Decline and Fall

"The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by a despotic government."
--Thomas Jefferson

Another coup for the Bush Administration: hacking away at the First Amendment. In terms of press freedom, America has gone from the 17th freest country to the 53rd since 2002. We're now officially more hostile to reporters than Bolivia, Benin or Namibia. We're tied with Lithuania. Why did this happen? The War On Terror explains part of it, but not all.

The United States (53rd) has fallen nine places since last year, after being in 17th position in the first year of the Index, in 2002. Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.” The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 US states, refuse to recognise the media’s right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism.

Freelance journalist and blogger Josh Wolf was imprisoned when he refused to hand over his video archives. Sudanese cameraman Sami al-Haj, who works for the pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera, has been held without trial since June 2002 at the US military base at Guantanamo, and Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein has been held by US authorities in Iraq since April this year.

Clearly that Thomas Jefferson guy is a subversive and needs to be silenced.

The President has told us many times that we are hated because we are free. My prediction: the Administration's next move will be to tell us that by making us less free, they're reducing the terrorists' hatred for us. They won't attack us again if they don't hate us anymore! Right?

Via Glenn Greenwald, whose post is worth reading in full.