be talking about today, we should take a moment to recognize this 41st birthday of legislation that was enacted in the best spirit of this country’s principles. James Madison seems prescient in his statement back in 1822:

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”

Happy 41st, Freedom of Information Act.
See my salute to FOIA’s 40th.

A New Pentagon Papers

Posted by on June 27, 2007 at 12:36 pm. NO Comments :

A few days ago, I wrote an article warning of the danger of allowing the government and/or media to avert our attention to important matters through the Art of Misdirection. In it I alluded to the compelling notion of some patriotic Americans exposing the crimes of the Bush Administration in the same way that Daniel Ellsberg did when he brought us the Pentagon Papers. Apparently Ellsberg agrees with me:

“The equivalent of the Pentagon Papers exist in safes all over Washington, not only in the Pentagon, but in the CIA, the State Department and elsewhere. My message is to them: Take the risk, reveal the truth under the lies of your own bosses and your superiors, obey your oath to the Constitution, which every one of those officials took, not to the commander in chief, but to the Constitution of the United States.”

This comment was made at a panel at the annual convention of Unitarian Universalists last weekend. The panel, “The Pentagon Papers Then and Now,” was moderated by Amy Goodman and included Ellsberg, Sen. Mike Gravel, and Rev. Robert West. There is a video of the session at the link above. Watch it. These are three of the principles involved in the Pentagon Papers affair and they relate some fascinating details about an honest-to-goodness spy caper.

After 35 years, most people should be aware of the basic story of how Ellsberg copied secret Defense Department documents and got the New York Times and others to publish them (if not, click here). Less well known is the story of how the Papers moved from the DoD to the public. It wasn’t easy.

Ellsberg was turned down dozens of times before the Papers were published. President Nixon obtained a restraining order halting the presses at the New York Times (the first time in U.S. history that presses were stopped by federal court order). Sen. Mike Gravel wore a colostomy bag as he attempted to read the Papers into the Congressional Record via filibuster. When a quorum could not be held, Gravel convened the Subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds, which he chaired, and read the papers into the record from there.

This is a tale of true American heroism. These people risked their freedom, perhaps their lives, to save the lives of so many more; to insure that Americans, and the world, were informed; to defend the ideals of Democracy. We need more like them.

Let me repeat: We need more like them. I do not say this as a plaintive yearning for a bygone era of dedicated public servants. I say it as an appeal to recruit soldiers of conscience to save more lives; to inform more people; to further defend what is today an ailing Democracy. Daniel Ellsberg heeded the call. Sen. Gravel heeded the call. For all the ridicule Gravel endures in his quixotic bid for the Democratic nomination, he deserves some credit for his courageous participation in these historic matters. I guarantee that you will not look upon him the same after you learn what did 35 years ago to advance peace and liberty.

And now it’s our turn. As Ellsberg said, “The equivalent of the Pentagon Papers exist in safes all over Washington…” Let’s find them. Let’s publish them. Let’s free them and ourselves – again.

FCC Chief Fucks Up

Posted by on June 5, 2007 at 6:47 pm. NO Comments :

The Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin Martin, had some choice words in response to a court ruling yesterday. The case before the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York concerned whether the FCC can regulate and penalize broadcasters for spontaneous profanities aired during live television programs. The court ruled that…

“The FCC’s decision is devoid of any evidence that suggests a fleeting expletive is harmful, let alone established that this harm is serious enough to warrant government regulation. The order provides no reasoned analysis of the purported ‘problem’ it is seeking to address from which this court can conclude such regulation of speech is reasonable.”

Chairman Martin was less than pleased (PDF) with the court’s conclusion…

“I completely disagree with the Court’s ruling and am disappointed for American families. I find it hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that “shit” and “fuck” are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience.”

Martin, however, doesn’t seem to have a problem with saying “shit” and “fuck” on the Internet, which children have also been known to use from time to time.

The Daily Show To The Media: Be More Honest

Posted by on May 23, 2007 at 10:13 am. NO Comments :

In October of 2004, I wrote an essay entitled, “The Real Fake News.” It was premised on my observation that Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, commonly labeled “fake” news, provided more accurate representations of news events more often (and more compellingly) than the so-called “real” news. And conversely, the “real” news was rampant with plagiarists, fabricators, and shills of both the ideological and paid-for variety.

Since that time, The Daily Show’s popularity and reputation has grown and it continues to embarrass its establishment media elders. Its success is still largely misunderstood by most analysts. The most egregious error is made by those who view the program as political satire. While politics is a part of the recipe, it is not the main ingredient. TDS is, first and foremost, media satire.

Rachel Smolkin, managing editor of the American Journalism Review, has written an article that explores, “What the Mainstream Media Can Learn from Jon Stewart.” To some degree she grasps the conceptual territory covered by TDS, correctly holding that…

“Much of the allure of Stewart’s show lies in its brutal satire of the media. He and his correspondents mimic the stylized performance of network anchors and correspondents. He exposes their gullibility. He derides their contrivances.”

Smolkin could take it a little further by noting that even when politicians are being skewered, it is within the framework of how they are covered by television newscasts. The very structure of the newscasts themselves is often targeted by Stewart’s drollery. A particularly fertile subject is the disintegrating concept of “balance” as currently practiced. Smolkin quotes USC’s Annenberg School for Communication associate dean, Martin Kaplan, who poignantly articulates the problem with modern journalism:

“Every issue can be portrayed as a controversy between two opposite sides, and the journalist is fearful of saying that one side has it right, and the other side does not. It leaves the reader or viewer in the position of having to weigh competing truth claims, often without enough information to decide that one side is manifestly right, and the other side is trying to muddy the water with propaganda.”

Hub Brown, chair of the communications department at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, puts it even more succinctly:

“The truth itself doesn’t respect point of view. The truth is never balanced.”

How true. The truth always takes its own side, and without the slightest hint of partisanship. But, for some reason, reporters are reluctant to acknowledge truthfulness for fear of being branded as partisan. How did the media get so twisted as to believe that accepting reality as it is has come to be regarded as an expression of partiality? This is the attitude that is mocked by Stewart’s offspring, Stephen Colbert, when he declares that, “truth has a well-known liberal bias.”

To the extent that TDS has transended this problem, it is a beacon for the very reporters it is ridiculing. But rather than expect them to decipher the correct interpretation of these signals, I’ll let Smolkin sum it up for them:

“…the lesson of “The Daily Show” is not that reporters should try to be funny, but that they should try to be honest.”

Adoption of that simple advisory would produce a wholesale transformation of American media. If I could implement just one revision of contemporary journalistic practice it would be to liberate reporters from the absurd notion that they are proscribed from differentiating truth from fiction when covering controversial issues. In fact, I consider such differentiation to be an obligation of ethical journalism. The surreal irony is that this approach is understood and practiced by fake reporters on a comedy program, but not by their ostensibly real counterparts. We can only hope that this lesson will eventually seep through.

To YouTube Or Not To YouTube

Posted by on May 15, 2007 at 3:27 pm. NO Comments :

As a follow up to my article yesterday on press freedom which reported the Pentagon’s order barring soldiers from using YouTube, MySpace, and other social networks, there were a couple of notable stories published today:

DoD Flip-Flop: YouTube Banned, But Watch It.
“One day after the Pentagon banned US military personnel worldwide from accessing the wildly popular YouTube Web site via DoD computers and networks, the weekly electronic newsletter of the US-led Multi-National Forces-Iraq (MNF-I) today makes a banner appeal for US forces and others to watch MNF-I’s new YouTube channel.”

Warner Blasts Pentagon Internet Move.
“There is nothing more important to the men and women of the armed forces than to have that connection to home,” said [Sen. John] Warner, who served in the U.S. Navy. “I will be looking into it today.”

Talk about your mixed messages.

The Fear Of Censorship

Posted by on May 15, 2007 at 4:56 am. 6 Comments :

John Roberts has been CNN’s senior national correspondent and its anchor of the awkwardly-named This Week at War (sounds like a VH1 Top 20 Countdown). He was recently named a new co-host of CNN’s American Morning. In his former position at CBS he served as the network’s White House correspondent and was embedded with Marines during the invasion of Iraq. Now, in an interview with Broadcasting & Cable, this experienced and connected professional speaks out about the handling of the coverage of the war in Iraq and, despite his participation, he has some rather unflattering critiques of what transpired.

In the article, Roberts concedes that the media was unprepared to properly cover events on the ground and should have been more vigilant in the run-up to the war. But by far the more notable observation that Roberts imparts is one that reflects on current coverage:

“If we showed people the full extent of what we see every day in Iraq, we would either have no one watching us because they couldn’t stand to see the pictures, or we would get so many letters of complaint that some organization would come down on us to stop.”

With current polls showing that two thirds of the American public are already opposed to the war in Iraq, the notion that we have not yet reached the nadir of our disapproval is somewhat unsettling. Especially if the reason is that, as Roberts contends, the “full extent” of what the press sees every day has been withheld from us by a media establishment that is afraid of mail and of losing viewers. And I get no consolation from Roberts’ informing me that things are much worse than I ever imagined.

Indeed, the pictures that are presently darkening our TV screens with bloodshed, blasts, and blackened smoke, are enough to sow depression in the most optimistic amongst us. But that is not sufficient reason for responsible journalists to soft-peddle even a harsh reality. In an open democratic society, citizens need to be fully informed because, contrary to the monarchal delusions of President Bush, we are the deciders. If exposure to the truth produces more dissatisfaction, it is not up to editors and programmers to shield us from our own tender sensitivities. That is not the way to cultivate an informed electorate. That is not the way to promote Democracy.

The public’s appetite for this war has steadily declined over the past four years and would likely have declined further and faster had the news been presented impartially and honestly. In fact, we might never have gone to war in the first place if the vigilance of which Roberts spoke had been practiced at the outset by a conscientious and ethical press corps.

There are two problems (at least) with Roberts’ statement above. One is that he gives too much weight to the notion that Americans don’t have the stomach to manage the nation as our Constitution requires. The other is that his fear that “some organization” would put a stop to honest, unfettered reporting, resulted in that fear becoming manifest. The fear of censorship produced censorship and the people were deprived of knowledge. The only organization that profited from this suppression is an administration that was predisposed to execute a war of aggression and preferred to avoid the pesky interference of the will of the people.

To paraphrase Roberts:

If we, the people, show the full extent of what we see and feel every day about Iraq, they would know that we are watching, and they would get so many letters of complaint that our organization of citizens would come down on them to stop suppressing the truth; stop embracing unscrupulous pseudo-leaders; and stop this god-awful war.

This practice of Nanny Journalism is all too common in American media. They think we can’t handle the truth. But it’s funny (by which I mean pathetic) that they keep coming back after the fact to confess their mea culpas.

Let The Sunshine In

Posted by on March 15, 2007 at 9:58 pm. NO Comments :

For those who may have missed it, this is Sunshine Week. What is Sunshine Week?

“A national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include print, broadcast and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools and others interested in the public’s right to know.”

In recognition of this special time, Henry Waxman’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is proudly announcing the passage of four bills that promote the goals of Sunshine Week:

  • H.R. 1255, The Presidential Records Act Amendments: approved by a vote of 333-93, makes clear that presidential records belong to the American people, not the president who created them. The Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007 will nullify a Bush executive order which gave former presidents – and their heirs – nearly unlimited authority to withhold or delay the release of their own records. If it becomes law, this legislation will ensure that a complete historical record is available to researchers.
  • H.R. 1254, The Presidential Library Donation Reform Act: approved by a vote of 390-34, will require organizations that raise money for presidential libraries to disclose information about their donors. This will eliminate a major loophole that allows presidential supporters to secretly give millions in support of a president’s legacy while that president remains in office.
  • H.R. 1309, The Freedom of Information Act Amendments: approved by a vote of 308-117, will strengthen the Freedom of Information Act and improve public access to government information. One key element of this legislation would restore the presumption of disclosure under FOIA that was eliminated by the Bush Administration in 2001.
  • H.R. 985, The Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act: approved by a vote of 331-94, offers improved protections to federal whistleblowers who report wrongdoing to authorities. Federal employees and contractors are privy to information that enables them to play an essential role in ensuring government accountability.

These bills are good start in undoing some of the damage that the Bush administration has done to the concept of an open and honest government. There is still more to be done and, of course, these bills have to pass in the senate and be signed by the President. On that score, Bush has already threatened to veto two of them: The Presidential Records Act and The Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. He has also expressed opposition to the Freedom of Information Act. All three of these bills passed in the House with a margin greater than the two thirds required to override a veto, so the threat may never come to pass. The process is far from over and it is still discouraging to see how many legislators were willing to vote against these common sense measures to make government more accountable. But in honor of Sunshine Week, I’m going to focus on the positive and celebrate a Congress that is starting to do work that represents the people’s interest for a change.

U. S. Military Justifies Censorship

Posted by on March 11, 2007 at 12:48 pm. NO Comments :

Last week it was reported that American soldiers in Afghanistan destroyed photos and videos taken by journalists in the aftermath of a suicide bombing. Witnesses reported that the Americans were firing indiscriminately at pedestrians and vehicles as they rushed from the scene. The photos and videos were said to have documented civilian casualties.

Now the military has responded to inquiries regarding their interference with the local media. Col. Victor Petrenko, chief of staff to the top U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan, said:

“Investigative integrity is one circumstance when civil and military authorities will reluctantly exercise the right to control what a journalist is permitted to document.” […and…] “When untrained people take photographs or video, there is a very real risk that the images or videography will capture visual details that are not as they originally were. If such visual media are subsequently used as part of the public record to document an event like this, then public conclusions about such a serious event can be falsely made.”

The Associated Press, responds on behalf of its reporters, who were amongst those whose work was confiscated:

“That is not a reasonable justification for erasing images from our cameras. AP’s journalists in Afghanistan are trained, accredited professionals working at an appropriate distance from the bombing scene. In democratic societies, legitimate journalists are allowed to work without having their equipment seized and their images deleted.”

The Army’s justification is not just unreasonable, it is entirely devoid of logic. If “investigative integrity” was at issue, the reporter’s visual records would be invaluable. By their actions the soldiers destroyed important and irreplaceable evidence. If the recordings proved to be tainted or unreliable, that could have been ascertained in the course of the investigation. Now, no one will ever know. It is the Army that has degraded investigative integrity and, in the process, trampled on the rights of journalists and citizens and all those who honor a free press. But that’s not how they see it:

“We are completely committed to a free and independent press, and we hope that we can help encourage this tradition in places where new and free governments are taking root. It so happens that on these two recent occasions, military operational or security requirements were compelling interests that overrode the otherwise protected rights of the press.”

So they are completely committed to a free and independent press unless they decide not to be. In which case, destroy all documentary records first so no questions can be asked later. If that’s their idea of encouragement, I’d sure hate to see what repression looks like.

Fighting For A Free Press?

Posted by on March 4, 2007 at 3:03 pm. NO Comments :

The escalating hostilities in Afghanistan were evident today when a suicide bomber launched an attack intended for a convoy of American Marines. Initial reports estimate that the blast killed 16 civilians and injured up to 34. Witnesses say that following the attack, the Americans fled, firing indiscriminately at vehicles and pedestrians along a six mile stretch of a busy road. Accounts of these events come primarily from victims of the shootings at a local hospital as well as other eye witnesses on the road. But accounts from local media may not be forthcoming:

“U.S. forces near Sunday’s bombing later deleted photos taken by a freelance photographer working for The Associated Press and video taken by a freelancer working for AP Television News. Neither the photographer nor the cameraman witnessed the suicide attack or the subsequent gunfire. It was not immediately known why the soldiers deleted the photos and videos. The U.S. military didn’t immediately comment on the matter.”

I’m not sure where these soldiers got the idea that they had the authority to interfere with local journalists. I’m not sure how they came to believe that it was acceptable to destroy their photos and video. But I am sure that this is not the way to promote freedom. The Afghan people will certainly hear of these events and it will undoubtedly exacerbate the anti-American sentiment in the region. But suppressing the media, and the truth, will only make things worse by inciting further resentment, distrust, and hostility. And it doesn’t make for a very good example of American values either.

War On The Press?

Posted by on February 13, 2007 at 10:38 pm. NO Comments :

Slate’s editor at large, Jack Shafer, disputes the notion that the Bush administration is at war with the media. His support for that position is that the New York Times’ James Risen and Eric Lichtblau aren’t imprisoned at Gitmo. He further imagines that…

“A president intent on making war on the press would surely have carpet-bombed Dana Priest and the Washington Post for her secret prisons journalism. By now, Seymour M. Hersh of The New Yorker would have been executed on general principle.”

The entire thrust of his opinion rests on whether or not you take the word “war” literally. Since no one I can think of would ever do that in this context, it seems silly to base his whole argument on it. What kind of idiocy would it require to assert that a war on the press meant sending in the Marines? Shafer knows what war on the press means and he gives a pretty good description of it later in the article:

“…it’s true that the Bush administration hates the press and shouts it out frequently, that it tells lies, that it makes the lives of reporters as miserable as it can, that it plays propaganda games at every step, overclassifies, manufactures “phony news,” and intimidates the press…”

If that’s not a war on the press, I don’t know what is. Shafer ought to admit that the tactics he ascribes to the Bush administration constitute actual hostility to a free press and pose a clear and present danger to honest and independent journalism.