Speaking to the media just a year ago against the backdrop of continued criticism of the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, President Bush defended that treatment and urged the media to go down there and see for themselves:
You’re welcome to go down yourself — maybe you have — and taking a look at the conditions. I urge members of our press corps to go down to Guantanamo and see how they’re treated and to see — and to see — and to look at the facts. …
I would urge you to go down and take a look at Guantanamo….I seriously suggest you go down there and take a look. And — seriously, take an objective look as to how these folks are treated…
Bill O’Reilly did just that recently, claiming he had been given “almost total access to the prison” (a claim which, if true, suggests that O’Reilly was exempted from the very heavy restrictions usually imposed upon journalists visiting Guantanamo), and he returned to wax eloquent repeatedly that “there’s absolutely no evidence that I’ve seen that says any abuse is taking place at Guantánamo Bay.”
Three other journalists who visited Guantanamo shortly after the suicides of three detainees there on June 10th met with a somewhat different reception. Their permission to visit the base was revoked, and they were asked to leave. The story was played down initially by most of the mainstream media, including The New York Times, which carried a terse, 74 word article back on June 15th:
Reporters Must Leave Guantánamo By NEIL A. LEWIS
The Pentagon ordered three reporters at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to leave, officials and the reporters said. The reporters, from The Miami Herald, The Los Angeles Times and The Charlotte Observer, had been reporting on the suicides of three detainees last weekend. Lt. Cmdr. J. D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said other news organizations had threatened to sue if they were not given similar access or if the other reporters at Guantánamo did not leave.
It has since become clear that the reasons given for the expulsion were false, and the story has been gaining momentum, spurred on by articles written by the expelled journalists themselves. Editor & Publisher today carried a long article providing fresh and disturbing insight into this new round of Guantanamo censorship:
Fallout From Gitmo Reporter Expulsions Continues Coast to Coast By Joe Strupp
NEW YORK The fallout from last week’s expulsion of four journalists from Guantanamo Bay by military officials, who claimed the move was necessary to appease other media outlets seeking similar access, continued in recent days as newspapers from The New York Times to the Los Angeles Times raised concerns about the move.
In addition, journalism organizations such as the Society of Professional Journalists have weighed in on the reporter banishment, claiming the removal of journalists following the suicides of three detainees just a week ago was wrong.
“This is the sort of banana-republic intimidation of the press we sneer at when it occurs on other points on the globe,” Charles N. Davis, co-chairman of SPJ’s Freedom of Information Committee, said in a statement. “The American public deserves nothing less than knowing what’s going on at Guantanamo.”
But the latest reaction has come from newspapers themselves.
Carol Williams of the Los Angeles Times, one of the reporters forced to leave last Wednesday after five days in the area, wrote a harsh column Sunday in which she pointed out how the military’s willingness to remove journalists from the controversial base during a major news event there — such as the suicides — is misguided. Michael Gordon and Todd Sumlin of the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer and Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald also were expelled on Wednesday.
“In the best of times, covering Guantanamo means wrangling with a Kafkaesque bureaucracy, with logistics so nonsensical that they turn two hours of reporting into an 18-hour day, with hostile escorts who seem to think you’re in league with Al Qaeda, and with the dispiriting reality that you’re sure to encounter more iguanas than war-on-terror suspects,” Williams wrote in her piece. “In the worst of times–this past week, for example–those quotidian discomforts can be compounded by an invasion of mating crabs skittering into your dormitory, a Pentagon power play that muzzles already reluctant sources and an unceremonious expulsion to Miami on a military plane, safety-belted onto whatever seat is available. In this case, that seat was the toilet.
“I ended up on that plane, on that seat, because of a baffling move by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s office, in which the only three newspaper reporters who managed to surmount Pentagon obstacles to covering the first deaths at Guantanamo were ordered off the base Wednesday,” she added. “Rumsfeld’s office said the decision was made ‘to be fair and impartial’ to the rest of the media, which the government had refused to let in. Rumsfeld’s gatekeepers have long made clear that they view outside scrutiny of the detention operations as a danger to the Bush administration’s secretive and often criticized campaign to indefinitely detain ‘enemy combatants.’ But this time, their actions seemed counterproductive because booting out [the four journalists] only provoked fresh demands to learn what the government is hiding.”
The E&P story also suggests that Col. Mike Bumgarner may have himself been ejected from Guantanamo for allowing just a little too much access to Michael Gordon of the Charlotte Observer.
“In a traditionally closed military society, Bumgarner, 47, is an open book. In the hours after the suicides, when some of his superiors wanted to close ranks, the Kings Mountain native kept a promise to throw open the doors on himself and his command,” Gordon wrote. “But he also may have jeopardized his career.”
Gordon went on to detail how Bumgarner had helped Gordon and his photographer report on the suicides in the hours and days after they occurred, saying, “while the Pentagon tried to lock off the military base that day, Bumgarner opened Camp Delta to two Observer journalists who flew in the same day of the suicides to do a long-scheduled story on the colonel. For the next two days, Bumgarner welcomed the pair in his war room as he and his staff discussed ways to make sure more suicides didn’t take place.”
But Gordon’s story ends with an epilogue indicating Bumgarner may have been silenced for his troubles. “Tuesday night, while packing to leave Guantanamo Bay, I called Bumgarner’s cell phone to say goodbye. A strange voice answered. I thought I dialed a wrong number, so I hung up. A few moments later, my phone rang. It was Navy Capt.-select Katie Hampf, Bumgarner’s second-in-command. She now had Bumgarner’s phone because she was acting prison commander. She wouldn’t say any more. The Pentagon would not talk about Bumgarner’s status. A spokesman said Bumgarner’s decision to allow us to listen in on staff meetings and observe other activities inside the prison ‘adds to an already complex and difficult situation’.”
Now back to The New York Times which today carried a much more detailed follow-up article to its earlier 74-word foray into this incident. Missed it, you say? Well that is quite understandable. The piece, “Evictions Raise the Tension Level at Guantanamo By Julie Bosman, is not mentioned among “Today’s Headlines” that the Times sends out daily via e-mail. If you go to the Home Page you’ll find “Playskool Is Expanding to Baby Care” among the Business Stories, but you won’t find any reference to Julie Bosman’s article. You won’t find any reference to it anywhere else on the home page either. But click on the Business section, and there you’ll find the seventh Business story under the sub-section of “Media & Advertising” is… yup, Julie Bosman’s story about media censorship at Guantanamo Bay.
One might well ask why a story about Pentagon censorship was assigned to someone on the business beat to begin with, but that question aside, Julie’s beat did not mean the story had to be carried in the Business section. Back in April she collaborated on a story about The New York Post: “Scandal Jolts a Scandal Sheet, and Gossip Swirls.” That story made the coveted New York Times Front Page.
Here are excerpts from today’s Times piece. Ask yourself why this story merited no mention in the e-mailed headlines nor a link on the Home Page. Ask why it landed in the Media and Advertising sub-set of the Business Section. Better yet, ask The New York Times.
Evictions Raise the Tension Level at Guantánamo By JULIE BOSMAN
Last Wednesday, after spending four days reporting from the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, three newspaper reporters and a photographer were ordered off the island by the Pentagon.
…The journalists, from The Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald and The Charlotte Observer, left Guantánamo after reporting on the suicides of three prisoners.
The Charlotte Observer said its reporter, who was originally assigned to write a profile on a military commander at the base, may have obtained too many details about the military’s response to the suicides, leading the Pentagon to impose new restrictions on reporters.
Others have suggested that the decision was a bureaucratic tussle between the public affairs office at the Pentagon and military commanders on the base.
The Pentagon said it removed the reporters in an attempt to level the field with other reporters who had been denied access to the base after the suicides. The decision prompted protests from several lawyers representing prisoners and from Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group for journalists.
But the abrupt expulsions also reflect the continuing tensions between the military personnel who oversee the base, which has served as a prison camp for suspected terrorists since early 2002, and reporters who are trying to gather information in the highly secure environment.
Journalists have complained that they are banned from interviewing detainees, that their movements around the base are tightly controlled and that they receive little information from public affairs personnel.“Everybody would like unfettered access, come and go as you please, talk to everybody you want to, but that’s not what this is,” said Dave Wilson, the managing editor for news at The Miami Herald. “We understand that and have tried to work with it.”
Reporters who visit Guantánamo are usually reluctant to criticize the military publicly because it controls their access to the base. Once there, reporters are paired with “minders,” who organize and restrict their movements and escort them around the grounds.
The latest skirmish between the military and the press began June 10, when the Pentagon announced that three detainees had hanged themselves in their cells. A group of reporters already had been planning to travel to Guantánamo on a military plane from Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington, to cover the scheduled hearing of an Ethiopian detainee on June 12. But after the suicides, the Pentagon quickly canceled the hearing and the reporters’ flight.
Two reporters, Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald and Carol J. Williams of The Los Angeles Times, who were traveling by a different route, were also notified by the Pentagon on June 10 that the hearing had been canceled and they were no longer authorized by the Pentagon to visit the base. But they requested authorization from the prison’s commander to visit anyway. Permission was granted, and they boarded their small commercial flight as planned…One reporter, Michael Gordon of The Charlotte Observer, and Todd Sumlin, a photographer for the paper, were already on the base, preparing a profile of Col. Michael Bumgarner, a prison commander and a native of Kings Mountain, N.C., near Charlotte.
Rick Thames, the editor of The Charlotte Observer, said the Pentagon was unhappy with articles Mr. Gordon had filed, including an account of a morning staff meeting on June 12 led by Colonel Bumgarner.
Mr. Gordon had quoted Colonel Bumgarner as telling the staff, “The trust level is gone,” referring to the detainees. “They have shown time and time again that we can’t trust them any farther than we can throw them.” Mr. Thames of The Observer said, “We can’t be certain, but we believe the Pentagon was uneasy with close-up access to the operations of the prison at a time of crisis,” adding, “Clearly, they were at odds over this.”
…
Readers of The New York Times deserve to know about this story, and now they do. That is they do if they happened to wander over to “Media & Advertising” to get the news of the day about Guantanamo.
