President Bush said Thursday that withdrawing now from Iraq would leave Americans at risk of terrorist attacks “in the streets of our own cities.”
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U.S. military leaders in Baghdad put out for bid a two-year, $20 million public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq.
In a speech before the American Legion on Tuesday, Rumsfeld said that a search of leading newspapers revealed that a soldier punished for misconduct was written about “10 times” as often as the first recipient of the Medal of Honor in anti-terrorism efforts.
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Fox News Channel’s total viewership dropped 7 percent from last August, and it’s prime time audience is down 28 percent. Ratings for The O’Reilly Factor also fell 15 percent.
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A federal judge has ruled that the government can legally tap the phones of anyone handling “material that is not generally available to the public.” Privacy experts says the ruling by Judge T.S. Ellis opens the door for the U.S. government to monitor journalists. Steven Aftergood who edits the journal Secrecy News said,
“If the press could only report on ‘information generally available to the public,’ there would be no need for a press.”
The ruling came in the trial of the two former AIPAC lobbyists who are accused of receiving classified intelligence from a Pentagon official.
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Two Fox journalists kidnapped by militants two weeks ago in Gaza were freed and appeared to be in good health.
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A previously unknown militant group released the first video Wednesday of two kidnapped Fox News journalists and demanded that Muslim prisoners in U.S. jails be released within 72 hours in exchange for the men.
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The New York Times has publicly admitted that it decided not to publish its groundbreaking expose on the Bush administration’s secret domestic surveillance program until after the presidential 2004 election.
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The president of Iran started a blog.
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On Thursday, a federal judge ruled private citizens can be prosecuted if the government decides they’ve received or disclosed information harmful to national security.
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A federal prosecutor may inspect the telephone records of two New York Times reporters in an effort to identify their confidential sources, a federal appeals court in New York ruled yesterday.
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A software contractor for the CIA was fired when she posted a blog entry to the agency’s closed network stating her opposition to torture. The post started like this: “Waterboarding is Torture and Torture is Wrong.”
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Columnist Robert Novak has revealed White House aide Karl Rove was a confirming source in his story outing the CIA operative Valerie Plame. Novak did not reveal who first told him of Plame’s identity.
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The website CNET News.com is reporting the FBI has drafted legislation that would open the door to massive surveillance of internet users. The legislation would force Internet service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance and require manufacturers to build in “backdoor” technology into computer networks that would allow for easy eavesdropping. The surveillance would be approved under an expansion of the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.
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China announced that media outlets would be fined up to $12,500 if they reported on any “sudden events” without prior authorization.
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The Republican-led House of Representatives has passed a resolution condemning news organizations for reporting on classified information that the government wants to keep secret.
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The New York Times accused President George W. Bush of executive arrogance amid a row over the newspaper’s disclosure of a secret government program to monitor international finances.
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Dan Rather has left CBS after more than four decades. Rather stepped down as CBS News anchor last year following controversy over his infamous report on President Bush’s military record. On Tuesday, Rather said he was leaving after CBS offered him “a future with only an office but no assignments.” Rather added: “Too much is made of anchors and their personalities… The larger issues—the role of a free press and of honest, real news in a democracy, the role of technology in supporting a free press, the ‘corporatization’ of news and its effects on news content—all deserve more attention, more discussion and more passionate debate.”
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In the House, lawmakers passed the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act, known as the COPE bill. The controversial telecommunications legislation would permit phone and cable companies to operate Internet and other digital communications service as private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight. The bill would effectively end what is known as “net neutrality” which is the concept that that everyone, everywhere, should have free, universal and non-discriminatory access to the Internet. The bill would also cut back the obligation of cable TV companies to devote channels to public access and fund the facilities to run them. And the COPE bill would replace local cable franchises with national franchises.
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A national coalition of community media organizations is organizing a day of action to save public access television and protect net neutrality.
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The government has the legal authority to prosecute journalists for publishing classified information, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said yesterday.
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