Anderson promotes journalism internationally
Kidnapped and taken hostage as a reporter for almost seven years in Lebanon, a renowned journalist and former marine spoke on threats to press freedom Tuesday at Utah State University as part of the Media and Society Lecture Series.
“You cannot have a free society without a free press,” said guest speaker Terry Anderson, honorary co-chair with Walter Cronkite of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Yet he said in the field of journalism today “truth is not always the defense, but quite often an indictment.”
Anderson said the American people are lucky enough to live in a society allowing free press, but after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack “the U.S. government has shown itself to be quite willing to sacrifice a certain number of rights in the war on terrorism, and that is worrisome.”
The government has now classified whole databases which were once public records because of the attack, he said.
According to foia.state.gov “the Freedom of Information Act generally provides that any person has a right to request access to federal agency records, except to the extent the records are protected from disclosure by any of nine exemptions contained in the law or by one of three special law enforcement record exclusions.”
Classifying once-public databases removes the ability of citizens to check if the government is doing their job properly to protect them he said.
“We the people govern the nation, but we can’t do that if we don’t know what the hell is going on,” Anderson said.
One of the only ways citizens and journalists can change this is by continuing to report the truth, he said.
Anderson said if a person wants to know how well a country is doing just take a look at how free their press is.
One of the missions of the CPJ is to monitor attacks on the press and work in behalf of jailed journalists, he said.
Anderson said a Russian reporter was jailed because he reported on dumping nuclear waste into the sea, and there are journalists in Ethiopia and Columbia who are also in trouble with their governments.
“When a journalist is thrown in jail or threatened, it’s for a purpose – to shut them up,” he said.
Yet the United States is not to be counted out from this abuse, he said.
Marshall Thompson, a senior print journalism major and journalist in the military, said when he was sent to Kosovo to report, everyday military officers told him he couldn’t write on a particular issue.
“Ninety percent of those requests were not legitimate,” Thompson said.
Anderson said when he reported overseas he had marines point their guns at him and threaten to shoot.
“The American military has been seriously confused about their enemy for a long time,” he said. “And no journalist in any war has ever revealed tactical information that put someone in danger.”
Last year 37 journalists were killed covering war, which is up by 24 from the last year, and 118 are in jail.
One of those journalists jailed is in the United States. That makes the United States one of two countries to ever keep a journalist in jail, Anderson said.
He said in the recent death of Daniel Pearl, a reporter taken hostage in Pakistan, the CPJ did the best they could to help. They issued news releases, held press conferences and sent missions to meet with the government, but it was an unfortunate incident.
“I don’t think they intended to let [Pearl] go, they were using him as a weapon,” he said.
However, every year the CPJ features a journalist in jail somewhere in the world and they are always set free, he said.
If those journalists are not able to tell the truth, then citizens of any country are not able to know anything about the world, he said.
“I admire the local journalists I have met around the world,” Anderson said.
“These people don’t know if they will be free or even alive at the end of the day, but they do know how important it is to establish a free press,” he said.
In addition to the information journalists provide, Anderson said people today have at their fingertips far more information than yesterday and they are better informed.
And although the Internet can be dangerous, it is an incredible tool if used correctly, he said.
Yet people today lack a sense of responsibility or mission to gather and process this information in order to know the truth, he said.
So, “it’s not just a wasteland anymore, it’s a toilet,” he said.
But is spend a lot of time talking about the problems in the journalism profession until students get the idea it’s too hard. That is not true. Journalists are accomplishing their missions every day, Anderson said.