Page 2 of 2 MEDIA
MACHINATIONS Under the gun in
Afghanistan By Philip Smucker
US soldiers deleted photos and
video taken by Afghan journalists - including a
freelance photographer and a cameraman of the
Associated Press (AP) - covering the aftermath of
a suicide bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan. More
than a dozen civilians were accidentally shot
dead, and Afghan officials claimed marine special
forces fired weapons indiscriminately along a
crowded
highway.
Taqi-ullah
Taqi, a reporter for Afghanistan's largest
television station, Tolo TV, said that US troops
told him (in reference to his pictures), "Delete
them, or we will delete you." United Nations
officials, investigating the incident, said in
interviews that the AP reporter and colleagues
were well outside of the "crime scene" cordon set
up by US soldiers when they began filming a
vehicle of Afghan civilians riddled with bullets.
NATO and US spokesmen disputed that. "The
media were trying to break the security cordon set
up around that area, and what it ultimately comes
down to is people potentially compromising
evidence," said Colonel Thomas Collins, an
American and a senior spokesman for NATO's
International Security Assistance Force mission.
"In my opinion, they had a right to confiscate the
tape" and film.
But that view contradicts
practice and law in the United States. Major US
Supreme Court rulings in recent decades have held
that there can be no "prior restraint" placed on
the public's right to know. Supreme Court Justice
William O Douglas wrote in a famous 1971 case
regarding the New York Times' publishing of the
"Pentagon Papers" that "the dominant purpose of
the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread
practice of government suppression of embarrassing
information".
Threats of physical force
against journalists are always against the law in
any democracy.
Reporters Without Borders,
an international advocate for a free press,
demanded to know after the March 4 suicide attack:
"If the US soldiers had nothing to hide, why have
they done everything to prevent the press from
covering the blunder?"
The marine special
forces unit involved in the incident has been
ordered to return home while a full military
investigation continues. AP lodged a formal
complaint with the US military but, according to
reporters, remains disappointed with the response.
Afghan journalists are also concerned
about proposed changes to an already restrictive
national media law that could make it possible for
the Afghan government to jail journalists for
reporting news deemed "humiliating and offensive".
The changes also envisage a powerful "High
Media Council" to be run by the Supreme Court, the
Ministry of Culture and members of Parliament, but
with no representatives at all from the press
corps.
All the same, there are already
strong advocates of the press in the ranks of the
government, some of whom have served as
journalists.
"The government believes in
freedom of speech and is supporting free and fair
and independent media," said Lutfullah Mashal,
director of strategic communications for the
Afghan National Security Council and a former war
correspondent, who broke the story about Osama bin
Laden's escape from US forces at Tora Bora,
another embarrassing episode for the Pentagon.
"We have 5,000 publications, 98% of which
are private," continued Mashal. "By comparison,
the Taliban [have] only vicious websites and
continue to try to kill and intimidate
journalists."
Removing all shackles from
the Afghan press is a "win, win, lose" situation
for everyone involved, said Mashal. The government
will be seen by the public as open and fair, the
public will be far better informed, and the
Taliban will be exposed for the evil and crimes
they foment.
Note 1. The
First Amendment, part of the US Bill of Rights,
prohibits the federal legislature from making laws
that establish a state religion or prefer a
certain religion, prohibit free exercise of
religion, infringe the freedom of speech, infringe
the freedom of the press, limit the right to
assemble peaceably, or limit the right to petition
the government for a redress of grievances.
Philip Smucker is a commentator
and journalist based in South Asia and the Middle
East. He is the author of Al-Qaeda's Great
Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror's
Trail (2004).
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