OPINION
5
Hey, Media: US Jails Journos, Too
'First duty' of press is to hold own gov't accountable
By Matt Cantor
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Posted May 11, 09 12:21 PM CDT
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(Newser)
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The American media are celebrating Iran’s release of journalist Roxana Saberi in a case the press doggedly pursued. But today’s back-patting is hypocritical, writes Glenn Greenwald in Salon: the US media have all but ignored foreign journalists imprisoned by our own government, often with little reason. Case in point: the US held an al-Jazeera cameraman for 6 years without a trial. Where was the media on that one?
We held an AP photographer for two years without a trial in Iraq—“not an isolated incident,” noted the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Dozens of journalists—mostly Iraqis—have been detained by US troops” over a three-year period, the CPJ said. And we’re still holding a freelance photographer for Reuters. “The first duty of the American media,” Greenwald writes, “is to oppose oppressive behavior by our own government,” before “smugly” criticizing other countries.