US networks are getting there. I think the difference between here and there is because of prominence of public broadcasting in the UK and Canadian systems, both responsible to parliament instead of commercial or partisan political interests. I was involved directly in two separate incidents where the Conservative party in power and the military tried to impose their will on the public CBC.
The military first, since you mentioned the Official Secrets Act. Our military is as stupid as everywhere at times. In a one-hour documentary on integration of the armed forces, I reported with graphic animation how our underwater anti-submarine listening was linked to US missile systems. The admirals wanted me charged with sedition, the firing squad, the whole damned thing because they said Washington would blame Canada for spilling military secrets.
Our Chief of Staff, AVM Sharp, agreed that was ignorance supreme and was pleased I didn't make an issue of it. The "secret" information was obtained by me personally at the Pentagon in the Chief of Staff's war room and---get ready for it---it had been published in an American electronics magazine. Little wonder reporters everywhere are taught never to defer to the military. As for UK, Mark Danner's reporting of the "secret" Downing Street papers on Iraq was untouchable.
Our prime minister Diefenbaker didn't like JFK and feelings were reciprocated. During the Cuban missile crisis, my newsroom ordered clearance of normal programming to carry JFK's speech to the nation. Ottawa brass demurred, said for all it knew JFK might be announcing "a bond drive," and its persistence over our objections raised concern over CBC sacrosanct insulation from partisan politics.
Orders are orders, however, but CBC management was told it would "read about it in the (Toronto) Star bulldog (9p edition)." That stopped the nonsense. The point here is responsible news organizations take guff from no one. The Pentagon once tried to get CBS to fire Morley Safer---my colleague in the same documentary unit here---for his reporting of Marines firing up hooches in their hearts and minds program in Vietnam.
The Pentagon sleuths---actually they were sent off to Toronto, Morley's hometown, from the Under Secretary's office---reported to CBS vice-president Fred Friendly that they suspected from their investigation Morley was a Viet Cong sympathizer and a Communist Jew. (The military has prevaricated under oath with worse results here.) Friendly, with greater sense of responsibility to his country than the military in this instance, told the creeps to get lost.
As for US fuming and impotent to charge reporters in these matters, no, no: there's publication by the New York Times and Washington Post of Daniel Ellsberg's celebrated then-classified Pentagon Papers which the United States (Nixon) tried to stop by taking it to the Supreme Court. The Court ruled that the First Amendment came first, freedom of the press trumped executive authority, that the United States would suffer from no irreparable damage or danger from their publication.
And so it goes, said Vonnegut, who was a POW with my Dad in Stalag Luft III.
Last edited by King Brown; 01/19/09 12:49 PM.
