Out of My Mind

Important story, so the whole column about it gets posted:

Sunshine Week, the AP's spotless mind, and the real threat to free speech

So far this week, the debut of the Washington Post's "Red America" has become one of those blogger-licensing issues -- i.e., our license to blog would be stripped if we didn't weigh in on the controversy by the end of business today. However, we've been sidetracked by a new story that points to the real problem with media bias.

First, and quickly, as for giving young home-schooled creationist Bush accolyte Ben Domenech a high-profile platform on Washingtonpost.com, we would paraphrase Chairman Mao (who we don't go carrying pictures of) and say, "Let a hundred Domenech's bloom" in the infinite playing field of cyberspace." Give young Ben all the space he needs to spew forth his views, because common sense will not merely defeat him in the arena of ideas, but it will rise up and crush him.

It would be one thing if the Washington Post walled off part of its print front page, above the fold, for Red America -- because that space is limited and thus very valuable. The Web is something else entirely. Our point here is that maybe we shouldn't spend some much time wailing about the addition of new voices to the great American political divide, even those on the side we disagree with. The real threat to our national conversation is shutting down and blocking certain viewpoints -- especially when their main offense seems to be criticizing the current government.

That's why we're not nearly as troubled by what's going on at the Washington Post as with what's taking place at the Associated Press:

The longtime chief correspondent for The Associated Press in Vermont has been forced out of his job, stunning the state's journalists and politicians.

Christopher Graff, 52, a writer who was in charge of The A.P.'s Vermont bureau in Montpelier, was told Monday he no longer had a job. The move came after he put a partisan column on the wire, and as the news agency is consolidating some of its bureaus across state lines.

When you look closer however, the issue of whether what he put on the wire was "a partisan column" becomes murkier:

Emerson Lynn, editor and publisher of The St. Albans Messenger, said one clue to Mr. Graff's departure might have been The A.P.'s having told him this month that it was inappropriate for him to have posted a column by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, on the wire.

Mr. Lynn said that for the last two years, The A.P. had prepared a package of articles about Sunshine Week, in which media organizations advocate openness in government. Senator Leahy had written a column highly critical of the Bush administration on the matter for the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

The column said, for example, that "the foundations of our open government are under direct assault from the first White House in modern times that is openly hostile to the public's right to know."

Here's the thing: the Associated Press and the other media groups knew they were going out on a bit of an advocacy limb when they announced "Sunshine Week." Not so coincidentally, the effort was launched in December 2004, the month after George W. Bush was elected to another four years in office. Here's the AP's reasoning (from its own coverage, Dec. 14, 2004):

Tom Curley, president and CEO of the Associated Press, said that the national effort is needed because government secrecy seems to be growing at an "epidemic rate."

"From city hall to Congress, from police chiefs' offices to the attorney general's office, the trend towards secrecy is unmistakable," said Curley, a member of the Sunshine Week steering committee.

But elsewhere in the same article, it becomes patently clear that the reason for that epidemic was the ascendency of George W. Bush:

Members of the committee also cited an Oct. 12, 2001, letter from Attorney General John Ashcroft that was widely interpreted as reversing course on the release of information to the public, putting the onus on citizens to prove why they needed the information.

A Department of Justice official, who declined to be named, said that Ashcroft's memo did not put any new burden on citizens, but that it represented a change in the "emphasis and tone" of freedom of information policy. He would not elaborate further.

The bottom line is this: "Sunshine Week" never would have happened in the first place had there not been a Bush presidency. But then the AP seeks to retroactively censor, in a sense, a piece that dares to call out the main culprit. Maybe they should, you know, raise the blinds a little bit at the "Sunshine Week" headquarters.

It's one thing for a fearful Washington Post to promulgate a young and foolish new voice. It's something else entirely for a fearful Associated Press -- a virtual monopoly wire service -- to attempt to silence a legitimate, experienced voice with a message that Americans need to hear. There are many ways that the big media can do harm to our political discourse, but none is more severe and more troubling than censorship.

(Piece ran here without a copyright.)

And just to be repititve: Can't help wondering whether the realtively sudden sale of Knight-Ridder's newspaper group had anything to do with silencing the groups aggressive journos.