RSF: Press Freedom Index 2010

Although Reporters Without Borders welcomed the enactment of the Daniel Pearl Act in May 2010, requiring the State Department to list countries that threaten press freedoms and tolerate violence against journalists, several incidents over the past year raise questions about the government’s use of national security concerns to try to curb media access to issues of legitimate public interest.

The WikiLeaks release of a 2007 video of a US helicopter attack in Iraq that killed 12 people including two Reuters staff and the Pentagon’s decision to ban four journalists from military commissions at Guantanamo Bay a month later, although eventually reversed, highlighted the military’s perceived lack of transparency and inconsistencies in its compliance with to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Two weeks ago, in a new blow to the FOIA, the US Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal by 23 lawyers representing Guantanamo Bay detainees who want the National Security Agency to reveal whether it tapped their phone conversations with their clients and, if so, to provide them with transcripts.

“The Obama administration should back up its own talk on media rights. Signing the Daniel Pearl act is not enough to show its commitment to press freedom within the country”, the organization said.

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