• Submitted by: manso
• international
• 09 / 11 / 2010

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Published: September 10, 2010. The Pentagon has agreed to revise some of the rules that have restricted what journalists are free to report on from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, resolving a conflict that peaked in May when four reporters were expelled from the naval base there.

In a significant compromise, the Pentagon agreed to no longer require that reporters withhold information that the military considers privileged if such information has already been publicly revealed or independently verified. A coalition of news organizations, including The Associated Press, The New York Times and The Miami Herald, had filed a complaint with the Pentagon that such restrictions amounted to an unconstitutional imposition of prior restraint.

The revised policy now specifies that journalists will not be considered in violation of the rules if what they report “was legitimately obtained” in the course of newsgathering done outside Guantánamo.

A dispute over independently verified information was the central issue in the case involving the four reporters who were barred from the base. They each printed the name of a former Army interrogator who was a witness against a Canadian citizen accused of killing an American soldier in Afghanistan and detained at Guantánamo. The interrogator’s name had been mentioned in many news accounts of the case, but a military judge had declared his name protected information.

The Pentagon has also agreed for the first time to allow journalists to formally challenge in writing decisions by the public affairs office. Previously, there was little recourse if journalists were denied information or told they could not report something.

Other aspects of the media ground rules at Guantánamo, which news organizations have objected to as inflexible and arbitrarily enforced, were also relaxed. Provisions that expressly prohibited acts like gum chewing and stretching in military courtrooms have been dropped.

Every image brought to Guantánamo on a camera — regardless of whether it was taken there — is still subject to review by military censors daily. But the military pledged to be more flexible and not automatically delete photos with water towers and antennas in the background.

“Taken as a whole, this should make the atmospherics surrounding the journalism that takes place there at least seem more normal and less hostile,” said Mark Seibel, a managing editor for McClatchy, owner of The Miami Herald, which had one of its reporters expelled in May. “I actually think the Pentagon has moved quite a distance.”

By JEREMY W. PETERS

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/us/11gitmo.html?_r=1