Obama’s Free-Speech Disconnect

Readers Have a Stake in Obama’s Free-Speech Disconnect

“efforts to restrict speech can quickly become
a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities”

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

 

President Obama’s ode to free speech at the United Nations on Tuesday was welcome for those of us who put the First Amendment almost on par with our first-born children.

“In a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities,” Mr. Obama said, in the context of recent anti-American tumult in the Muslim world.

Speech, of course, is not just people shouting in a public square, not just a billboard, not just a violence-inducing film.

It’s also a newspaper article, a book, a Web site. It’s Keith Olbermann, it’s Rush Limbaugh and it’s everyone along the spectrum. The First Amendment protects these as well, and American journalists are grateful that it does.
New York Times readers, whom I represent as public editor, should be, too. Free speech allows journalists to do their jobs — getting information to the public so that they can be informed citizens.

Mr. Obama’s speech seems to be in keeping with all of that. The Washington Post called it “refreshingly clear.” The Times said it was “much needed.”

But with all the praise Mr. Obama received for his protection of free speech on one of the world’s largest stages, it’s worth acknowledging that he has also authorized the federal government to engage in an unprecedented crackdown on journalists and whistle-blowers here in the United States, relentlessly pursuing and initiating new cases against journalists and their sources.

Consider the Times reporter James Risen — whose 2005 work with Eric Lichtblau on the federal government’s use of warrantless wiretapping was perhaps the most important national security journalism of the last decade.  Mr. Risen has been under constant pressure from the Justice Department to reveal his confidential sources. Federal prosecutors say one of those sources is the former C.I.A. official Jeffery Sterling, whom they accuse of leaking secrets about American efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program to Mr. Risen for his 2006 book “State of War.” (Glenn Greenwald wrote powerfully about Mr. Obama and Mr. Risen last year in Salon.)

Just this month, according to the Web site Secrecy News, government lawyers continued their full-court press against Mr. Risen:

Government attorneys this week reiterated their argument that New York Times reporter James Risen “does not have a ‘reporter’s privilege’ to refuse to identify his source” in the prosecution of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who is accused of disclosing classified information to Risen. The attorneys cited a new ruling in another Circuit that rejected a similar claim of privilege, and they urged the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm their position.

Mr. Risen and Mr. Sterling are not the only two who have been pursued. There have been others. 
It’s worth noting that Mr. Obama’s prosecution of whistle-blowers is not an isolated instance of the disconnect between words and actions on free speech.

The Post reported on Wednesday on the controversy surrounding the recently released book “No Easy Day” and the levels to which its description of the killing of Osama bin Laden can be discussed in the Department of Defense. (Whistleblower.org offers a good take on a similar topic.)

And lastly, who can forget when the Air Force blocked its employees’ access to The Times’s Web site and those of more than 25 other news organizations that published diplomatic communications obtained by WikiLeaks.

Mr. Obama’s notice to the world that “efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities” should also be employed at home.

So, yes, I’m glad to hear Mr. Obama’s words defending free speech. But in the context of First Amendment press rights – so important to readers — I’d like to see his administration’s actions keep pace with his rhetoric.

Sourced : NYT-OP