Posted from Washington, Oct. 10, 2013
After decades of turning its critical eye to the lack of press freedoms in other countries, the renowned Committee to Protect Journalists today releases its first comprehensive report on working conditions in the United States — and it’s quite damning. (Read as PDF).
Essentially, just when you thought the Obama administration’s “war on national security reporters” couldn’t get any worse, CPJ comes along and describes in detail how the situation is actually far more dire than one might imagine.
The “CPJ Special Report” was authored by Leonard Downie, Jr., the former top editor of the Washington Post, and it is as important as it is scathing. Downie’s report is being released today and, while long, it’s worth reading in its entirety — not just by reporters but by the public and certainly by lawmakers and other observers of the growing security state here in Washington.
That is, in part, due to the stature of the author as well as the organization that commissioned the report. Downie served with distinction as the Post’s executive editor for a remarkable 17 years, and remains a vice president at large at The Post. He is also the Weil Family Professor of Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Investigative Reporters and Editors, (as do I), and is a founder of the grassroots nonprofit organization, which is dedicated to improving the quality of investigative reporting worldwide.
But what gives the report its moral authority is the people quoted in it. Downie and CPJ research associate Sara Rafsky spent months investigating the issue, and talked to dozens of key journalists, lawyers, scholars and government officials, and teased out of them some remarkably astute and candid observations.
I was one of the many journalists interviewed by Downie for the report, which CPJ commissioned after reading some of his earlier postings on the topic. The lead, or “lede,” as they say at newspapers, is that reporters and sources alike are so freaked out that their calls and emails are being read by the government that it’s having a tremendous chilling effect on how the media does its job of holding the government accountable on a wide range of issues, from warrantless wiretapping to constitutionally questionable drone strike to…well, you get the picture.
One of Downie’s particularly newsworthy observations is that the big media chill in the nation’s capital has spread far wider than the public is aware of, and is thwarting the public from getting information about an alarming array of stories and topics.
“U.S. President Barack Obama came into office pledging open government, but he has fallen short of his promise,” Downie writes. “Journalists and transparency advocates say the White House curbs routine disclosure of information and deploys its own media to evade scrutiny by the press. Aggressive prosecution of leakers of classified information and broad electronic surveillance programs deter government sources from speaking to journalists.”
For all the details, click here: “The Obama Administration and the Press: Leak investigations and surveillance in post-9/11 America.’’
In his report, Downie delves into the topic of how the U.S. government tries to keep reporters in check by starting with the Watergate era, in which the Nixon administration’s telephone wiretaps were the biggest concern for journalists and sources worried about government surveillance. He notes in a related op-ed piece in The Washington Post that, “Except for the aborted prosecution of Daniel Ellsberg for the leak of the Pentagon Papers, criminal culpability or pervasive surveillance were not major concerns, especially after Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974.”
But all that changed with the passage of the Patriot Act after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to Downie. Since then, we have seen “a vast expansion of intelligence agencies and their powers, the aggressive exploitation of intrusive digital surveillance capabilities, the excessive classification of public documents and officials’ sophisticated control of the news media’s access to the workings of government.”
As a result, he writes, “journalists who cover national security are facing vast and unprecedented challenges in their efforts to hold the government accountable to its citizens.”
Some are taking extraordinary precautions to keep their sources from becoming casualties in the Obama administration’s war on leaks, such as avoiding telephone conversations and email exchanges and arranging furtive one-on-one meetings instead. A few news organizations have gone so far as to set up separate computer networks and safe rooms for journalists trained in encryption, Downie writes.
Downie doesn’t disclose which media outlets are doing that kind of thing, and demurred when I asked him about it. But it’s safe to say that only the news media organizations with the deepest pockets — such as The Post and other big papers and television networks — will be able to pay for such measures. The vast majority of reporters covering national security will be stuck trying to operate in a world where they assume — and probably rightly so — that everything they say and do is being monitored by the government.
Some in the media praised CPJ for tackling the topic, including the dean at the Cronkite school, Christopher Callahan.
“The fact that the Committee to Protect Journalists felt compelled to investigate the U.S. government’s treatment of the press is a remarkable statement here in the home of the First Amendment,” Callahan said in a statement accompanying the report. “U.S. government tactics are increasingly impeding journalists’ work and placing a chill on newsgathering that could endanger our democracy.”
CPJ says its comprehensive investigation of threats to press freedoms under the Obama administration is its first on the U.S. The organization issues about a half-dozen special reports annually on the state of press freedom in selected countries.
So far in 2013, CPJ says, it has completed reports on Burma, China, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, and Tanzania. The only time the United States has been the subject of a CPJ report was 19 years ago. That report was limited to attacks on immigrant journalists.
CPJ says it plans to send an accompanying series of recommendations to the Obama administration regarding press freedoms in the United States. I’m looking forward to reading them, and hearing from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and perhaps even Obama himself on the recommendations, as well as the report itself. It raises a lot of important issues that require their response.
Josh Meyer is director of education and outreach for the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative. He spent 20 years with the Los Angeles Times before joining Medill in 2010, where he is also the McCormick Lecturer in National Security Studies. Josh is the co-author of the 2012 best-seller “The Hunt For KSM; Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,’’ and a member of the board of directors of Investigative Reporters and Editors.
