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WHEREAS the U.S. led war in Iraq has resulted in 26 Iraqi and foreign journalists and media employees being killed by U.S. troops, militia gunmen or terrorist bombings WHEREAS four Iraqi employees of Western news organizations say they have been mistreated at an American base in Iraq and the claims were dismissed by the Pentagon before a proper investigation was ordered WHEREAS the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington D.C. circuit decided on February 15 that reporters Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time Magazine could be jailed if they continue to refuse to answer questions about their sources before a grand jury which is investigating whether an administration official knowingly revealed the identity of an undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame which was originally revealed by columnist Robert Novak in July 2003 WHEREAS Federal Judge Thomas Hogan ordered reporter Miller to jail for refusing to testify about confidential sources and that special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald had exhausted other sources before subpoenaing Miller WHEREAS reporter Cooper earlier agreed to provide limited testimony to the grand jury after one of his sources, vice presidential aide Lewis Libby, released him from a promise of confidentiality, but a special prosecutor later issued a second, broader subpoena seeking the names of other sources WHEREAS reporter Miller and New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller have said they would not agree to provide testimony even if a supposed source released Miller from the promise of confidentiality WHEREAS in a similar case, a New York federal judge, Robert Sweet, ruled that The New York Times did have a qualified right under federal law to protect the identity of its sources by refusing to release telephone records to a prosecutor who contended that the reporters alerted to two Islamic charities under investigation of impending raids WHEREAS in December 2004 a federal judge sentenced a Providence TV reporter, Jim Taricani, to six months of house arrest for contempt after he refused to divulge who had leaked him a copy of a videotape of a city official taking a bribe from an undercover FBI informant WHEREAS in August 2004 a judge found five reporters in contempt and subject to $500 a day in fines for refusing to say who gave them information about Wen Ho Lee, the former nuclear physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico WHEREAS last summer three reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle and two others at the San Jose Mercury news were asked by federal prosecutors to reveal who had leaked information about the grand jury investigation into illegal steroid distribution by BALCO, Bay Area Laboratory Corp WHEREAS Principle 3 of the Declaration of Chapultepec states, "No journalist may be forced to reveal his or her sources of information" THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE IAPA RESOLVES to urge the Pentagon to thoroughly investigate the injuries and deaths of journalists involved in the Iraqi conflict and issue a timely report regarding the circumstances of those injuries and deaths to urge the Pentagon to investigate the alleged mistreatment of journalists who claim they were threatened and humiliated while detained in U.S. custody and issue a public report on the outcome of that investigation and put steps and procedures in place to prevent that kind of offense against journalists from happening in the future to condemn in the strongest manner the attempt to force journalists to reveal confidential sources, and demand that prosecutors and judges stop this practice.
Copyright © 2003 Inter American Press Association. All rights reserved. . |
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