- (AP) -- Associated Press president
Tom Curley says his news organization does not buy the government's argument
that one of its photographers arrested in Iraq was working on behalf of
the enemy, and he alleged the US is rounding up journalists in an attempt
to control information.
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- "To say the least, we see things very differently,"
Curley commented dryly, regarding photographer Bilal Hussein, who was arrested
two years ago and remains in military custody.
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- Noting that at least a dozen other Iraqi photographers
have been detained or arrested, Curley stated, "It's impossible not
to conclude that the words and pictures these journalists produced were
considered unhelpful to the war effort and that their arrests would have
served a broader strategy of information control."
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- Curley also called on journalists to demand that all
the presidential candidates make a commitment to reversing a directive
issued by Attorney General John Ashcroft shortly after September 11 that
radically restricted the scope of the Freedom of Information Act.
-
- Ashcroft's memo
stated, "When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold
records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of
Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis
or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability of other
agencies to protect other important records."
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- Curley told the National Press Club, "When a matter
of public policy poses a straight-up choice between the public's rights
of access to government and a government effort to infringe or even narrow
those rights, journalists cannot pretend to be disinterested observers."
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- "This is the moment to make it clear to all the
presidential candidates how important reversal of the Ashcroft directive
is to us and to the people," Curley continued. "We need to ask
the candidates at every opportunity ... whether they are willing to appoint
an attorney general willing to follow the spirit as well as the letter
of the law that protects the people's right to know what their government
is doing."
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