Posts
Obama
blasted for cracking down on free press
RT,
10
October, 2013
A
letter to the White House, a laundry list of recommendations for the
president and a 29-page report about the administration’s assault
on free press are all compiled in the latest offering from the Center
to Protect Journalists.
The
CPJ, a non-profit founded over 30 years ago to promote “press
freedom worldwide and defends the right of journalists to report the
news without fear of reprisal,”
published a special report on Thursday penned by longtime Washington
Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. in which he dismantles
United States President Barack Obama’s treatment of journalists
with assistance from the country’s foremost national security
reporters.
Despite
campaigning heavily on the promise of increased government
transparency and the most open administration yet, Pres. Obama’s
four-and-a-half-years in the White House so far have included a
number of instances cited by Downie in which reporters were
investigated, whistleblowers reprimanded and administrative actions
allowed for the chilling of journalism, both domestically and on a
global level.
Pres.
Obama “came into office
pledging open government, but he has fallen short of his promise,”
Downie prefaces his report.
“Journalists
and transparency advocates say the White House curbs routine
disclosure of information and deploys its own media to evade scrutiny
by the press,”
he continues, adding, “Aggressive
prosecution of leakers of classified information and broad electronic
surveillance programs deter government sources from speaking to
journalists.”
The
report and its accompanying articles and letter to the White House
mark a rare occasion in which the CPJ single-out the US for
infringing on press freedoms, turning away from the international
examples that are usually investigated by the organization, such as
journalists exiled, imprisoned or killed for doing their work, and
restrictions on the open-media in more repressive countries overseas.
Glenn
Greenwald, the Guardian writer who has worked closely with a trove of
top-secret documents supplied to his newspaper, wrote on Twitter that
he considered the report to be a “scathing indictment” of the
White House’s press attacks.
It's hard to imagine how this scathing indictment from @pressfreedom of Obama admin's press attacks isn't big news:
183 РЕТВИТА 73 ИЗБРАННЫХ
Drawing
on the recent examples of WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning and
National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden — as well as other
US citizens charged with espionage for exposing arguably egregious
government initiatives with the press — Downie and his colleagues
question the White House’s efforts to handle the unauthorized
disclosures of classified information and the chilling effect those
attempts have had on journalists around the globe.
“Six
government employees, plus two contractors including Edward Snowden,
have been subjects of felony criminal prosecutions since 2009 under
the 1917 Espionage Act,” recalls Downie, who acknowledges that the
tally of Americans indicted under that law exceeds double the total
from all previous administrations combined.
Manning
is currently serving a 35-year prison sentence for leaking sensitive
diplomatic and military documents to WikiLeaks while serving in the
US Army, and before that was held in solitary confinement in a
military brig for almost a year. And Snowden — the former
intelligence contractor that exposed the NSA’s vast surveillance
apparatus — has resorted to accepting asylum in Russia while he
battles an indictment that could carry an even harsher sentence than
the soldier.
And
while the government has relied on established legislation to
legitimize those cases, Downie and company caution that the
administration’s tactics have transformed the journalism industry
as a whole thanks to frequent fear among reporters that every aspect
of their lives is under surveillance.
“Numerous
Washington-based journalists told me that officials are reluctant to
discuss even unclassified information with them because they fear
that leak investigations and government surveillance make it more
difficult for reporters to protect them as sources,” wrote Downie.
Scott
Shane, the New York Times national security reporter who contacted
former Central Intelligence Agency officer John Kiriakou before he
was indicted for espionage, told Downie that the White House’s
tactics with regards to silencing leaks is “a real problem.”
“Most
people are deterred by those leaks prosecutions. They’re scared to
death. There’s a gray zone between classified and unclassified
information, and most sources were in that gray zone. Sources are now
afraid to enter that gray zone,” Shane told him. “It’s having a
deterrent effect. If we consider aggressive press coverage of
government activities being at the core of American democracy, this
tips the balance heavily in favor of the government.”
Only
hours before the CPJ published their findings, Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist Barton Gellman told an audience at a panel in Washington
that “Once you are an actual target, there are no technological
steps you can take to fully protect yourself” from surveillance,
according to American Civil Liberties Union technologist Chris
Soghoian.
At CATO event today, @bartongellman: Once you are an actual target, there are NO technological steps you can take to fully protect yourself.
54 РЕТВИТА 18 ИЗБРАННЫХ
Gellman,
who has worked with the Guardian on the NSA secrets released by
Snowden since June, is referenced several times in the CPJ’s piece,
but is far from the only reporter close to the Snowden case who has
criticized Obama’s response to those disclosures and the ones
attributed to the WikiLeaks source formerly known as Bradley Manning.
“We
know from at least three national security reporters that their
sources are hesitant to speak to them, and [they] explicitly cite the
treatment of Bradley Manning as a reason as to why they are hesitant
to disclose abuses by the United States government in the national
security sector,” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told RT earlier
this year.
In
the CPJ report, White House press secretary Jay Carney refutes those
allegations by saying, "The idea that people are shutting up and
not leaking to reporters is belied by the facts.”
But
Jean-Paul Marthoz, a senior advisor for the CPJ, added in his own
report this week that “any restrictions on US journalists' freedom
to report inevitably reverberates around the globe,” and accused
the Obama administration of silencing the international media by
curbing the activities of even domestic reporters who should be
protected by the Constitution’s guarantee of press freedom.
“CPJ
is disturbed by the pattern of actions by the Obama administration
that have chilled the flow of information on issues of great public
interest, including matters of national security,” reads a separate
statement published by the organization this week. “The
administration's war on leaks to the press through the use of secret
subpoenas against news organizations, its assertion through
prosecution that leaking classified documents to the press is
espionage or aiding the enemy, and its increased limitations on
access to information that is in the public interest -- all thwart a
free and open discussion necessary to a democracy.”
The
CPJ has written the White House urging the president to “affirm and
guarantee that journalists will not be at legal risk or prosecuted
for receiving confidential and/or classified information,” as well
as to be more forthcoming about government surveillance programs,
revise Department of Justice guidelines with regards to targeting
journalists, retire the practice of using the Espionage Act to arrest
reporters and sources and “Make good on promises to increase
transparency of government activities and end government intimidation
of officials who might speak to the press,” among other requests.
“We
understand that your administration and its Justice Department have
heard the strong criticism of its use of secret subpoenas and
responded with revised guidelines still to be implemented,” the
CFJ’s top officers wrote the president. “And we appreciate your
clear statements on the need for Americans to know and be able to
publicly debate their government’s practices regarding national
security. But the actions of your administration do not lean toward
openness.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.