There's no greater test of the strength of a nation's free press than wartime. In the ongoing 'war on terror,' the White House sees the battle for domestic popular opinion as one of the main fronts.

Has truth become a casualty of the campaign to whip up support?

Before getting underway, panelists said their hellos to each other, making their way over to the dynamically demure Helen Thomas (who hit one out of the park again yesterday).

[See Flickr for the whole lot of the shots I took]

Moderator Geneva Overholser, whom I was fortunate to share some time with as a participant in the pre-NCMR Journalism That Matters sessions [coverage here and here], opened the discussion by reflecting on the hopefullness and energy of so many gathered in Memphis to work on making our media in America better. [Full program audio]

But, Overholser also gently cautioned against an "emphasis on negativism:"

"There are so many people in newsrooms whose hopes are very much like the hopes that I'm hearing expressed here today and who are seeing their hopes crushed by a lot of the realities of daily journalism."

"I certainly understand the criticisms, and they need to be heard more by people in the media world. But it seems to me that since these people are such fruitful and potential allies in this quest, that it's kind of an impediment to make sweeping generalizations about the abysmal uselessness of all of the work of the mainstream media. [applause]"

She said it is a bit of a "coup," that it is now widely agreed that there were terrible failures in news coverage leading up to the Iraq war.

Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush [excerpt] (he also worked for five years as senior writer for Salon.com writing exclusively on media and politics), agreed with Overholser:

There are wonderful reporters doing great work, and particularly when we talk about Iraq. We wouldn't know what's going on if it weren't for, obviously, the reporters going, who are doing the good work over there.

It's important to keep in mind the difference between a liberal critique of the press and a conservative critique of the press.

One recent example: the latest fight with conservative bloggers over "nonsense:"

"Warbloggers, all boosters of the doomed U.S. invasion, have been poring over the AP's dispatches, feverishly dissecting paragraphs in search of proof for their all-consuming conspiracy theory that biased American journalists, too cowardly to go get the bloody news in Iraq themselves, are relying on local news stringers who have obvious sympathies for insurgents and who actively "spread terrorist propaganda," according to right-wing blog Little Green Footballs. The result of the AP hoax? Gullible, or "average," Americans have been duped into believing there is a "civil war" raging in Baghdad today."

"According to the warbloggers, Iraqi insurgents like the AP; they have friendly contacts with the AP; and they use the AP as a conduit to advance their propaganda war. Indeed, insurgents badly want for the AP to broadcast images and write stories about bloodshed in order to create the illusion of chaos in Iraq."

"See, it's really the AP's fault we're losing the war."

Or perhaps it's Newsweek's....    

Pacifica radio host and producer Sonali Kolhatkar reminded us of 2005's Quran desecration incident at Guantanamo Bay, where Newsweek reported interrogators had placed the sacred Muslim text on toilets to unhinge their detainees. One holy book was said to have even been flushed.

While their report was vetted by a Pentagon official before publication (with no call to change the Quran abuse claims), after deadly riots broke out in eastern Afghanistan the Bush administration pushed down hard on Newsweek to retract the story.

They did.  

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, once the media's darling, warned reporters:

"People are dead, and that's unfortunate. ...People need to be very careful about what they say just as people need to be careful about what they do."

But Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was informed by the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan that the riots and demonstrations were due mainly to local politics and strife. So, in reality, the Newsweek article wasn't the spark that enflamed Afghan regions after all. Never mind, the Bush administration was only too happy to attack the media and order it to "bow down," as Kolhatkar characterized its eventual capitulation. [See SusanHu's diary for more]

The administration used the incident to remind the press: watch what you say.

Iraq vet Paul Rieckhoff delivered for the audience with his usual high-octane style. He opened his remarks by pointing to the celebrity-obsessional element of our media today:

"When I came home from Iraq in 2004, the biggest story in America was Janet Jackson's exposed breast. [laughter] That was the number one story when I got back. And it kind of shook me...was this really what America was talking about? Is this what America's paying attention to?"

"In many ways, things haven't really changed. ..."

"The past few weeks the biggest story has been Rosie and Donald Trump. And this is what dominates people's consciousness. More people talk about that around the water cooler than what's happening in Fallujah or Ramadi."

His biggest criticism with the media's coverage of our "wars of disconnect" is how little we are allowed to glimpse the true cost of war and how veterans' voices have been nearly frozen out. (That reality led him and other fellow returning vets in all 50 states to form IAVA in the first place.) He says things have improved on that front, but important Iraqi voices continue to be shut out of the coverage leaving Americans with less than a full picture of what's going on over there.

But Rieckhoff also defended the media against government attacks:

There was a lot of dialogue coming out of the White House attacking the media early-on saying, "You're only telling the bad news stories." And they were really attacking the messenger.

I've always said, if you want good news stories, go to Disneyland. [laughter] Don't go to Iraq...[applause]...because it's a war zone and there are bad things happening there. When the media explains and depicts, albeit flawed, what's happening over there, they shouldn't be attacked for that.

Yet, as we would learn later in the program, media of all forms is still being bullied and pushed around by the powers that be. More recently, those being intimidated are independent reporters and citizen journalists whose Constitutional First Amendement press protections are still being sorted out, and who have fewer resources and clout to protect and defend themselves with.

Helen Thomas received a standing ovation from the crowd as she began to speak, surely deserving of six decades of news reporting service to the public covering every president since JFK.

She spoke of the 90 journalists and interpreters who have died covering the Iraq War -- more killed than during World War II, a war in which 16 million troops were deployed. Thomas rattled off these figures right out of the gate, saying, "I like to cut to the chase."

I think the American press corps has lost its way.

Certainly national reporters who forgot their mission is to search for the truth and their purpose: to keep a constant spotlight on public officials to lessen the possibility of corruption and mistruths, as Justice Brandeis said. There's no reason the media played along for so long with the administration's shifting rationales. ...

Even now, some newspapers are still supporting a war undertaken under false pretenses. Even though they know the truth. In this disgraceful era, we've seen the government create a disinformation mill, pay reporters to write the 'good news' for Iraqi papers and television. Of course, the daily spin from the White House and Pentagon by public servants helped a lot and we simply recorded as stenographers.

One area that press should have protested and pushed back, Thomas said, was regarding the Bush administration's determination to keep the war hidden from our view by forbidding pictures to be taken of returning flag-draped coffins.

The Washington Post explained at the time:

Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets. To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases.

In March, on the eve of the Iraq war, a directive arrived from the Pentagon at U.S. military bases. "There will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Ramstein [Germany] airbase or Dover [Del.] base, to include interim stops," the Defense Department said, referring to the major ports for the returning remains.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said the military-wide policy actually dates from about November 2000 -- the last days of the Clinton administration -- but it apparently went unheeded and unenforced, as images of caskets returning from the Afghanistan war appeared on television broadcasts and in newspapers until early this year. Though Dover Air Force Base, which has the military's largest mortuary, has had restrictions for 12 years, others "may not have been familiar with the policy," the spokeswoman said. This year, "we've really tried to enforce it."

Thomas said it was left to one man -- a former CNN correspondent and current professor of journalism at Delaware University -- to sue the government under the Freedom of Information Act to get the ban lifted. "The profession took a bath," she said. Yet Thomas said, "I believe newspapers are more relevant than ever." But she called for more courageous reporters to come forward.

One did.

A freelance reporter, Sarah Olson, came forward later in the program to speak of the present dangers that exist for journalists trying to do just what Thomas has called for.

Her odyssey began last summer after conducting one hour-long interview and filing one report on the first Army officer to refuse his orders to Iraq, Lt. Ehren Watada. He had come to believe the war in Iraq was illegal and that it was his duty to refuse such orders. Asking to serve in Afghanistan instead, the Army refused his request.

Olson appeared on Democracy Now! earlier this month with Dahr Jamail, another independent journalist who has been placed on the prosection witness list, to explain how the government is increasingly using journalists to seemingly build their legal cases by having them testify against their sources:

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what it is the government is demanding that you do?

SARAH OLSON: The government has subpoenaed me to testify at the court-martial of Lieutenant Ehren Watada, as well as the pretrial hearing this Thursday and Friday. They have asked me to appear. They have asked me to take the stand and essentially verify my reporting. They want to have me say that what I reported is accurate.

The problem with that, as I see it, is that the Army is asking me to participate in the building of a case and the prosecution of political speech. I feel that that would threaten press freedom and chill dissenting voices and free speech, political speech in the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: And how did you learn that you were being required to go to this hearing and testify?

SARAH OLSON: Well, I was actually first notified that I was on the Army's witness list back in July, when the Associated Press and Reuters started emailing me. Later on, I was formally served with a subpoena just a couple weeks ago, and someone showed up at my house in Oakland several different times and served me with a subpoena to appear both, again, at the pretrial hearing, as well as the court-martial.

AMY GOODMAN: And that pretrial hearing is January 4th?

SARAH OLSON: It is. January 4th and 5th.

Following the broadcast of this segment of Democracy Now!, the Army backed-off its demands that Olson appear at the pre-trial hearing as a witness for the Army; she is still expected to appear at the February 5, 2007 court-martial trial.

This is what Olson told the crowd in Memphis:

It is not a reporter's job, it's not my job to testify against my own sources...[applause] particularly in situations with regard to political speech. When a reporter testifies in this way, you are eroding the very necessary separation between government and press. I think you threaten to turn journalists into the investigative arm of the government, which absolutely and fundamentally subverts the very notion of press freeom.

I also think you face a situation where speech in the Unites States is chilled, particularly dissenting speech. ...You're facing a situation where reporters themselves are not wanting to report on topics that are controversial or unpopular with the current administration.

I think everyone here can all agree that we need more debate in this country, not less. [applause] And I think that as a journalist it's my job, my duty to the public and their right to know, and not to the government.

If Olson refuses to testify at Watada's upcoming trial, she faces a felony charge of contempt of court and up to six months in prison. Yet she closed her remarks with the story of Josh Wolf, another independent journalist and videographer who has been jailed for some 150+ days.

On February 6, he will become the longest-jailed journalist in the history of our country. [His mother took the stage later as well to speak about his case. See the August San Francisco Chronicle editorial for one view on this case's importance; see the Free Josh wiki for action items.]

Sonali Kolhatkar says there's a difference between attacks on media institutions [corporations whose first priority is to make a profit] and attacks on independent journalists [whose first priority is often to inform the public of issues of import]:

When the institutions are attacked, somewhere up in the chain of command -- the CEO, the Board of Directors -- [someone] realizes, "We've got to toe the line. We've got to make sure we don't go under." Often, as in the Newsweek example that I cited, the establishment media realizes that, hey, they've got to stay afloat. They've got to toe the line if they want to stay in business.

But what happens to the independent journalists? What happens to the journalists who refuse to speak out against the people they've interviewed?

Olson was on the mark when she said:

The choice between my personal liberty and my integrity is not a choice that I or any other journalist  should have to make.

Contact Sarah Olson at www.FreePressWG.org.

[One note: My upcoming book, Moving a Nation to Care, includes a full chapter dealing with the issue of media, democracy, and the war.]