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Your Right to Know About Environment, Natural Resources, and Energy -- A First Amendment WatchBlog |
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AP Honcho Curley Declares Campaign Against Government Secrecy Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley has announced a plan to strengthen his organization's advocacy of open government. He unveiled it May 7, 2004, in Riverside, CA, as he spoke in the Hays Press-Enterprise Lecture series. "The powerful have to be watched, and we are the watchers," Curley said, "and you don't need to have your notebook snatched by a policeman to know that keeping an eye on government activities has lately gotten a lot harder." Curley said, according to an AP story, that the AP will continue doing open records compliance audits at the state level. He said that state AP bureau chiefs will monitor whether still and video cameras have access to state and federal courtrooms, and that AP will mount legal challenges when access is denied. "We will issue fresh instructions to AP editors at every level," Curley said, "to be sure that any news story that benefits from an FOI request or suffers from lack of public information that was refused by a government source says so clearly." Most importantly, perhaps, Curley vowed to tie in with and support the efforts of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, American Society of Newspaper Editors, Society of Environmental Journalists and others (including SEJ) who have banded together under the umbrella of the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government. He announced that AP plans to bolster this effort by opening a media advocacy center to lobby in Washington for open government. "I know that some in the journalism community would strongly disapprove of a project of this kind," Curley said. "They believe the role of journalists is to remain strictly impartial, and that express backing for even the best intended legislation would compromise that role. I respectfully disagree." Curley said he was reminded of a story about a man who was "so broadminded that he wouldn't take his own side in a fight." "A fight is what this is," he said. "A fight is what our system of government intends and expects it to be." -- "AP President Proposes Media Lobby to Fight Government Secrecy," AP via San Diego News-Tribune, May 8, 2004, by Linda Deutch |
