62nd
General Assembly
Mexico City, Mexico
September 29 to October 3, 2006
Camino Real Hotel
Reports and Resolutions
|
UNITED STATES
Report to the Midyear Meeting
Quito, Ecuador
Over the
last six months, press freedom has continued to be affected by judicial restraints
that limit journalists’ rights to maintain confidentially of their sources,
as well as placing obstacles to access to public information. On a positive
note, the Florida Supreme Court on November 7, 2005, unanimously rejected a
proposal that would have strictly limited camera coverage of courtroom proceedings
by the news media. The rule change was proposed presumably to protect privacy
and confidential material. The justices also unanimously vetoed a proposal that
would have allowed judges to ban television and still pictures of jurors' and
potential jurors' faces without holding hearings.
Several journalistic
associations and civil rights groups on November 10, 2005, joined in filing
a lawsuit to compel the Departments of State, Justice, and Homeland Security
and the CIA to release documents that will shed light on whether the United
States is barring prominent international figures from visiting the United States
because of their political views. The suit follows the failure of these agencies
to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that the ACLU filed
in March for records concerning the exclusion of foreign scholars and intellectuals
from the United States under Section 411 of the USA PATRIOT Act. It aims to
force the agencies to release the information as required by law.
The Washington Post's Walter Pincus became, on November 17, 2005, the fifth
journalist currently in contempt of court for refusing to reveal a confidential
source who gave him information about a government investigation of nuclear
scientist Wen Ho Lee. In ruling that Pincus must reveal his source or pay a
$500-a-day fine, U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer wrote that "the
qualified First Amendment reporter's privilege does not protect Mr. Pincus from
revealing his sources and that the reporter's privilege urged by Mr. Pincus
in federal common law is not tenable." Pincus' contempt citation comes
more than a year after five reporters were held in contempt for refusing to
reveal confidential sources in Lee's Privacy Act case against the government.
The contempt citation against one of the reporters was thrown out earlier this
year by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. Pincus argued that the First
Amendment provides a qualified reporter's privilege and that, alternatively,
court rulings that comprise federal common law provide a reporter's privilege.
A Harper's Magazine photographer acted within his First Amendment rights when
he took pictures of an open casket at the funeral of an Oklahoma National Guard
member killed in Iraq, a federal judge ruled on January 4, 2006, in granting
summary judgment to the photographer and the publication. In dismissing the
case, Judge Frank H. Seay of the Eastern District of Oklahoma in Muskogee, Okla.,
ruled Dec. 22 that the First Amendment protected Peter Turnley because his pictures
depicted a public, newsworthy event, trumping Kyle Brinlee's family's privacy
interests during the funeral. The lawsuit arose after the funeral of Brinlee,
who is believed to be the first Oklahoma National Guard member to be killed
in action since the Korean War. At his May 19, 2004, funeral nearly 1,200 people
showed up, including Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry and Turnley, who photographed
the open casket. One of his photos was featured in a photo essay titled "The
Bereaved" in the August 2004 Harper's.
The Guardian newspaper in Britain published reports of an alleged attempt by
the U.S. military to recruit a detained journalist as a spy. The paper said
that U.S. military interrogators allegedly told a journalist for Qatar-based
Al-Jazeera that he would be released if he agreed to inform U.S. intelligence
authorities about the satellite news network's activities. The Guardian published
the allegation on September 26, 2005. CPJ later interviewed the military and
the journalist's lawyer and reviewed letters said to have come from the journalist.
The journalist, Sami Muhyideen al-Haj, an assistant cameraman for Al-Jazeera,
was arrested by Pakistani authorities Dec. 15 2001 along the Afghan-Pakistani
border while on assignment for the network in December 2001. He was later transferred
to U.S. custody. Al-Haj has since been brought to the U.S. military facility
in Guantanamo Bay, where he is being held as an accused "enemy combatant,"
according to his London-based lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith.
The United States government
continues to face criticism for failing to respond to calls for independent
investigation of cases where journalists and media staff have been killed by
U.S. soldiers. Critics say the U.S. attitude is encouraging a culture of impunity
in the killing of media staff around the world.
 questions
or comments? e-mail us
Copyright © 2003 Inter American Press Association.
All rights reserved.
. |
