Has Freedom of the Press Become Irrelevant?

[DrSmellThis]

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/an_eye_on_power.php[/u

rl]

"Freedom of the press" does not equal freedom of information. I am posting this excellent article to follow

up on my suggestion four days ago, in the Fahrenheit 9/11 thread, that getting one's information predominantly from

today's hegemonic, conservative, corporate press (the same one that increasingly runs on Saudi Oil money) is not to

be recommended.



[url="http://www.pherolibrary.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10679"]http://www.pherolibrary.com/forum/showthread.php?t=106

79 (http://www.tompaine.com/articles/an_eye_on_power.php)

Now, more than ever in America, citizens have to claw and scratch for good information regarding

politics, government, and world events. Folks, know that this phenomenon is real, and has damaged your democratic

freedoms. Some of the most important information that most of us think about is controlled increasingly by corporate

oligarchy and government officials.

The author, Bill Moyers, is one of the most respected journalists in the

world. He is one of the most prominent figures on PBS, and is also the former Press Secretary for the Johnson

administration.

From the article:

"Meanwhile, as secrecy grows, and media conglomerates put more and more

power in fewer and fewer hands, we have witnessed the rise of a new phenomenon—a quasi-official partisan press

ideologically linked to an authoritarian administration that is in turn the ally and agent of powerful financial and

economic interests that consider transparencies a threat to their hegemony over public opinion. This convergence

dominates the marketplace of political ideas in a phenomenon unique in our history."

[HK45Mark23]

HI DST,



You know how much I respect you. I have learned so much from you and appreciate being able to confer

with you on a daily basis if necessary. It is refreshing to know we find so many political things self evident and

true. It is also interesting to note that while we see the same evidence, we attach different problems as the cause

of the symptom. Humbly Yours,

HK45Mark23



P.S. I find that the more I learn the stupider I am.

[belgareth]

Legal Pressure Seen Affecting News Reports

By SETH SUTEL, AP

Business Writer



NEW

YORK - With several reporters facing possible jail sentences and fines, there are signs mounting legal pressure on

journalists to reveal confidential sources is having a chilling effect on newsgathering. Clark Hoyt, the Washington

editor of Knight Ridder, the nation's second-largest newspaper company, said he has seen two examples in recent

weeks of sources declining to provide information after initially agreeing to do so confidentially.



The sources feared they might be investigated, or that their

identities could be discovered from a subpoena of the reporter's phone records, Hoyt said.



"I think there is no question that there is greater anxiety among

sources about talking to journalists," he said.

The ability of

reporters to gather sensitive information confidentially received another challenge Thursday, when a federal judge

approved an unusual request by bioterror expert Steven Hatfill to question journalists who wrote stories relating to

the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Hatfill is suing Attorney General John

Ashcroft (news - web sites) and other government officials who named him as a "person of interest" in the attacks,

which killed five people. Hatfill says his reputation has been ruined, and he is seeking damages.



As part of the arrangement, the Justice Department (news - web

sites) will distribute waiver forms to members of its staff next month, allowing them to release journalists from

pledges of confidentiality. Hatfill's attorneys would then question reporters who wrote about the attacks using

information they may have received from confidential sources.

Similar waivers have been used by prosecutors in a separate investigation into the disclosure of the identity

of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative. Investigators suspect her name may have been revealed as retribution

by the government against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for writing a newspaper opinion column

criticizing President Bush 's claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger.

Some reporters gave testimony after government officials released them from pledges of confidentiality,

but Judith Miller of The New York Times and Time magazine's Matt Cooper were both found in contempt of court for

declining to disclose their sources. Appeals are pending, but the two face possible penalties including jail time.



Use of the waivers has frightened at least one source for a Hearst

reporter. Eve Burton, the general counsel for Hearst Corp., which owns 12 newspapers across the country, said a

reporter's source recently warned he would never release the journalist from a pledge of confidentiality.



"My response back as a lawyer is that you ought to be sure that this

is a story you're willing to go to jail for," Burton said.

There

are other recent examples of pressure on reporters to divulge sources. Five reporters, including one from The

Associated Press, were held in contempt last summer in a civil case brought against the government by former nuclear

physicist Wen Ho Lee (news - web sites). Fines were levied; payments were suspended pending appeals.



Also, reporter Jim Taricani of WJAR-TV in Rhode Island was found in

contempt for refusing to say how he obtained a videotape showing a Providence official taking a bribe. Taricani is

being assessed a fine of $1,000 per day.

The ruling comes as former

Providence Mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci Jr. serves five years in prison for masterminding a scheme that took bribes

in exchange for tax breaks, favors and city jobs.

Much of the recent

legal action against reporters has occurred in federal courts, where there is no clear law protecting journalists

from revealing confidential sources. Such "shield" laws exist in 31 states.

"The press simply cannot perform its intended role if its sources of information — particularly

information about the government — are cut off," Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. wrote Oct. 10 in a statement

with company CEO Russell T. Lewis, calling for a federal shield law.

[a.k.a.]

In June 2002, Dan Rather looked old,

defeated, making a confession he dare not speak on American TV about the deadly censorship – and self-censorship –

which had seized US newsrooms. After September 11, news on the US tube was bound and gagged. Any reporter who

stepped out of line, he said, would be professionally lynched as un-American.

"It's an obscene comparison,"

he said, "but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they

dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be necklaced here. You will have a flaming tire of lack of

patriotism put around your neck." No US reporter who values his neck or career will "bore in on the tough

questions."

Dan said all these things to a British audience. However, back in the USA, he smothered his

conscience and told his TV audience: "George Bush is the President. He makes the decisions. He wants me to line up,

just tell me where."

...

On the British broadcast, without his network minders snooping, you could see

Dan seething and deeply unhappy with himself for playing the game.

"What is going on," he said, "I'm

sorry to say, is a belief that the public doesn't need to know – limiting access, limiting information to cover the

backsides of those who are in charge of the war. It's extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted,

and I'm sorry to say that up to and including this moment of this interview, that overwhelmingly it has been

accepted by the American people. And the current Administration revels in that, they relish and take refuge in

that."

http://blackcommentator.org/106/106_rather.html