Ethics and Freedom

The Centre, under severe criticism for its plans to regulate the electronic media in the country, has allayed fears over the contents of the proposed Broadcast Bill, and said that the government is committed to press freedom and that the legislation is meant to facilitate and develop the content of broadcasting in an orderly manner. A STING THAT STILL HURTS SOME: Tehelka chief, Tarun Tejpal (right...

NEW YORK: The intra-mural press battle between The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal continued Tuesday with a few digs delivered by Pulitzer-winning Times' columnist Nicholas Kristof. The Journal editorial page had blasted the Times Friday for publishing its bank records surveillance scoop -- even thought the Journal published a similar story at the same time. It added a few gratuitous...

NEW YORK — Headline by headline, a trickle of news leaks on Iraq and the antiterror campaign has grown into a steady stream of revelations, and from Pennsylvania Avenue to Downing Street, Copenhagen to Canberra, governments are responding with pressure and prosecutions. The latest target is The New York Times. But the unfolding story begins as far back as 2003, when British weapons expert David...

The story that most aroused N&O readers in the past week has to do with the press and national security. When is it appropriate for newspapers to publish information that could jeopardize our common safety and well-being? The question arises from the disclosure in The New York Times and other national papers, and reported subsequently in The News & Observer, that the government is monitoring an...

THE Bush administration's unusually harsh attacks on The New York Times for exposing a secret banking-data surveillance program have turned a glaring spotlight on the paper's decision to publish the article. President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Republican legislators have singled out The Times in recent days for disclosing the counterterrorism program, even though The Los Angeles Times and...

WHEN government officials ask journalists to withhold information on national security grounds, they face a natural skepticism. Many reporters believe that the government routinely exaggerates the need for secrecy. They suspect that security officials try to snuff reporting that is merely embarrassing or at most politically troublesome. And most journalists are deeply reluctant to pass up a scoop...

MANY READERS have been sharply critical of our decision to publish an article Friday on the U.S. Treasury Department's program to secretly monitor worldwide money transfers in an effort to track terrorist financing. They have sent me sincere and powerful expressions of their disappointment in our newspaper, and they deserve an equally thoughtful and honest response. The decision to publish this...

The government's expenses on advertising have dropped from over 14.5 million euros in 2004 to three million euros in 2005, following the civil society's calls for transparency and equitable political publicity, according to a report by the Center for Independent Journalism titled "Political advertising - a year of transparency." According to the CJI report, in 2004 the civil society and daily...

Every passing week, it becomes more apparent that disgruntled leftists in the intelligence community and antiwar crusaders in the mainstream media, annealed in their disdain for the Bush administration, are undermining our ability to win the War on Terror. Their latest body blow to the war effort is the exposure, principally by the New York Times, of the Treasury Department’s top-secret program to...

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration yesterday to seek criminal charges against newspapers that reported on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists. Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) cited the New York Times in particular for publishing a report last week saying that the Treasury Department is working with the CIA to examine an...