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Title: How Free Is the US Press?
Source:
Arab News
URL Source: http://arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=63293&d=6&m=5&y=2005
Published: May 6, 2005
Author: William Fisher
Post Date: 2005-05-06 15:14:37 by Eoghan
Keywords: Press?, Free
Views: 58
Comments: 7
Recent polling data shows that most Americans think their press is the freest in the world — indeed, some believe it is too free. But according to a new report by Freedom House, a highly respected civil liberties advocacy group, the US is among countries that have experienced “notable setbacks” in press freedom. “Freedom of the Press 2005: A Global Survey of Media Independence,” revealed that the US was tied with Barbados, Canada, Dominica, Estonia, and Latvia at 24th place out of 194 countries covered in the survey. The report said the US score declined due to “a number of legal cases in which prosecutors sought to compel journalists to reveal sources or turn over notes or other material they had gathered in the course of investigations.” It declared, “Doubts concerning official influence over media content emerged with the disclosures that several political commentators received grants from federal agencies, and that the Bush administration had significantly increased the practice of distributing government-produced news segments.” The survey was produced by asking journalists, researchers and legal experts to answer 50 questions covering a wide range of press freedom violations. Of the 194 countries and territories examined, 75 (39 percent) were rated “Free”, 50 (26 percent) were rated “Partly Free” and 69 (35 percent) were rated “Not Free”. The freest nations in 2004 were Finland, Iceland, and Sweden. At the very bottom of the list was North Korea, followed by Burma (Myanmar), Cuba, and Turkmenistan. The second reason for the poorer showing by the US, the Freedom House report claims, is the government’s practice of paying journalists to espouse administration positions without identifying their government sponsors. In one case, the administration — seeking to build support among black families for its education reform plans — paid a prominent African American pundit, Armstrong Williams, $240,000 to promote the “No Child Left Behind” law on his nationally syndicated television show and through his newspaper column, and to urge other black journalists to do the same. In addition, the government has been producing Video News Releases (VNRs) — pre-packaged to look like independent news — and distributing them to local television stations across the US. The stations frequently fail to identify the government as the source, thus encouraging viewers to believe they are watching genuine news. More than 20 different federal agencies have used taxpayer funds to produce television news segments promoting Bush administration policies. Bush has defended the government’s sending such “pre-packaged news stories” to local television stations and says he plans to continue the practice. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Congressional watchdog agency, has called them a form of “covert propaganda”. “Paying journalists to write positive stories is part of a pattern of secrecy and manipulating the public that undermines our safety and our democracy”, Steven Aftergood, who runs the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, told IPS. Rick Blum of OpenTheGovernment.org, another pro-transparency advocacy group, told IPS, “The public expects journalists are credible and independent, free of government money and conflicts of interest.” Norman Solomon, a syndicated columnist on media and politics and founder of the Institute for Public Accuracy, said in an interview with IPS, “The ‘video news releases’ put out by the US government are pernicious because the TV broadcasts often do not tell the viewers that the government is funding and controlling those supposed ‘news’ reports.” And Martin Kaplan, head of the Lear Center at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, told IPS: “The consequence of their injecting fake news into the media mainstream may be even worse than poisoning public debate on specific issues. It corrodes the ability of real journalism to do its job.” But, media critics say, there are many other factors at play in the diminution of press freedom in the US. A major threat, they say, is the Bush administration’s excessive secrecy. Bill Moyers, who recently retired as one of America’s most respected broadcast journalists and who was press secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson when Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act IN 1966, charges that President Bush) “has clamped a lid on public access.” Journalists complain that administration secrecy has greatly increased the difficulty of accurately reporting the Bush White House. According to US News and World Report, the administration has “quietly but efficiently dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government — cloaking its own affairs from scrutiny and removing from the public domain important information on health, safety, and environmental matters. The result has been a reversal of a decades-long trend of openness in government...” The US has been through other periods of censorship and self-censorship, but has always bounced back to fully assert its First Amendment freedoms. The principal difference is that, on most of the previous occasions, press blackouts occurred during wars. And in those days, wars had beginnings and ends. The so-called “war on terror”, which is responsible for much of the fear spreading through newsrooms, may not have an end.
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#1. To: Eoghan (#0)
This is a joke, right?
I think the joke is that there ARE countries with a free press...
Recent polling data shows that most Americans think their press is the freest in the world — indeed, some believe it is too free. Who on earth did they poll?? The same idiots that drink in every word on Fox? And TOO free? What on earth?
The poll was conducted by Freedom House... http://www.freedomhouse.org/index.htm Has the look and smell of a NWO.org front...Zogby-esque...
Freedom house is a Neo-Con outfit. Look at who their writings are by.
Yep, I picked that up with the founder speaking in Congress "to promote democracy worldwide..." That, and the torch logo...It's a front...
http://www.freedomhouse.org/aboutfh/index.htm Freedom House is a clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world. Founded over sixty years ago by Eleanor Roosevelt, Wendell Willkie, and other Americans concerned with the mounting threats to peace and democracy, Freedom House has been a vigorous proponent of democratic values and a steadfast opponent of dictatorships of the far left and the far right. Non-partisan and broad-based, Freedom House is led by a Board of Trustees composed of leading Democrats, Republicans, and independents; business and labor leaders; former senior government officials; scholars; writers; and journalists. All are united in the view that American leadership in international affairs is essential to the cause of human rights and freedom. Over the years, Freedom House has been at the center of the struggle for freedom. It was an outspoken advocate of the Marshall Plan and NATO in the 1940s, of the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, of the Vietnam boat people in the 1970s, of Poland's Solidarity movement and the Filipino democratic opposition in the 1980s, and of the many democracies that have emerged around the world in the 1990s. Freedom House has vigorously opposed dictatorships in Central America and Chile, apartheid in South Africa, the suppression of the Prague Spring, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, and the brutal violation of human rights in Cuba, Burma, China, and Iraq. It has championed the rights of democratic activists, religious believers, trade unionists, journalists, and proponents of free markets. In 1997, a consolidation took place whereby the international democratization training programs of the National Forum Foundation were incorporated into Freedom House. Today, Freedom House is a leading advocate of the world's young democracies, which are coping with the debilitating legacy of statism, dictatorship, and political repression. It conducts an array of U.S. and overseas research, advocacy, education, and training initiatives that promote human rights, democracy, free market economics, the rule of law, independent media, and U.S. engagement in international affairs. Freedom House is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that relies upon tax-deductible grants and donations under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code. Major support has been provided by:
#2. To: Loopy (#1)
#3. To: Eoghan (#0)
#4. To: Zipporah (#3)
#5. To: Eoghan (#4)
#6. To: Loopy (#5)
#7. To: Eoghan (#4)
Has the look and smell of a NWO.org front.
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation The Byrne Foundation The Carthage Foundation The Eurasia Foundation The Ford Foundation The Freedom Forum Grace Foundation, Inc. Lilly Endowment, Inc. The LWH Family Foundation National Endowment for Democracy The Pew Charitable Trusts Sarah Scaife Foundation The Schloss Family Foundation Smith Richardson Foundation, Inc. The Soros Foundations The Tinker Foundation Unilever United States Foundation, Inc. US Agency for International Development US Information Agency Charles Stewart Mott Foundation Whirlpool U.S. Steel
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