Moyers and Me: Before Baghdad Fell

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The Bill Moyers documentary on our failed and barren press
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When Bill Moyers returned to PBS on Wednesday, I tried to recall this week what I'd said when I appeared on his show in early April 2003 -- as U.S. troops were about to topple Saddam. Did I make a fool myself? A transcript soon told all. By Greg Mitchell (April 25, 2007) -- Bill Moyers Journal returned to PBS on Wednesday night with a powerful indictment of the media for its failures in the run-up to the Iraq war. Last week, in previewing "Buying the War," I tried to recall exactly when I was a guest on Moyers' previous PBS series, NOW. It was right around the time our invasion of Iraq in late-March 2003, but was it just before or after the war started? And what did we mainly talk about? I guessed it had to do with the mixed editorial views of newspapers. Did I say anything I'd now regret, such as predicting that we'd surely be hailed as liberators by the Iraqis? How time flies when you're tearing another country, and your own, apart. Curiosity finally got the best of me, and I managed to find a transcript of the chat on the Web. Turns out it took place on April 4, 2003, just a few days before the American forces took Baghdad. By then, it was clear the U.S. was headed for a quick (apparent) victory. Indeed, the interview concluded with Moyers asking, "Do you have a sense that when the battle is over, this story's only begun?" Apparently I replied: "I don't think most Americans understand that this is going to be something that's with us for years and decades, and I'm not sure we get a sense of that from the coverage which seems to be oriented towards next week or next month, when the battle will be over. The boys will start to come home, and it will be a glorious episode in our past rather than something that's just the beginning of this story. "We're really at the beginning of the story of the US and Iraq and the 21st century." Whew. Here are a few other comments on still-relevant war and press issues from back then. * MOYERS: Do you think the public knows that the reporters who are embedded had to sign a contract with the Pentagon in order to be accepted for this role? That they had to agree to play by the rules? MITCHELL: Well, it's a good question whether they know but also whether they care. I think, as we found in polls over the years, that the American people... believe that there should be all sorts of restrictions. And, of course, everyone agrees that in war time there should be more restrictions. But the question is, to what degree? And we've seen in our interviews with editors in the past couple weeks, many cases of editors getting a lot of mail from readers who are upset about their coverage. And it shows that the people have a really different view about what the rights and the responsibilities of the press are. MOYERS: I saw your story about USA TODAY the other day... the editor of USA TODAY got in trouble for this photograph, didn't he? MITCHELL: Well, they ran a photograph of some dead Iraqi soldiers on the front page. And a large number of readers, they told us, complained because on the same day they ran a photo inside of a U.S. soldier surrounded by happy Iraqi children. And so these people were saying, "Why wasn't that photo on the front page instead of the dead Iraqi soldiers?" And the executive editor of USA TODAY told us that, yeah, the reason was simple. It was a day of great bloodshed. One of those days of great pessimism. And he thought it would have been inappropriate and misleading to show this happy photo on the front page. So he went with the more grim photo. Another example I'll give you, the DALLAS MORNING NEWS editor told us that they've gotten a lot of complaints for showing dead civilians or damaged civilians of Iraqis on the on the front page. And he says that it's viewed by the readers as an anti-war statement... showing the casualties on the other side is an anti-war statement. And that really goes against all the principles of press coverage that we believe in which is, you know, showing what is happening. And letting the people deal with it as they can. MOYERS: Do you think that journalists can be objective about what they're reporting when they are alongside the troops who are protecting them as they move forward? MITCHELL: Well, I think that's one of the problems. These reporters have been living with these troops. Reporting with them, getting to know them. And, of course, that's all terrific. You know, no one could really be against that. But in practice it could modify or adjust what they report about the actions....One of the problems in this whole campaign has been that originally we were told that the embedded reporters would only make up maybe half of the reporters who would be covering the conflict. The rest would be independent. But what's happened is because of the dangers over there-- almost all the reporters are the embedded reporters. So there's very few free-roaming reporters who can report without any restrictions whatsoever. But the problem is that the commentators on TV have almost from the beginning adopted a "we" attitude. They now are reporting, "We are advancing. We are taking fire. We are taking prisoners." So all objectivity has been dropped. And, as human beings, I think we could agree it's understandable in this situation. But, as journalists, it's not the best situation where commentators, anchormen-- reporters in the field -- are talking about this as a "we" rather than a U.S. mission or the U.S. soldiers. MOYERS: Fox News has become the cheerleader for the government. What does it do to other news organizations when Fox proves that jingoism is more popular than journalism? MITCHELL: I think the problem with that is that a lot of the other-- particularly the cable news networks have-- felt that they have to keep up with that. I think there's a certain competition to show that they're not soft on the war, that they don't have any less patriotism than Fox. And we've seen it just this morning. I saw an interview on CNN with an Australian woman who had been in Baghdad and had just left. And the woman kept saying that, you know, she was amazed how much the Iraqi people, although they may not like Saddam Hussein, were very angry about the bombings. Many of their children had been injured or killed....And the person who was the interviewer back in the U.S. asked her one aggressive question after another. After he finished talking to her, he then sort of editorialized on the air, saying-- "Well, we've talked to countless people who say that the Iraqi civilians will welcome with open arms the American soldiers." Now that may or may not be true. But the point is that even after one of the rare kind of dissenting or contrary opinions was expressed, the anchor felt he had to then jump in and editorialize, saying, "You can disregard what this woman said. You know, we have other information." The press should report straight down the line. You know, let the people see all sides. Let the people get all the information as quickly as they can. And let the chips fall where they may.... MOYERS: What concerns you about what's not being covered? MITCHELL: My complaint is with the cable news networks that are on 24/7 and yet have found virtually no time to interview psychologists and theologians and other observers who could talk about what this is doing to us what this is doing to us as a country. MOYERS: Do you see as much cheerleading in the print press as you do on television? MITCHELL: No, I think the print press has played it more straight down the line. They've had a more variety of stories. They have had reports from Baghdad itself. More reports on what people are saying around the world. More reports on protests pro and con about the war. More range of editorial opinions. So I think the print press and newspapers have done a much better job, a more reflective job. MOYERS: What do you think is stake for democracy and how we journalists cover this war? MITCHELL: Edward R. Murrow had a quote on his wall in his office from Thoreau in which he said something like, "To speak the truth, you need two people. One to speak it and one to hear it." And I think that sums up the relationship not only between the military and the press but the press and the American people. You know, the press often is reporting factual matters. And the public sometimes turns away from it. We entered this war, with upwards of half the people in the country believing that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack. Now, how did that happen? Was that the media's fault? Was it the government's fault for putting out the stories? Or is the public sometimes not receptive, and the public wants to believe what the public wants to believe? MOYERS: Last question. Do you have a sense that when the battle is over, this story's only begun? MITCHELL: "I don't think most Americans understand that this is going to be something that's with us for years and decades, and I'm not sure we get a sense of that from the coverage which seems to be oriented towards next week or next month, when the battle will be over. The boys will start to come home, and it will be a glorious episode in our past rather than something that's just the beginning of this story. "We're really at the beginning of the story of the US and Iraq and the 21st century." Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor.

The Bill Moyers documentary on our failed and barren press

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When Journalism Became Transcription and Reporting Disappeared
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Thursday April 26, 2007 09:26 EST

Glenn Greenwald

(updated below - updated again)

If you didn't watch Bill Moyers' documentary last night regarding the joint, coordinated behavior of our government and its media in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, I can't recommend it highly enough. You can watch it here.

For those who have been following these issues, there was no single, specific blockbuster revelation that was not previously known, although Moyers' focus on the superb (and largely ignored) pre-war work of Real Journalists at Knight-Ridder (now at McClatchy) does cast a new light on the profound malfeasance of our most influential media outlets. Most of all, the documentary very powerfully compiles some of the most incriminating facts, and it unapologetically identifies many of the guiltiest and most destructive wrongdoers in our government and in the press.

For that reason, the documentary is -- in one sense -- a very valuable historical account of the corrupt behavior by our dominant political and media institutions which deceived the country into the invasion of Iraq. But on another, more significant level, it illustrates the corruption that continues to propel our political and media culture.

One of the most important points came at the end. The institutional decay which Moyers chronicles is not merely a matter of historical interest. Instead, it continues to shape our mainstream political dialogue every bit as much as it did back in 2002 and 2003. The people who committed the journalistic crimes Moyers so potently documents do not think they are guilty of anything -- ask them and they will tell you -- and as a result, they have not changed their behavior in the slightest.

Just consider that, as Moyers notes, there has been no examination by any television news network of the role played by the American media in enabling the Bush administration and its warmonger propagandists to disseminate pure falsehoods to the American public. People like Eric Boehlert have written books about it, and Moyers has now produced a comprehensive PBS program documenting it. But the national media outlets themselves have virtually ignored this entire story -- arguably the most significant political story of the last decade -- because they do not think there is any story here at all.

The fraud that was manufactured by our government officials and endorsed by our media establishment is one of the great political crimes of the last many decades. Yet those who are responsible for it have not been held accountable in the slightest. Quite the contrary, their media prominence -- as Moyers demonstrates -- has only increased, as culpable propagandists and warmongers such as Charles Krauthammer (now of Time and The Washington Post), Bill Kristol (now of Time), Jonah Goldberg (now of The Los Angeles Times, Peter Beinert (now of Time and The Washington Post), and Tom Friedman (revered by media stars everywhere) have all seen their profiles enhanced greatly in our national media.

And while Judy Miller became the scapegoat for the media's failures, most of the media stars responsible for the worst journalistic abuses -- from Michael Gordon to Tim Russert to Fred Hiatt to most of The Washington Post, to say nothing of the Fox stars and cogs of the right-wing noise machine -- continue merrily along as before, with virtually no recognition of fault and no reduction in their platforms.

Moyers did a superb job of questioning both Tim Russert and Peter Beinart, and both were -- appropriately and enjoyably -- extremely defensive about their behavior. Beinart, along with his good friend and mirror image Jonah Goldberg, participated in one of the most vile -- though not all that unusual -- smear campaigns against a war opponent, Scott Ritter. The smear campaign was necessary precisely because Ritter was one of the very few individuals in this country who (completely unlike Goldberg, Beinart and all of the other faux warrior-experts parading across television screens loyally reciting the Bush line) actually knew what he was talking about when it came to the Iraqi weapons program and its "relationship" to Al Qaeda, and continuously warned (to little effect) about all of the warmongers' false claims about those topics.

But credit is at least due to both Russert and Beinart for appearing on Moyers' program and facing his appropriately confrontational questions. Their willingness to account for their conduct stands in stark contrast to the long list of cowards who still constantly strut around self-lovingly touting their own courage, resolve, Churchillian backbone, and all of their other little self-glorifying platitudes, yet were too afraid to face questioning from a real journalist about all of the fact-free, false propaganda they spewed for years (and continue to spew).

That disgraceful, dishonorable roster of Great Warriors hiding under their beds from Bill Moyers includes Fox's Krauthammer, Fox's Kristol, Fox's Roger Ailes, Bill Safire and Judith Miller. As The Washington Post's own Tom Shales put it:

Among those who declined -- and thus became a part of the story more than they already were -- are Judith Miller of the New York Times, a reporter who became a relentless drumbeater for war; Times pundit William Safire, who'd predicted that Iraqis would welcome Americans as liberators when they marched into Baghdad; columnist Charles Krauthammer, another hawkish columnist who's usually anything but camera-shy; and Fox boss Roger Ailes.

William Kristol, a conservative columnist who, Moyers says, "led the march to Baghdad behind a battery of Washington microphones . . . has not responded to any of our requests for an interview, but he still shows up on TV as an expert, most often on Fox News."

People like Bill Kristol and Krauthammer will only go and sit with the likes of Brit Hume and speak only to Fox audiences, so they are never reminded of the literally countless falsehoods they churned out not only to justify the invasion but to profoundly mislead Americans for years about the ongoing occupation. And they both continue to issue one-way decrees from the pages of Time and The Washington Post, where they are never held to account for what they have done.

Moyers' documentary is a superb piece of journalism and makes inescapably clear how profoundly corrupt our dominant political and media institutions were prior to the invasion. But most national "journalists" will simply ignore the whole program (as Digby notes, The New York Times, one of the principal culprits, did not even review it).

They will almost certainly dismiss Moyers as a liberal partisan, not a real journalist, and continue to insist that they are doing a superb and even-handed job. They will continue to revere the most guilty parties responsible for the deceit and destruction of the last six years.

And, worst of all, the sicknesses documented so potently by Moyers will continue to pervade our dominant media and political institutions. Comparing 2002 and now, however, there is a significant difference: as Moyers' documentary illustrates, as does the emergence of political blogs, more and more people are increasingly recognizing how pervasive those deficiencies are, and consequently, are developing multiple alternatives to the rancid governing Beltway system.

UPDATE: Tom Tomorrow is one of those radical, unserious, untrustworthy extremist commentators who saw exactly what was going on back in 2002 and was right about virtually everything. As a result, Fred Hiatt and Richard Stengel will never invite him onto the Op-Ed pages of The Washington Post or Time alongside our Brilliant Foreign Policy Luminaries like Charles Kruathammer, Joe Lieberman and Robert Kagan, but -- to celebrate the four-year anniversary of our Glorious War -- he does have a small though rich sampling over at the Huffington Post of the great wisdom showered on us by Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and many of their other media and neoconservative friends.

UPDATE II: CBS White House Correspondent Mark Knoller watched Moyers' documentary and he is absolutely befuddled that anyone could possibly suggest that our White House Press Corps was insufficiently skeptical of the White House's pre-war claims or that they were too deferential to the Leader:

To hear Bill Moyers tell it last evening on his PBS program "Buying The War," the White House press corps was a willing participant in its own deception about the President's case for war in Iraq.

He portrays us as easily-manipulated stooges on bended-knee to the President and his top aides.

Now, I'm the first to concede there are plenty of good reasons to criticize the White House Press. We're an irascible and unlikable bunch. I'm one of us and I don't like us very much. But the point made by Bill Moyers at the start of his program last night is just off base. . . . Now, I can understand if Moyers didn't like the President's answers. Fair enough. But to portray reporters as mindless conduits of White House policies is unfounded.

Really, what can one even say about this? Like most of his colleagues, he is drowning in total self-delusion. Note how he pretends to criticize White House journalists for being "irrascible and unlikable" -- the implication being that they are a really tough, ornery and contentious bunch of hard-core reporters who may not be likable or agreeable, but boy, they sure are feisty.

After describing (though understandably not quoting) several of the oh-so-super-tough questions he claims were asked at the pre-war Press Conference -- the one where reporters pretended to raise their hands in the hopes of being called upon, even though they knew Bush had a pre-scripted list of which reporters would be allowed to ask questions and they were only doing that to create a false perception of a free-wheeling press conference -- Knoller ends with these paragraphs:

Did we report what the President said about his case for war? Of course we did. That's our job. Did we also report that his views were challenged or disputed by others? Absolutely. Were questions raised about the veracity of the president's arguments? Certainly.

Did reporters stop the U.S. from going to war in Iraq? No. Could reporters have done a better job? Always.

But to charge that the White House press was "compliant" and cheered the President's arguments for war plainly misrepresents the facts.

I wonder if Knoller is aware that seven out of 10 Americans believed even six months after the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein personally planned the 9/11 attacks. But Knoller just cannot believe that anyone would suggest that the national press corps was too compliant.

This is the point I have realized only recently which I cannot stress enough. They really do not think they did anything wrong. They think that their pre-war "journalism" (which, they will admit with great humility, could "of course" -- like everything in the world -- have been better) was perfectly excellent journalism, and anyone who suggests otherwise simply does not understand the elevated role of journalists, and is probably just a lowly partisan hysteric.

That's how they think. Just go read Knoller's response to the Moyers' documentary. Our government deceived the entire country into a war based on a whole set of blatantly false claims -- all of which were shoveled into the public's minds by our nation's media outlets -- and they continue to say what a great job they did.

-- Glenn Greenwald

Is Mainstream Corporate Media subverting the AIPAC Spy Trial?

4/21/2007 Opinion Essay

Graymail and Freedom of the Press

by Grant F. Smith

The Associated Press reported a major victory for defendants in the AIPAC espionage trial on April 17^th, 2007. "Prosecutors suffered a setback yesterday in their case against two former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of violating the 1917 Espionage Act when a federal judge rejected the government's proposal for conducting much of the trial in secret." The presiding judge, T. S. Ellis III underscored the gravity of the situation. "If the prosecution decline[s] to submit any substitutions [for classified evidence] that you would ever make public, then maybe ... I have to decide whether to dismiss the indictment, if that's the case."

As various elements of the Israel lobby trumpet the ruling as a victory for free speech, it is useful to review not only the involvement of mainstream corporate media in trafficking classified information in the AIPAC espionage case, but also their past record on secret evidence in other high profile criminal cases.

Mainstream media's formal legal foray into the AIPAC case was triggered by a government motion. On February 16, 2007 federal prosecutors filed a "Classified Intelligence Procedures Act" (CIPA) motion with the contents sealed from public view. CIPA is an established process under which courts operate when classified information is expected to be used at trial. In response, defendants Rosen and Weissman filed a sealed motion to strike the CIPA requests and the government's motion to close the trial.

On March 13, 2007 attorney Jay Ward Brown filed a motion to intervene (PDF) and argue against the DOJ prosecutors' proposal to "limit public access to classified portions of the trial proceedings." Brown filed the motion on behalf of elite media clients including the Newspaper Guild, Communications Workers of America, Radio-Television News Directors Association, Reuters America LLC, Society of Professional Journalists, Time, Inc., The Washington Post, Hearst Corp., Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, ABC, Inc., American Society of Newspaper Editors, The Associated Press, Dow Jones & Company, Inc., and the Newspaper Association of America, Inc. The collective pressure and threat brought to bear on Judge T.S. Ellis was implicit in the motion: Any attempt to introduce classified evidence or protect sources and methods with closed proceedings would be widely reported on as Soviet era secrecy in a kangaroo court.

Titled an "Emergency Motion for Leave to Intervene", the filing sought to keep the trial completely open, ostensibly in the interest of press coverage. The motion also subtly expresses mainstream media preconceptions about the trial, stating in the filing the case is worth coverage because of the "unusual factual circumstances that gave rise to their (Rosen and Weissman) indictment" and that the case involves an "unprecedented application of the Espionage Act". The court docket (PDF) reveals this is only the latest skirmish in a legal battle that has been raging for well over a year and a half, though the trial is scheduled to begin on June 4, 2007.

On the surface this seems to be a triumph of a free press over government secrecy. However, the involvement of the elite media in the AIPAC espionage trial goes far beyond the motion or what they routinely report. A few of the same corporate news outlets filing the motion were willingly used by Weissman and Rosen to disseminate classified information to further AIPAC's policy objectives. On July 21, 2004, Weissman and Rosen called Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler to pass information that they said was from "an American intelligence source". That source is now known to be Col. Lawrence Franklin, a DoD employee sentenced to 12 years in prison. The Israel lobbyists were hoping to influence US policy on Iran. In 2003 Rosen relayed classified information to Reuters correspondent Carol Giacomo and Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs about the contents of confidential drafts of a US presidential directive advocating a more aggressive US posture toward Iran. Dobbs included the classified information in a story two weeks later.

Another AIPAC motion to intervene filer, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, clarified the mainstream corporate media's collective desire to continue serving as a willing conduit for selectively released classified information, According to Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, "Journalists who cover national security and defense receive classified information all the time, It's virtually routine. If that were the standard for bringing an espionage case, we'd be locking up a lot of people in this town and there would be fewer sources of information."

Notwithstanding the press's apparent willingness to be used to further AIPAC or any other lobbies' policy objectives by selective disclosure of classified information, secrecy in trials raises questions. Does the elite media's own reporting record reveal a consistent industrywide commitment calling for disclosure of secret evidence in all high profile criminal trials? It does not.

The New York Times chided the Iran Contra trial defense of Oliver North in an article titled "North's Lawyers Trying to Derail Prosecutor's Plan" published in 1989. Reporter Michael Wines reported, "The Federal judge in the Iran-contra case today rejected the bulk of Oliver L. North's demand to use 30,000 pages of secret documents as evidence in his defense, accusing Mr. North of making the request in a calculated effort to 'frustrate the prosecution.''' Another AIPAC espionage motion filer, Time Inc., also had a different take on classified evidence in an earlier era. Time reporter George J. Church wrote in a piece called Top-Secret Strategy that the North defense appeals for public access to classified information was despicable "graymail". Church elaborated that, "North's strategy, it seems, is to threaten to disclose embarrassing secrets if the Government will not drop the trial. In the bitter words of Robin Ross, chief aide to Attorney General Thornburgh, 'This great American hero is graymailing the Government. This is the guy who stood up in his Marine Corps uniform and all his medals, and now he is sticking it to the Government with an advantage (knowledge of secrets) he got through service to his country.'"

What about spies for foreign countries like Russia? According to the case docket of FBI spy for Russia Robert Hanssen, the mainstream corporate press did not at any time file urgent briefs, even though the bulk of the evidence trafficked by Hanssen to be used against him in court would have been highly classified.

In the rarified world of elite mainstream corporate media, if a defendant like Oliver North attempts to introduce classified information as evidence, it is "graymail." If defendants Weissman and Rosen attempt to similarly force the revelation of classified information, possibly "outing" sources and methods used to protect the US against Israeli espionage, well that's simply freedom of the press. This double standard is unfortunate.

The stakes in the AIPAC espionage case could not be higher. The AIPAC espionage case, if it comes to trial, could redefine the role of lobbies, the mainstream press and think tanks operating in Washington, DC. It is not yet clear whether average Americans approve of Washington's hidden world of selective third party disclosure and trafficking in classified information. It is also not known whether selectively disclosed and leveraged classified information fed to the "free press" has played a wider, unknown role in promoting misguided war, wasteful military spending, and perpetuating the influence of the Israel lobby. The Washington Post's own Walter Pincus, who has been rather sloppy in bringing facts about the case to his readership, now gloats that the prosecution now has only two weeks to find effective substitutes for reams of classified transcripts. We must ask whether, thanks to the legal intervention of the elite mainstream corporate media, we will ever obtain the answers to dire and burning questions of public interest.

'Devastating' Bill Moyers Probe of Press and Iraq Coming

'Devastating' Moyers Probe of Press and Iraq Coming

By Greg Mitchell

Published: April 19, 2007 9:00 PM ET

NEW YORK (Commentary) The most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq will appear next Wednesday, a 90-minute PBS broadcast called "Buying the War," which marks the return of "Bill Moyers Journal." E&P was sent a preview DVD and a draft transcript for the program this week.

While much of the evidence of the media's role as cheerleaders for the war presented here is not new, it is skillfully assembled, with many fresh quotes from interviews (with the likes of Tim Russert and Walter Pincus) along with numerous embarrassing examples of past statements by journalists and pundits that proved grossly misleading or wrong. Several prominent media figures, prodded by Moyers, admit the media failed miserably, though few take personal responsibility.

The war continues today, now in its fifth year, with the death toll for Americans and Iraqis rising again -- yet Moyers points out, "the press has yet to come to terms with its role in enabling the Bush Administration to go to war on false pretenses."

Among the few heroes of this devastating film are reporters with the Knight Ridder/McClatchy bureau in D.C. Tragically late, Walter Isaacson, who headed CNN, observes, "The people at Knight Ridder were calling the colonels and the lieutenants and the people in the CIA and finding out, you know, that the intelligence is not very good. We should've all been doing that."

At the close, Moyers mentions some of the chief proponents of the war who refused to speak to him for this program, including Thomas Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer, Judith Miller, and William Safire.

But Dan Rather, the former CBS anchor, admits, "I don't think there is any excuse for, you know, my performance and the performance of the press in general in the roll up to the war&hellipWe didn't dig enough. And we shouldn't have been fooled in this way." Bob Simon, who had strong doubts about evidence for war, was asked by Moyers if he pushed any of the top brass at CBS to "dig deeper," and he replies, "No, in all honesty, with a thousand mea culpas&hellip.nope, I don't think we followed up on this."

Instead he covered the marketing of the war in a "softer" way, explaining to Moyers: "I think we all felt from the beginning that to deal with a subject as explosive as this, we should keep it, in a way, almost light – if that doesn't seem ridiculous."

Moyers replies: "Going to war, almost light."

Walter Isaacson is pushed hard by Moyers and finally admits, "We didn't question our sources enough." But why? Isaacson notes there was "almost a patriotism police" after 9/11 and when the network showed civilian casualties it would get phone calls from advertisers and the administration and "big people in corporations were calling up and saying, 'You're being anti-American here.'"

Moyers then mentions that Isaacson had sent a memo to staff, leaked to the Washington Post, in which he declared, "It seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan" and ordered them to balance any such images with reminders of 9/11. Moyers also asserts that editors at the Panama City (Fla.) News-Herald received an order from above, "Do not use photos on Page 1A showing civilian casualties. Our sister paper has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening emails."

Walter Pincus of the Washington Post explains that even at his paper reporters "do worry about sort of getting out ahead of something." But Moyers gives credit to Charles J. Hanley of The Associated Press for trying, in vain, to draw more attention to United Nations inspectors failing to find WMD in early 2003.

The disgraceful press reaction to Colin Powell's presentation at the United Nations seems like something out of Monty Python, with one key British report cited by Powell being nothing more than a student's thesis, downloaded from the Web -- with the student later threatening to charge U.S. officials with "plagiarism."

Phil Donahue recalls that he was told he could not feature war dissenters alone on his MSNBC talk show and always had to have "two conservatives for every liberal." Moyers resurrects a leaked NBC memo about Donahue's firing that claimed he "presents a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. At the same time our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."

Moyers also throws some stats around: In the year before the invasion William Safire (who predicted a "quick war" with Iraqis cheering their liberators) wrote "a total of 27 opinion pieces fanning the sparks of war." The Washington Post carried at least 140 front-page stories in that same period making the administration's case for attack. In the six months leading to the invasion the Post would "editorialize in favor of the war at least 27 times."

Of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC and CBS nightly news in the six months before the war, almost all could be traced back to sources solely in the White House, Pentagon or State Dept., Moyers tells Russert, who offers no coherent reply.

The program closes on a sad note, with Moyers pointing out that "so many of the advocates and apologists for the war are still flourishing in the media." He then runs a pre-war clip of President Bush declaring, "We cannot wait for the final proof: the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Then he explains: "The man who came up with it was Michael Gerson, President Bush's top speechwriter.

"He has left the White House and has been hired by the Washington Post as a columnist."

***
Greg Mitchell's most recent column on Iraq: "Sorry We Shot Your Kid, But Here's $500"

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Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor and author of seven books on politics and history, including two for Random House, "The Campaign of the Century" and "Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady."

The essential corruption of the Washington press corps

Monday March 26, 2007 08:47 EST

The most revealing three-minute You Tube clip ever

I want to return to the video clip of the jovial and dismissive discussion of the U.S. attorneys scandal on yesterday's Chris Matthews Show (embedded below). In one sense, this clip is completely typical of how our national media thinks and talks about political matters. But there just is something about this particular discussion and the giggling, vapid participants that is extra vivid and instructive on a visceral level.

Whatever one thinks of how convincing the available evidence is thus far, nobody who has an even basic understanding of how our government functions could dispute that the accusations in this scandal are extremely serious. Presumably, even those incapable of ingesting the danger of having U.S. attorneys fired due to their refusal to launch partisan-motivated prosecutions (or stifle prosecutions for partisan reasons) at least understand that it is highly disturbing and simply intolerable for the Attorney General of the U.S. -- the head of our Justice Department -- to lie repeatedly about what happened, including to Congress, and to have done so with the obvious assent and (at the very least) implicit cooperation of the White House. Even the most vapid media stars should be able to understand that.

And yet so many of them do not. They continue to defend the administration by insisting that even if the accusations are correct, there was no real wrongdoing here. Add Fred Hiatt to that list, as he defends the Bush administration's prosecutor firings in his Washington Post Editorial today by insisting that Gonzales appears "to have tried to cover up something that, as far as we yet know, didn't need covering. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president . . . ."

Just as was true for their virtually unanimous insistence that there was no wrongdoing worth investigating in the Plame case -- including the serial lying and obstruction of justice from the Vice President's top aide, one of the most powerful people in the White House -- they also see nothing wrong whatsoever with serial lying and corruption by the Attorney General in this case.

Think about this: there are only two instances in the last six years where real investigations occurred in any of the Bush scandals -- this U.S. attorneys scandal (because Democrats now have subpoena power) and the Plame case (due to the fluke of two Republican DOJ officials with integrity, James Comey and Patrick Fitzgerald). And in both cases, it was revealed conclusively that top Bush officials -- at the highest levels of the government -- repeatedly and deliberately lied about what they did. Isn't that pattern obviously extremely disturbing? And imagine what would be revealed had there been real investigations -- journalistic or Congressional -- of all the other scandals that ended up dying an inconsequential death due to neglect and suppression.

Beltway media stars really aren't bothered by any of this in the slightest. It's how their world works. Initially, they even refused to talk about the story at all, insisting that there was nothing worth seeing here, and were all but forced into writing about it as a result of the tenacious coverage in the blogosphere, led by TPM's Josh Marshall. Their instinct is to lash out at anyone who suggests real wrongdoing on the part of the Republican political machinery that has ruled their town for so long.

They respect and admire the Republicans who wield power in Washington -- media elites particularly love Karl Rove (Mark Halperin to Hugh Hewitt: "we say in the book about Karl Rove, who I respect and enjoy…I enjoy his company . . . Maybe he did the things he’s accused of, but to have this guy’s image portrayed and defined by things that are accusations that are unproven, we say in the book is really outrageous"). They admire and love Rove because he is the embodiment of the political power which they worship -- and they are angered by the notion that these figures who rule their world, a world which lavishly rewards them, should be accused of real wrongdoing, let alone threatened with subpoenas and prosecution and imprisonment. Fun and playful political tussles are fine, but anything truly disruptive or threatening is despised by them and considered out of bounds.

These are not journalists who want to uncover government corruption or act in an adversarial capacity to check government power. Rather, these are members of the royal court who are grateful to the King and his minions for granting them their status. What they want more than anything is to protect and preserve the system that has so rewarded them -- with status and money and fame and access and comfort. They're the ludicrous clowns who entertain the public by belittling any facts which demonstrate pervasive corruption and deceit at the highest levels of our government, and who completely degrade the public discourse with their petty, pompous, shallow, vapid chatter that transforms every important political matter into a stupid gossipy joke.

Here are several of our media elites from our nation's most influential journalistic outlets -- including from Time, U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times, and NBC News -- all sitting around on the Chris Matthews Show giggling for three and a half minutes straight about the silly U.S. attorneys scandal. The whole thing is just a fun game for them, and it's absurd to them that anyone could take things like this seriously.

And what is most notable is that they express outrage at one part, and one part only, of this whole story -- namely, they are furious over the fact that the foolish, unfair Democrats would even dare to try to force Karl Rove to testify. Why, firing U.S. attorneys and lying to Congress and the country about it is all fair game, but that -- trying to get Rove to answer questions -- is really beyond the pale. Just watch how the people who have done so much damage to our country think and behave:

VIDEO

Really, is it any wonder at all that our government is so fundamentally corrupt and broken when we have a press like this? Why wouldn't top government officials lie continuously when our national press corps finds such lying to be such a source of merriment and humor, and can summon the energy only to attack, mock and condemn those who find the lying objectionable, rather than the liars themselves?

And given that these are the people who are supposed to perform the function of checking government power and uncovering government corruption, is it really any wonder that the administration has felt comfortable engaging in six years worth of systematic lawbreaking? These media stars would never investigate any of it, because they don't think it's a problem, and if it ends up being exposed, they will belittle and mock any objections to the lawbreaking, defend the administration, and distract everyone from the issues raised. They obscure the consequences of corruption revelations with gossipy and giggly speculation about who is helped or hurt politically.

The same thing happened when it was revealed that the President was eavesdropping on the conversations of Americans in secret and without obtaining judicial warrants -- conduct which is a felony in this country and, worse still, revealed a broader theory whereby the administration believes it has the power to break the law. The national media could hardly have cared less about any of the profound implications of those revelations, but instead focused obsessively on laughing about how the Democrats could not object to the lawbreaking because to do so would make them look "weak" in fighting the Terrorists. They warned against investigations and echoed Karl Rove's talking points endlessly by insisting that Americans supported "eavesdropping on Terrorists."

The overriding goal of most of our national media elites is to preserve the prevailing Republican power system that rules Washington because of how beneficial that system is to them. As a result, they admire and want to protect those who rule that system, and thus reflexively view scandals which entail accusations of true corruption by our political leaders -- and especially unpleasant formal investigations and threats of criminal prosecution -- as frivolous and inherently false and unfair.

They will always lash out at those who prosecute the scandal but defend as unfair victims those who are accused of the wrongdoing. Look at how angry Time's Richard Stengel is about the Democrats' desire to make Rove testify: "I am so uninterested in the Democrats wanting Karl Rove because it is so bad for them" (emphasis in original). What if Rove really engaged in serious wrongdoing? Stengel, like virtually all of his Beltway media colleagues, really couldn't care less.

Journalists are supposed to be, by definition, eager for investigations of government misconduct. That is supposed to be their purpose, embedded in their DNA. Yet virtually across the board, the prevailing Beltway conventional wisdom has become that -- as always -- investigations are "bad for Democrats," that Americans don't want their Leaders investigated, that it's all a terrible distraction from the oh-so-important business of legislating.

On what do these media stars base these constant, emphatic claims about what Americans want and don't want? On nothing other than their own personal desires, which they cowardly and misleadingly attribute to what "Americans believe," even though such claims are baseless and false.

In the last election, anger over Republican corruption played a major role in why Americans threw Republicans out of power:

By a wide margin, Americans who voted Tuesday in the midterm election say they disapprove of the war in Iraq. But when asked which issue was extremely important to their vote, more voters said corruption and ethics in government than any other issue, including the war, according to national exit polls.

And as I recall (though cannot yet find, but will add as an update), polls before the election also demonstrated that clear majorities of Americans wanted more oversight and checks on the administration. Claims that "Americans don't want investigations" are just false and reflective of nothing other than their own desire to defend the administration.

These Beltway media figures are not only completely vapid, shallow, and devoid of any objective other than to defend government leaders, but they are completely out of touch with the "Americans" whom they constantly invoke as props in order to depict their own biases and beliefs as being shared by the American mainstream.

In virtually every instance over the last six years -- from realizing that the country was misled into the invasion of Iraq to realizing that administration claims of success there were false to opposing the pardon of Lewis Libby by a wide margin -- Americans end up realizing the truth long before the national press comes close to it.

While our media stars continue to defend the administration, Americans have come to realize on their own just how profoundly inept and corrupt this President is. The President's real "base" -- his most loyal followers -- are not red state Republicans, but instead, are Norah O'Donnell and Gloria Borger and the stable of media elite feeding at the Republican power trough, boundlessly worshipful of those who fill it, and eager to defend them at all costs.

-- Glenn Greenwald

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Why We 'Harp' on Press Failure on WMD

As anonymous administration sources hype up the threat of Iran, some reporters fall into the same bad habits they did in the run-up to the disastrous Iraq War, spreading unconfirmed information as if it is fact. But there's also some evidence that lessons have been learned.

By Greg Mitchell

(March 05, 2007) -- Four years ago, E&P was one of the few mainstream news outlets to strenuously question the administration's case for WMD in Iraq. We've carried countless articles about this since, and occasionally a reader will ask, Why do you harp on it?

The simple answer is: We wonder if the media has really learned its lesson. Periodic incidents suggest otherwise, balanced by evidence that, as the prophet urged, "we won't get fooled again."


The recent firestorm over reports of Iranian weapons in Iraq provided reason for both hope and fear.

Three weeks ago, The New York Times featured prominently on its front page and Web site a report by Michael R. Gordon -- based wholly on unnamed sources -- claiming firm evidence that Iran was supplying "the most deadly" weapon used against U.S. forces in Iraq: a certain kind of roadside bomb. Gordon, of course, had produced (with Judith Miller) the so-called "mushroom cloud" article in 2002 relating to WMD in Iraq that proved quite false.

Last week, the Times' public editor, Byron Calame, offered his appraisal, which raised some questions about Gordon failing to provide a little more balance in his report -- but praising followup articles by other Times reporters that did seem more skeptical. Yesterday he printed some letters from readers, all critical of Gordon and the Times.

A San Francisco man commented: "Now even The New York Times’s public editor must pick up a bucket of whitewash to try to paint over the newspaper’s boosting of the Bush administration’s propaganda for another misguided war, this one against Iran. The truly unfortunate aspect is that these articles are carried on the front pages of hundreds of local newspapers. It’s a sorry mess, to which your fingerprints have been added, even through the white gloves your column claims to wear."

A woman from New Hampshire: "You insult the readers when you imply that Mr. Gordon has become the scapegoat du jour and that questioning his writing is merely sour grapes — leftover anger from the W.M.D. debacle. This demeaning argument suggests that readers aren’t able to make cogent decisions about the validity of his writing but are, rather, too busy nursing old wounds."

And a man from Maryland: "If the Times editors were so anxious to demonstrate the tenuous nature of this story as you suggest, why was the story prominently placed on Page 1? I recognize that a journalist’s task is difficult. But we are dealing with a president with a clear track record on war and diplomacy. Times editors were enablers for the Iraq war. Have these editors learned nothing more than to insert mild caveats into administration propaganda that could potentially be used to lead us into another war?"

This made made me reflect on one night last month, just after the Gordon and Baghdad briefing articles, when an e-mailed memo arrived in my inbox. At least one news editor had seen enough.

That night, the first part of the PBS Frontline series on the media was aired, with distressing reminders of newspapers' complicity in the Iraq invasion. It showed Bob Woodward on Larry King's CNN show back then saying there was "almost zero" chance WMD would not be found in Iraq. In a new interview, Judith Miller said she did nothing wrong in her reporting back then, even if the reporting itself was wrong.

A few minutes after that, the e-mail landed in my "new messages" box.

It came from KSFR, a public radio station in Santa Fe, N.M. I don't know anything about the station, although I have been to Santa Fe a couple of times. It seems that the surge in "unnamed officials" had finally pushed News Director Bill Dupuy to take action. He wrote that "until further notice, it is the policy of KSFR's news department to ignore and not repeat any wire service or nationally published story" about Iran, North Korea, and other sensitive foreign areas if it quotes an "unnamed" U.S. official.

"What we have suspected and talked about at length before is now becoming clear. 'High administration officials speaking on the condition of anonymity,' 'Usually reliable Washington sources,' and others of the like were behind the publicity that added credibility to the need to go to war against Afghanistan and Iraq.

"This is a small news department with a small reach. We cannot research these stories ourselves. But we can take steps not to compromise our integrity. We should not dutifully parrot whatever comes out of Washington, on the wire or by whatever means, no matter how intriguing and urgent it sounds, when the source is unnamed. I am also calling on our colleagues in other local news departments -- broadcast and print -- to take the same professional approach."

The following day, President Bush at a press conference contradicted the still-unnamed officials at the Baghdad briefing, admitting, "I do not know" one way or the other if the Iranian government knew anything about the weapons in Iraq. But, to update Mark Twain, I'll add: An unnamed source's lie can dominate the Web while the truth is still putting on its boots.

---

Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor of E&P.

The Press and the Watada Trial

by MARC COOPER

[posted online on January 22, 2007]

When Army Lieut. Ehren Watada's court-martial opens on February 5, more than Watada's refusal to deploy to Iraq may be put on trial. Also at stake is the independence of the press, especially some of its more vulnerable members. The US Army prosecutor in the case has subpoenaed two reporters to appear: Gregg Kakesako of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Oakland freelancer Sarah Olson. The two are being asked to authenticate statements made to them by Watada in which Watada criticized Administration war policy and explained his reasons for refusing to deploy to Iraq last summer.

Watada, 28, is the highest ranking US military officer to refuse duty in Iraq; he faces charges of missing a movement and conduct unbecoming an officer, which could cost him six years in jail. Kakesako and Olson face six months in jail or a $500 fine if they refuse to testify. Kakesako isn't commenting, but Olson is adamantly opposing her compelled testimony. "When speech itself is the crime, journalists are turned into the investigative arm of the government," she told The Nation. "If I contribute to the Army's prosecution of Lieutenant Watada on speech-related charges, I will have colluded in suppression of speech. What could be more hostile to the ideas of a free press than that?"

Neither Watada, who is currently stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, nor his lawyer has denied any of the anti-Iraq War statements. Indeed, on the same day Olson's story appeared on www.truthout.org, Watada held a press conference repeating the same line of criticism. "As I read about the level of deception the Bush Administration used to initiate and process this war, I was shocked," Watada told Olson. "I became ashamed of wearing the uniform. How can we wear something with such a time-honored tradition, knowing we waged war based on a misrepresentation and lies?" A few months later, in a keynote speech at a convention of antiwar vets in Seattle, Watada further amplified his dissident views. A video of that speech, which was widely reported, including in the Washington Post, is available online.

The military's move to compel Olson to verify what Watada said thus appears gratuitous and unnecessary. Moreover, if the prosecution wants to authenticate what it deems actionable or illegal statements made by Watada in public settings, it should first verify whether the defendant disputes having made them. "When I defend a client like this, the first thing I do is ask the prosecutors if they have already asked the defendant to stipulate," says Los Angeles media attorney Susan Seager of the firm Davis Wright Tremaine. She says that while Olson is being called before a military court that can set its own rules, Justice Department guidelines state that where there is no shield law in effect, the first measure taken to verify information appearing in the press--before going to the reporter in question--should be to find an alternative source.

Dozens of reporters, myself included, have interviewed the free-speaking Watada, which raises further questions about why the military has singled out Olson, whose original article fetched a fee of only $300 and was published by a relatively obscure web news service. "Why harass this reporter?" asks Seager. "It's possible the military doesn't want reporters to write about this story anymore, and that's the real danger here--that reporters will figure it's not worth the hassle and the risk." And with fewer resources than other reporters, Olson might be a tempting demonstration case.

Olson's plight hasn't gotten much attention from professional media associations, in part because she's not being asked to reveal a confidential source but only to verify what's already been published, and no doubt in part because she works primarily for small alternative outlets. Olson is being defended, however, by the First Amendment Project in Oakland on a pro bono basis. The PEN American Center has sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on her behalf. And Military Reporters and Editors president James Crawley issued a statement saying: "Trying to force a reporter to testify at a court-martial sends the wrong signal to the media and the military.... Using journalists to help the military prosecute its case seems like a serious breach of that wall." Olson has received a letter of support from the Society of Professional Journalists.

A compromise legal solution, which Watada's lawyer has hinted he'd consent to, would not require that Olson appear but instead to sign a sworn affidavit authenticating her article. While she's not revealing her legal strategy, Olson bristles at the notion. "I don't want to participate in the government prosecution of political speech," she says. "That includes signing an affidavit."

ASSAULT ON PRESS FREEDOM

In a nation that preaches the virtues of democracy, the United States government has consistently eroded the media's ability to report and, by extension, undermines the ideals it professes to uphold

- William Bennett Turner
Sunday, November 26, 2006


Vladimir Posner, the former Soviet journalist, used to claim the press was freer in the Soviet Union than it was in the United States. This was during Glasnost, as the Soviet empire was disintegrating. Posner explained that the government was dysfunctional, so journalists did not have to worry about the official censors, and the media had not been privatized, so journalists were not accountable to commercial sponsors and advertisers. The result was a kind of anarchic freedom. The press was free, but only for a brief window in time.

The window in America once was open wide and, I thought, permanently so. I used to tell my students on the first day of class that we had the freest speech and press in the world. I can't do that anymore.

In recent years American press freedom has eroded. Many other countries are now ranked freer than the United States -- all of the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand and many others. In the most recent survey by Freedom House, an independent American-based organization that assesses liberties around the world, the United States tied for 17th place, with the Bahamas, Estonia, Germany and others.

The international free-press advocates Reporters Without Borders ranked us 53rd, tied with Botswana, Croatia and Tonga. These rankings may not be scientifically valid, for a lot of subjective judgment is involved. But it is sobering to see the consensus that the United States is no longer anywhere near the top.

By virtue of Supreme Court decisions, the U.S. press remains freer than the press elsewhere in a few respects.

First, our law provides significantly greater protection for the press against libel suits, especially by government officials. In many countries, libel is a bullying tool for officials and the powerful to silence dissent. Under the 1964 decision in New York Times vs. Sullivan, insults, parodies and vicious criticism of officials are protected by the First Amendment.

Second, our law protects the press against almost any attempt by government to impose a "prior restraint" on what can be published. That is, the government is not allowed to censor, in advance, information the press may wish to publish. The famous "Pentagon Papers" case in 1971 allowed the New York Times and the Washington Post to publish information about a classified Defense Department study on American involvement in Vietnam, despite the government's contention that publication would impair national security.

Third, perhaps unique in the world, our law protects the advocacy of dangerous, potentially divisive ideas. One can preach overthrow of the government -- domestic "regime change" -- religious hatred, racial discrimination and even criminal activity. Under the Supreme Court's 1969 decision in Brandenburg vs. Ohio, government may not suppress ideas, however repugnant to most, unless their expression amounts to incitement to imminent unlawful acts.

It also is true that American journalists have not been physically attacked based on what they report, at least at home (although overseas, some have been, and one was beheaded). In some other countries, journalists risk harassment or worse for reporting that offends government officials or powerful figures. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that 47 journalists were murdered last year.

But U.S. press freedom has been slipping away since Sept. 11, 2001. Now that we are in a seemingly permanent "war" on terrorism, the government claims wartime powers that result in restricting press freedom.

The Bush administration has multiplied exponentially the number of documents it classifies as secret, shielding them from public view. It has classified literally millions of documents "top secret," according to reports filed with the National Archives; and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney claims to be exempt from reporting even the numbers of records it brands with the "classified" stamp. (The administration has also tried to retrieve antique classified documents from columnist Jack Anderson's estate, contending that only the government may possess such documents, however old.) Within weeks after 9/11, President Bush issued Executive Order 13233, allowing him to veto public release not only of his own presidential papers but those of former President Ronald Reagan, Bush's father and former President Bill Clinton.

The administration also is aggressively pursuing leaks, not with a Nixonian Plumbers unit but by threatening criminal prosecution. Some Republicans in Congress have called for Espionage Act prosecution of the New York Times for publishing revelations about the National Security Agency's monitoring of communications by U.S. citizens and tracking international financial transactions. Bush himself said it was "disgraceful" for the Times to reveal these government activities and publishing the security agency's leak was "helping the enemy."

Pursuing leaks inevitably means pursuing the reporters who received and published the leaks, forcing them to give up confidential sources or telephone records or go to jail. Whatever Judith Miller's motivation and however questionable her arrangement with "Scooter" Libby, she went to jail solely because she refused to reveal communications with her source to the federal grand jury.

Although all states (except Wyoming) legally recognize some sort of privilege for reporters to protect the confidentiality of sources, there is no federal shield law, and the Supreme Court held in 1972 that the First Amendment does not itself serve as one, at least where the information is sought by a federal grand jury investigating a crime.

So reporters who dare to report leaked information that may be classified, or information about testimony before a grand jury -- as Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada did in the BALCO proceeding about steroids in sports -- face subpoenas requiring them to reveal their confidential sources to grand juries or go to jail. And now, Williams and Fainaru-Wada have been ordered to serve as much as 18 months in federal prison, a ruling they have appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

So far, the courts have refused to protect subpoenaed reporters no matter how important the information they unearthed or how insignificant the alleged crime. It is true that reporters have never had strong protection against federal subpoenas, but they have hardly ever needed it. Until now.

One of former Attorney General John Ashcroft's first post-Sept. 11 acts was to issue a directive to federal agencies restricting access to government records under the Freedom of Information Act. Ashcroft's directive effectively reversed the presumption of openness and told agencies not to allow inspection of records if there was any arguable basis for withholding the records, assuring officials that Justice Department lawyers would defend them if sued.

Ashcroft's Justice Department also proceeded to round up mostly Muslim immigrants and conduct deportation hearings in secret, not allowing the press or public even to know that any hearing took place, which caused one federal judge to remark that "democracy dies behind closed doors." Ashcroft's moves toward greater secrecy were of a piece with Cheney's refusal when sued under the Freedom of Information Act to disclose even the identity of the corporate executives he met with to determine the administration's energy policy.

Unlike in Sweden, where the right of access to government documents is enshrined in the Constitution, our 1966 information act is solely a legislative creation. Unlike in South Korea, where the Supreme Court decided in 1989 that the right of access to government documents was an integral part of the constitutional freedom of the press, the U.S. Supreme Court held (in a case I lost, Houchins vs. KQED) that there is no such thing as a First Amendment right of access to government information or facilities. Consequently, Americans' right to know what their government is up to is not as well recognized as it is in some other countries.

Nor is government propaganda healthy for a free press or the citizenry. The Bush administration did not advance press freedom by producing and canning favorable "news" stories with fake reporters and peddling them to television stations, or by clandestinely paying friendly columnists for publishing opinions supporting administration policies.

Other recent U.S. government actions also cut into press freedom. The Federal Communications Commission's campaign to stamp out "indecency" and "profanity" in the broadcast media, with congressionally increased fines of $325,000 per violation for allowing a breast to be glimpsed or a dirty word uttered, has intimidated broadcasters.

The campaign may initially have been aimed at Howard Stern, but it puts at risk serious programming like a CBS documentary on 9/11 in which strong language escapes from the lips of firefighters and others in the inferno, "Saving Private Ryan" and even Masterpiece Theater's "Prime Suspect." Other countries like Sweden are bemused by American prissiness about sex and impose no comparable restrictions on their broadcasters.

The press is free in countries that trust the people to make wise decisions when they're fully informed, countries that remain willing to take the risks of dissent, rude discourse, instability and some insecurity, that tolerate eccentricity and unorthodox ideas. The erosion of press freedom in the United States, relative to other nations around the world, is disheartening. We have always had high expectations of freedom, which we now don't live up to.

It is hard to stomach the hypocrisy of claiming to spread democracy abroad while restricting at home the very freedoms that make democracy possible.

William Bennett Turner is a San Francisco lawyer who teaches a course on the First Amendment and the press at UC Berkeley. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

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