Reporters Without Borders

On May 17th, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Press Freedom Act, also known as the Daniel Pearl’s Act, in honor of the Wall Street Journal reporter who was killed by terrorists in 2002. The new act would require the State Department to list countries that threaten press freedoms and tolerate violence against journalists. It "puts us clearly on the side of journalistic freedom," Obama said.

“We welcome the move and believe it strengthens America’s commitment to press freedom around the world”, said the press freedom organization. “However, we also believe the act would gain even more credibility if American authorities lived up to their promises of increased transparency and access to information” added the press freedom organization.

Since the beginning of 2010, several incidents have tarnished the current administrations record with the press. In March, Congress passed a bill aimed to prevent Arab based satellite providers from broadcasting, and opens the possibility of implementing punitive measures against satellite providers that carry al-Aqsa TV, al Manar TV and al-Rafidayn TV.

In April, the whistleblower website WikiLeaks released a video of a 2007 US military Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad that killed two Reuters employees and several other people. The Pentagon had refused to release the footage to Reuters, a decision Reporters Without Borders believes is a violation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA.) The leaked video seemed to contradict the military’s official version of events and Reporters Without Borders has since renewed its call for an investigation into the matter.

On May 17th, Reporters Without Borders once again condemned the Pentagon’s attitude towards the press, this time for attempting to ban 4 reporters from the Guantanamo Bay military commissions. The four journalists published the name of a witness whose identity was already a well established matter of public record. The decision has since been appealed by 3 of media organizations involved and Reporters Without Borders hopes it will be overturned.

The United States climbed 16 places on the Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom Index in 2009, from 36th to 20th, in just one year. Six months later, Reporters Without Borders fears the situation has again deteriorated.

Reporters Without Borders also published the tesimony of Anthony Chai, an American citizen from California, interrogated by Thai officials in Thailand and again later in the U.S. for allegedly insulting the monarchy in 2006 on a website hosted in the U.S. The Thai authorities filed a complaint against him and he is now very likely to be arrested if he goes back to Thailand because of its activities on the US soil.

Photo by Mark Wilson/UPI/POOL