UNITED STATE

The U.S.-led war in Iraq , heightened security in the United States and pressure to identify confidential sources continue to dominate press freedom issues at home and abroad. By the latest count, 26 Iraqi and foreign journalists and media employees have been killed during the Iraqi conflict, either by US troops, militia gunmen or terrorist bombings, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. In the latest scandal involving prisoner abuse, four Iraqi employees of Western news organizations said they were mistreated in January 2004 at an American base in Iraq . Three work for Reuters and the fourth for NBC News . The claims were originally dismissed by the Pentagon before a proper investigation was ordered. Reuters and NBC have expressed frustration at what they describe as the Pentagon's incomplete inquiry and lack of response. The accusations include reports of practices similar to abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib. The four men were arrested January 2 after trying to report on the downing of an American helicopter near Fallujah. They were held for three days even though the military was quickly notified that they were media employees. The three Reuters employees have been named as Reuters cameramen, Salem Ureibi, 54, and Ahmad Mohammed Hussein, 26, and their driver Sattar Jabar, 26. All four men say they were physically abused while being held at Forward Operating Base Volturno. They say they were hit by American soldiers, deprived of sleep and threatened with sexual assault and photographed while being forced to simulate sex acts. In the on-going Valerie Plame case involving confidential sources, the US Court of Appeals for the Washington DC circuit decided on Feb 15 that reporters for The New York Times and Time magazine can be jailed if they continue to refuse to answer questions about their sources before a grand jury. A lawyer for the two reporters, Judith Miller and Matt Cooper said he would ask the full appeals court to reverse the ruling, or take the case to the Supreme Court if necessary. The grand jury in that case is investigating whether an administration official knowingly revealed the identity of an undercover CIA officer. The investigation stems from the mention in a Robert Novak column naming Plame, whose husband is former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Disclosure of the identity of an undercover intelligence officer can be a federal crime, if prosecutors can show the leak was intentional. A federal judge in Washington DC held US reporter Judith Miller of The New York Times in contempt of court October 7 for not disclosing confidential sources to prosecutors investigating the official leak. Judge Thomas F. Hogan ordered Miller to be held in jail until she agrees to testify about her sources before a grand jury. She was allowed to remain free while her lawyer appeals the judge's ruling. The same judge ordered Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper jailed October 13 for up to 18 months and the magazine fined $1,000 a day for refusing to testify. The judge also suspended the sentence pending the outcome of an appeal. Cooper earlier agreed to provide limited testimony to the grand jury after one of his sources, vice presidential aide Lewis ?Scooter? Libby, released him from a promise of confidentiality. But a special prosecutor later issued a second, broader subpoena seeking the names of other sources. Miller and New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller have said they would not agree to provide testimony even under those circumstances. In another similar case, a New York federal judge, Robert Sweet, ruled that The New York Times did have a qualified right under federal law to protect the identity of its sources by refusing to release telephone records to a prosecutor. A prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, had argued that he needed the phone records for a grand jury investigation of government misconduct in the disclosure to two reporters, Judith Miller and Philip Shenon, of impending government actions against two Islamic charities. The prosecutor contends that the reporters alerted the charities to impending raids. The reporters say they were engaged in routine news gathering. The appeals court ruling is likely to accelerate moves afoot in Congress to pass a ?shield? law allowing reporters to keep the identities of their sources secret. An increasing number of journalists have faced court orders and the threat of jail in a wide range of cases. In December 2004 a federal judge sentenced a Providence TV reporter, Jim Taricani, to six months of house arrest for contempt after he refused to divulge who had leaked him a copy of a videotape of a city official taking a bribe from an undercover FBI informant. In August 2004 a judge found five reporters in contempt and subject to $500 a day in fines for refusing to say who gave them information about Wen Ho Lee, the former nuclear physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico . Lee, who was suspected of spying but never charged, had sued the government for revealing confidential information about him. Last summer three reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle and two others at the San Jose Mercury news were asked by federal prosecutors to reveal who had leaked information about the grand jury investigation into illegal steroid distribution by BALCO, Bay Area Laboratory Corp. A Chicago grand jury is investigating the leak of information about a planned FBI raid on the Global Relief Foundation, an Islamic charity suspected of funding terrorism. Representatives of the charity have said they were tipped off the day before the December 14, 2001 raid by reporters calling for comment. U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who is also acting as the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame investigation, was denied permission in 2003 by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to subpoena reporters' telephone records. DOJ regulations require that ?all reasonable attempts should be made to obtain information from alternative sources before considering issuing a subpoena to a member of the news media,? or for ?telephone toll records of any member of the news media.? On December 1, 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago dismissed Global Relief's libel suit against the Times and other news organizations for their reporting on the government's investigation. On February 24, 2005, a federal district judge in New York City held that the Times had the right to keep its phone records confidential. U.S. District Judge Robert W. Sweet held that the records are protected by a qualified privilege under the First Amendment and under common law, and that prosecutors had failed to overcome the privilege. Several conservative commentators have come under scrutiny over issues of conflict of interest for so-called ?payola? contracts with the Bush administration. The Bush administration has acknowledged that it paid at least three conservative commentators to promote its political agenda. President Bush has publicly expressed his disapproval of such contacts and ordered cabinet heads to put a stop to any payments of this kind. Not only are these arrangements considered a professional violation of ethics but could also be an illegal attempt to distort public opinion. The three cases reported so far involve: Michael MacManus who was paid $10,000 to train counselors about marriage by the Department of Health and Human Services; Armstrong Williams who entered into a $240,000 contract with the Education Department; and Maggie Gallagher, who has admitted having a $21,500 deal with the Department of Health and Human Services. In January the Bush administration decided not to continue its challenge of a court ruling that blocked the relaxation of media ownership rules. The decision could affect the future of newspapers and TV stations owned by the Tribune Company and Media General which both made acquisitions in anticipation of further deregulation. Relaxation of the rules had been backed by the broadcast networks, but has been strongly criticized by others as permitting the media to be concentrated in too few hands.

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