{"id":20,"date":"2004-09-21T22:11:32","date_gmt":"2004-09-22T05:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=20"},"modified":"2005-07-17T12:22:20","modified_gmt":"2005-07-17T19:22:20","slug":"a-zeal-for-secrecy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=20","title":{"rendered":"A Zeal For Secrecy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Moyers, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views04\/0917-02.htm\">in a speech<\/a> before the Society of Professional Journalists, offerred his much-heralded insight into the obsession for secrecy of modern government. Some highlights:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>President Bush&#8217;s chief of staff ordered a review that lead to 6,000 documents being pulled from government Web sites.\n<\/li>\n<li>The Department of Defense banned photos of military caskets being returned to the United States.<\/li>\n<li>Vice President Dick Cheney kept his energy task force records secret &#8220;to hide the influence of Kenneth Lay, Enron and other energy moguls.&#8221;\n<\/li>\n<li>The CIA asks a new question during its standard employer polygraph exam: &#8220;Do you have friends in the media?&#8221;\n<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;There have been more than 1,200 presumably terrorist-related arrests,&#8221; Moyers said, &#8220;and 750 people deported, and no one outside the government knows their names or how many court docket entries have been erased or never entered.&#8221;\n<\/li>\n<li>Secret federal court hearings have been held without any public record of when or where, or who was tried.\n<\/li>\n<li>When the American Civil Liberties Union challenged provisions of the Patriot Act, it was prohibited from telling anyone about it.\n<\/li>\n<li>The Washington Post reported that in recent years, judicial committees acting in secret stripped information nearly 600 times from reports intended to alert the public to conflicts of interest involving federal judges.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;By pillaging and plundering our peace of mind, they hoped to panic us into abandoning those unique freedoms &#8211; freedom of speech, freedom of the press &#8211; that constitute the ability of democracy to self-correct and turn the ship of state before it hits the iceberg.&#8221; The greatest moments in the history of the press, Moyers said, &#8220;came not when journalists made common cause with the state, but when they stood fearlessly independent of it.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And what is surely to become a classic quote held in reverence by principled journalists everywhere:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Moyers said, &#8220;&#8230;what&#8217;s important for the journalist is not how close you are to power but how close you are to reality.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Moyers, in a speech before the Society of Professional Journalists, offerred his much-heralded insight into the obsession for secrecy of modern government. Some highlights: President Bush&#8217;s chief of staff ordered a review that lead to 6,000 documents being pulled from government Web sites. The Department of Defense banned photos of military caskets being returned [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-k","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":187,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=187","url_meta":{"origin":20,"position":0},"title":"Happy Birthday: Freedom of Information Act Is 40 Today","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/4\/2006","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Free Press&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Free Press","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=14"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1176,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1176","url_meta":{"origin":20,"position":1},"title":"Bush Era Of Secrecy May Be Coming To An End","author":"Mark NC","date":"1\/14\/2009","format":false,"excerpt":"George W. Bush has presided over the most secrecy-obsessed administration in the history of the country. More documents have been classified than at any other time. White House officials have defied court orders to disclose data, calendars, and emails. They even claimed that the vice-president was not subject to Congressional\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Censorship&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Censorship","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=56"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":421,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=421","url_meta":{"origin":20,"position":2},"title":"The Assault On Bill Moyers Has Begun.","author":"Mark NC","date":"4\/26\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The PBS debut of Bill Moyers Journal's \"Buying the War\", has provoked the media's preeminent bully into a veritable frenzy. We can almost certainly expect Bill O'Reilly to air a post-broadcast rant on the dangers of the secular-progressive, far-left, presentation of committed left-wing loony, Moyers, because nothing is more terrifying\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":105,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=105","url_meta":{"origin":20,"position":3},"title":"The Memory Hole Gets Deeper","author":"Mark NC","date":"2\/21\/2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The legacy of the Bush administration may turn out to be that its greatest contribution to American productivity is its unparalleled production of secrets. It has long been readily observed that BushCo wants nothing more than to keep its own affairs private while, ironically, digging more into the affairs of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Free Press&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Free Press","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=14"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6978,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=6978","url_meta":{"origin":20,"position":4},"title":"Bill Moyers On Allen West And The Ghost Of Joe McCarthy","author":"Mark NC","date":"4\/30\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"This video should be required viewing for the historical amnesiacs and revisionists who wistfully wander down paths of ignorance that lead to personal ruin and animus and hostility, but could be avoided with just a little perspective and reason. As usual, Bill Moyers supplies copious amounts of both. \"Little of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Election&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":318,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=318","url_meta":{"origin":20,"position":5},"title":"NCMR2007 &#8211; First Report","author":"Mark NC","date":"1\/12\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The National Conference For Media Reform opened this morning with speeches by FreePress' John Nichols, and Yolanda Hippensteele, as well as the Mayor of Memphis, Dr. Willie Herenton. But the runaway rock star of the day (and of conferences past) was Bill Moyers. Moyers delivered an inspiring and infuriating discourse\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}