watchingamerica.com: Washington's Attack on Freedom of the Press

[unhappycamper]

Washington's Attack on Freedom of the Press
By Enrique del Val Blanco, Economist and Political Analyst
July 7, 2005

In one of the gravest attacks on freedom of the press in the supposed mother country of democracy and freedom, journalists have been cornered by jail threats, and the media has once again yielded before government pressure, revealing their sources of information.

It all began when a journalist from Time magazine and The New York Times revealed the name of the wife of an American diplomat, the wife being an undercover agent of the much-feared Central Intelligence Agency.

In fact, revealing the identity of an agent who conducts covert operations, from killing people to destabilizing out-of-favor regimes, activities that have been well-demonstrated over the last century, mainly the second half, is a crime one commits at pain of 10 years in prison.

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But independently of who was the source of the information and who benefits from it, we must face the lamentable fact and this attack on the sources of intelligence will create a very bad precedent, not only for the American press, but worldwide. We all know how often it is, that to get to the truth, reporters need confidential sources, and that this is the only way the public is ever informed of what is actually happening.

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