If FOIA Request Is Successful, AP Says It Will Decide Which OBL Pictures the Public Will See
Just when you consider cutting the Associated Press a break for doing something right, they pull this. Most people know that in the interest of “not spiking the football,” the Obama administration has decided that it will not release photos of Osama bin Laden's dead body. Shortly after the decision was announced, AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request for said photos. According to John Hudson at the Atlantic (HT to Jim Taranto at the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web), the AP's Michael Oreskes claims that “This information is important for the historical record” and “It's our job as journalists to seek this material.” So far, so good. But you just knew they'd figure out a way to potentially ruin it. Here's Oreskes as quoted by Hudson: “We're not deciding in advance to publish this material,” he pledged. “We would like our journalists, who are working very hard, to see this material and then we'll decide what's publishable and what's not publishable based on the possibly (sic) that it's inflammatory.” Really? The WSJ's Taranto pegs this preemptive censorship correctly (italics are in original): Oreskes is trying to have it both ways, isn't he? Like the government, he is willing in principle to withhold the photos from the public . He faults the government only for withholding them from journalists . “We'll decide,” he says. But what gives the AP that right? Who elected Michael Oreskes?
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on May 10, 2011. Filed under