Bush Administration Looking To Weaken Journalists Right To Ask [View All]

[JABBS]

The Bush Administration has provided a $1 million grant to a Texas Law School, to do research aimed at rolling back the amount of data available to the public through freedom-of-information requests.

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What's really going on? Conservatives are once again looking for ways to restrict the power of what they see as a liberal, anti-Bush press. Other conservatives have been talking up re-establishing a U.S. Office of Censorship, seemingly for similar reasons.

Over the past four years, the Republican-led Congress has closed some meetings and restricted some access to records for fear of making information available to terrorists, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Arlington, Va.

Irrational fear? Possibly. A back-handed way to obstruct what they see as "liberal media bias?" Absolutely.

Let's remember, the First Amendment provides for freedom of the press -- not freedom of the press when convenient. When Congress seeks to restrict our freedoms, ask yourself: what kind of democracy are we fighting to bring to Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere?

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