Associated Press president Tom Curley says his news organization
does not buy the government's argument that one of its photographers
arrested in Iraq was working on behalf of the enemy, and
he alleged the US is rounding up journalists in an attempt
to control information.
"To say the least, we see things very differently,"
Curley commented dryly, regarding photographer Bilal Hussein,
who was arrested two years ago and remains in military custody.
Noting that at least a dozen other Iraqi photographers
have been detained or arrested, Curley stated, "It's
impossible not to conclude that the words and pictures these
journalists produced were considered unhelpful to the war
effort and that their arrests would have served a broader
strategy of information control."
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Curley also called on journalists to demand that all the
presidential candidates make a commitment to reversing a
directive issued by Attorney General John Ashcroft shortly
after September 11 that radically restricted the scope of
the Freedom of Information Act.
Ashcroft's memo stated, "When you carefully consider
FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or
in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice
will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal
basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on
the ability of other agencies to protect other important
records."
Curley told the National Press Club, "When a matter
of public policy poses a straight-up choice between the
public's rights of access to government and a government
effort to infringe or even narrow those rights, journalists
cannot pretend to be disinterested observers."
"This is the moment to make it clear to all the presidential
candidates how important reversal of the Ashcroft directive
is to us and to the people," Curley continued. "We
need to ask the candidates at every opportunity ... whether
they are willing to appoint an attorney general willing
to follow the spirit as well as the letter of the law that
protects the people's right to know what their government
is doing."
This video is from The Associated Press<, broadcast
March 18, 2008.
