As this year turned, the People’s Republic of China was busy persecuting journalists and democracy activists with the assistance of American internet service providers like Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google and Cisco. Spokespeople for the corporations pleaded that their companies need to “operate within the laws, regulations and customs of the country in which they are based.” At the time, I wrote, “The people in the Bush administration who would make a totalitarian nation of the U.S. are watching China, they’re watching the response of American companies to China and they’re watching the response – or non-response – of American citizens.”
Few people paid attention, another outrage – Iraq, Guantanamo, domestic spying – surfaced again and focus shifted. In its July fourth edition, the New York Times reported that Monday, Wang Yongqing, vice minister of the legislative affairs office of China’s State Council, announced that all media outlets – both domestic and foreign – are now forbidden from reporting on “sudden incidents” without permission. “Sudden incidents” includes outbreaks of disease, natural disasters ands social disturbances. “Sudden incidents” is as good a definition of “news” as any. Violators will be fined $12,500 per report.
“If a Chinese reporter goes to France or Britain, he also has to abide by your laws,” Mr. Wang said. “If you engage in reporting activity, you also have to obey these rules.” Sound familiar? Perhaps someone, or more than one someone, has been paying attention to the non-response.
Here in the U.S., Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) and Rep. Peter King (R-NY) called for staffers at the New York Times to be charged with treason for revealing that the Bush administration has been searching Americans’ bank records. George Bush rushed out to the tee vee cameras to call the Times’s revelation “disgraceful;” Dick Cheney chimed in. (Forty years ago, Lyndon Johnson called David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan traitors for their prescient Vietnam reporting.) Various other Republicans, from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to Sen. John Cornyn (TX), have recently threatened news outlets with legal consequences for keeping citizens informed that the National Security Agency is tracking (at a minimum) who’s calling which number when.
It’s not just here. Other “democracies” are getting into the act. The Associated press reports that in London, criminal charges are being brought against the civil servants who leaked a document reporting that Mr. Bush suggested to Tony Blair that the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera should be bombed to keep it silent. Mr. Blair’s government has threatened to bring charges against any news outlet that reports on the Al-Jazeera incident again.
In Denmark, where freedom of expression led to the publication of anti-Islamic cartoons last year, journalists will be put on trial for reporting that the Danish government knew Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.
The governments of the “democracies” that so resemble the repressive government in Beijing, argue that disclosing government secrets endangers national security and tips off our enemies to our intelligence methods.
On the other hand, Bloomberg News reported last Friday that a lawsuit filed in New York claims that Mr. Bush’s NSA surveillance of telephone calls began in February 2001, seven months before the 9-11 attacks and weeks after his inauguration, so maybe there’s another reason the government would like the reporting to stop.
Columnist David Ignatius reminds us in Wednesday’s Washington Post that Richard Nixon made the “disclosing our methods” argument when he tried to prevent the publication of the Pentagon Papers. (One of Mr. Nixon’s methods was the secret invasion of Cambodia.) Thirty-five years later, it’s clear that printing the Pentagon Papers was an act of patriotism in the face of a corrupt and deceitful government. Journalists who do their jobs today are just as patriotic.
As Mr. Ignatius points out, “trust us” is a poor substitute for the First Amendment, especially when the people asking for that trust have lied to us so often and about such important matters. Keep an eye on your democracy; you can watch it fading away.
Fading Away
As this year turned, the People’s Republic of China was busy persecuting journalists and democracy activists with the assistance of American internet service providers like Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google and Cisco. Spokespeople for the corporations pleaded that their companies need to “operate within the laws, regulations and customs of the country in which they are based.” At the time, I wrote, “The people in the Bush administration who would make a totalitarian nation of the U.S. are watching China, they’re watching the response of American companies to China and they’re watching the response – or non-response – of American citizens.”
Few people paid attention, another outrage – Iraq, Guantanamo, domestic spying – surfaced again and focus shifted. In its July fourth edition, the New York Times reported that Monday, Wang Yongqing, vice minister of the legislative affairs office of China’s State Council, announced that all media outlets – both domestic and foreign – are now forbidden from reporting on “sudden incidents” without permission. “Sudden incidents” includes outbreaks of disease, natural disasters ands social disturbances. “Sudden incidents” is as good a definition of “news” as any. Violators will be fined $12,500 per report.
“If a Chinese reporter goes to France or Britain, he also has to abide by your laws,” Mr. Wang said. “If you engage in reporting activity, you also have to obey these rules.” Sound familiar? Perhaps someone, or more than one someone, has been paying attention to the non-response.
Here in the U.S., Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) and Rep. Peter King (R-NY) called for staffers at the New York Times to be charged with treason for revealing that the Bush administration has been searching Americans’ bank records. George Bush rushed out to the tee vee cameras to call the Times’s revelation “disgraceful;” Dick Cheney chimed in. (Forty years ago, Lyndon Johnson called David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan traitors for their prescient Vietnam reporting.) Various other Republicans, from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to Sen. John Cornyn (TX), have recently threatened news outlets with legal consequences for keeping citizens informed that the National Security Agency is tracking (at a minimum) who’s calling which number when.
It’s not just here. Other “democracies” are getting into the act. The Associated press reports that in London, criminal charges are being brought against the civil servants who leaked a document reporting that Mr. Bush suggested to Tony Blair that the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera should be bombed to keep it silent. Mr. Blair’s government has threatened to bring charges against any news outlet that reports on the Al-Jazeera incident again.
In Denmark, where freedom of expression led to the publication of anti-Islamic cartoons last year, journalists will be put on trial for reporting that the Danish government knew Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.
The governments of the “democracies” that so resemble the repressive government in Beijing, argue that disclosing government secrets endangers national security and tips off our enemies to our intelligence methods.
On the other hand, Bloomberg News reported last Friday that a lawsuit filed in New York claims that Mr. Bush’s NSA surveillance of telephone calls began in February 2001, seven months before the 9-11 attacks and weeks after his inauguration, so maybe there’s another reason the government would like the reporting to stop.
Columnist David Ignatius reminds us in Wednesday’s Washington Post that Richard Nixon made the “disclosing our methods” argument when he tried to prevent the publication of the Pentagon Papers. (One of Mr. Nixon’s methods was the secret invasion of Cambodia.) Thirty-five years later, it’s clear that printing the Pentagon Papers was an act of patriotism in the face of a corrupt and deceitful government. Journalists who do their jobs today are just as patriotic.
As Mr. Ignatius points out, “trust us” is a poor substitute for the First Amendment, especially when the people asking for that trust have lied to us so often and about such important matters. Keep an eye on your democracy; you can watch it fading away.
© Mark Floegel, 2006