Defend the Press

Ehren WatadaArmy First Lieutenant Ehren Watada saw his case move one step closer to resolution earlier this month when a federal court issued a preliminary injunction against a second court martial. The Army's prosecution of the first officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq has been in legal limbo since a February court martial ended abruptly when the military judge threw out a stipulation agreement and declared a mistrial.

In June 2006, Lt. Watada held a press conference where he declared that the Iraq War was illegal, and that it was his duty to refuse orders to deploy. Lt. Watada was charged with violations of articles 87 and 133 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for refusing to deploy to Iraq, and publicly explaining his reasons for doing so. If convicted, he faced up to six and a half years in prison.

Following February's mistrial, the Army refiled charges against Lt. Watada, and prepared for a second court martial. The defense argued Fifth Amendment protection against being tried for the same crime twice, and filed appeals with every level of military court. Lt. Watada's claims to constitutional protections were not heard in court until the case reached the civilian, federal district court, in Tacoma, Washington.

As the internet becomes an increasingly important source of information for the public, government repression is shifting from traditional journalists to bloggers, according to the latest Worldwide Press Freedom Index issued by Reporters Without Borders. The report notes the arrest of bloggers in China, Egypt, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, as well as the case of San Francisco blogger Josh Wolf, who was jailed for eight months for refusing to provide evidence in a grand jury investigation. "We are concerned about the increase in cases of online censorship," the organization states. "More and more governments have realised that the Internet can play a key role in the fight for democracy and they are establishing new methods of censoring it. The governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media."

The executive editor and CEO of Village Voice Media were arrested Thursday night after publishing details of what they call "breathtaking abuse of the constitution" in a grand jury subpoena against their Arizona newspaper, the New Times. The subpoena is part of an attempt to prosecute the paper for publishing articles criticizing Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio's questionable real estate deals. The subpoena demands that the paper turn over "all documents related to articles and other content published by Phoenix New Times newspaper in print and on the Phoenix New Times website, regarding Sheriff Joe Arpaio from January 1, 2004 to the present." In addition, it demands information about all the online readers of the publication, including their Internet domain names and what other Web sites they visited before reading New Times. According to retired judge Kenneth Fields, the subpoena "touches on privacy issues of a lot of people who cannot be the subject of a grand-jury investigation. This is potentially thousands of people." Village Voice reporter Tony Ortega says the arrests show that Arpaio, who has carefully cultivated a "constant parade of television journalists" to build an image as "America's toughest sheriff," is actually a "paranoid despot ... Even those reporters who may have bought Arpaio's line of bull in the past must see what an abuse of power this is, and how it threatens the journalism being done by papers that dare to question public officials."

It isn't just Burmese pro-democracy activists who have been denied Internet access by heavy-handed government censors. "OpenNet Initiative, which tracks Internet censorship, has documented signs that in recent years several governments -- including those of former Soviet republics Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan -- have closed off Internet access, or at least opposition Web sites, during periods preceding elections or times of intense protests. The brief disruptions are known as 'just in time' filtering," and "are designed to quiet opponents while maintaining an appearance of technical difficulties, thus avoiding criticism from abroad." While the Burmese junta easily cut off Internet access in the country, "nations with larger economies and more ties to the outside world have more at stake. China, for one, could not consider cutting itself off as Myanmar [Burma] has done, and so control of the Internet is an industry in itself," with help from Internet companies like Yahoo and Google.

"For the past five years," Sami al-Haj, a cameraman for Al Jazeera, "has been the only journalist known to be held in Guantánamo Bay," reports Rachel Morris. Al-Haj was originally detained in December 2001 while trying to cross the border into Afghanistan with a team of other journalists. After examining his case, Morris can find little evidence to justify his detention. His wife and journalists who worked with al-Haj describe him as "a very kind-hearted person" who "was very particular about his work" and "just seemed like a young kid trying to get his big break" but "was detained at a moment when distrust of Al Jazeera was accumulating rapidly at the highest levels of the American government." The specific charges against him have changed over time. At one point military officials said he "had gone to Afghanistan to buy Stinger missiles to fight in Chechnya, a charge that has since been dropped." Other charges are impossible to assess because the government says its information against him is classified and cannot be reviewed even by al-Haj or his attorney, Stafford Smith. According to Smith, al-Haj "has been interrogated approximately 130 times. Roughly 125 of those sessions, he said, dealt not with the allegations but with Al Jazeera’s operations."

A year ago, Melanie Morgan of the Move America Forward front group publicly fantasized about having New York Times editor Bill Keller sent to the gas chamber or the electric chair (she couldn't decide which). In a recent appearance on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, Morgan repeated her claim that Keller and other journalists who reported on the government's SWIFT program for tracking terrorist bank transactions "should be tried for treason. If they were found guilty of treason, I would have no problem with them being executed."

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) is criticizing U.S. news media for presenting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's non-renewal of the television station RCTV's broadcast license "as a simple matter of censorship." FAIR points out that "RCTV and other commercial TV stations were key players in the April 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chavez's democratically elected government." Moreover, "the Venezuelan government is basing its denial of license on RCTV's involvement in the 2002 coup, not on the station's criticisms of or political opposition to the government." BBC News reports that the Latin American press is portraying Chavez as "authoritarian" and Venezuelan media as "increasingly suffocated." Journalism and human rights groups have denounced the non-renewal of RCTV's license. Governments have the right not to renew a broadcast license, but a standard process should be followed, international rights groups maintain. "We're not arguing that the concession ... should be given to RCTV," said the Committee to Project Journalists' Carlos Lauria. "We're just saying that there's no process to evaluate if it should be." Just Foreign Policy's Patrick McElwee agrees, but notes that a 1987 law -- enacted previous to Chavez -- "charges the executive branch with decisions about license renewal" and "does not seem to require any administrative hearing."

After giving an interview to Afghanistan's Tolo TV in which she called the Afghan parliament "worse than a stable or a zoo," because "at least there you have a donkey that carries a load and a cow that provides milk," Malalai Joya was suspended from Parliament. Joya, a young lawmaker and rights activist, has been threatened by warlords, while Afghan officials have sought to intimidate Tolo TV. Human Rights Watch is calling for Joya to be reinstated. In Thailand, the government is closing down community radio stations, allegedly for using "illegal frequencies." Rights activists say the shut-downs are at least partially due to stations having aired interviews with ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. In Iraq, local journalists and news organizations, along with the Committee to Protect Journalists, are protesting the government's ban on journalists reporting from attack scenes. Lastly, the OpenNet Initiative found that 25 of 40 countries it studied "block Web sites for political, social or other reasons." The "most extensive filters" are imposed by China, Iran, Myanmar, Syria, Tunisia and Vietnam.

"Intimidation and harassment of the Afghan news media have come from a variety of sources," reports Pamela Constable, "including government prosecutors, police, regional militias, parliament, Islamic clerical councils and U.S.-led military forces." The Afghan parliament is considering banning "news coverage that disturbs the public or has an 'un-Islamic' theme." The measure, which is expected to pass in some form, would also "give the Ministry of Information and Culture full control of state-run broadcast media." Fazel Sangcharaki, who heads Afghanistan's National Union of Journalists, said, "We are very concerned about the state of press freedom. ... The government is getting weaker, and they do not want the media to expose its flaws." Afghanistan's new constitution guarantees freedom of the press, and the number of news outlets has increased dramatically. But reporters are often intimidated, attacked or even killed. Afghan officials have repeatedly targeted the popular "Tolo TV"; the Afghan attorney general ordered three of its journalists arrested, its cameras are banned from parliamentary debates, and its "hard-hitting talk show" was banned.

From the U.S. Army's "OPSEC in the Blogosphere" presentation

"The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer," reports Noah Shachtman. Shachtman asked Major Ray Ceralde, who wrote the regulations, "If a soldier has to consult his [sic] supervisor or an OPSEC [Operations Security] officer every time he wants [to] e-mail home or put up a blog posting, doesn't that effectively kill the practice?" Ceralde answered that reviews are required for public forums only, and the "unit commander or organization leadership" can determine how reviews are done. "Some units may require that Soldiers register their blog ... with occasional spot checks after an initial review," he explained. "Other units may require a review before every posting. A private e-mail message to Family Members is not considered posting information in a public forum." On "Secrecy News," Steven Aftergood posted a related U.S. Army presentation on "OPSEC in the Blogosphere." A slide on "vulnerabilities" shows email, blogs, cell phones, pictures, and GPS devices. Another slide lists "hackers," "militia groups," "drug cartel" and "media" among domestic threats. Aftergood notes that the new Army regulations classify "attempts by unauthorized personnel to solicit critical information or sensitive information" as "Subversion and Espionage" -- raising concerns about unembedded, or even just pesky, reporters.