Bad Time for Reporters

We have so few journalists left doing investigative reporting, and apparently that's just the way that the government likes it. They're getting so belligerent to anyone trying to do their job as the fourth estate that they're even going after dead people:

The F.B.I. is seeking to go through the files of the late newspaper columnist Jack Anderson to remove classified material he may have accumulated in four decades of muckraking Washington journalism.

Mr. Anderson's family has refused to allow a search of 188 boxes, the files of a well-known reporter who had long feuded with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and had exposed plans by the Central Intelligence Agency to kill Fidel Castro, the machinations of the Iran-contra affair and the misdemeanors of generations of congressmen.

Mr. Anderson's son Kevin said that to allow government agents to rifle through the papers would betray his father's principles and intimidate other journalists, and that family members were willing to go to jail to protect the collection.

"It's my father's legacy," said Kevin N. Anderson, a Salt Lake City lawyer and one of the columnist's nine children. "The government has always and continues to this day to abuse the secrecy stamp. My father's view was that the public is the employer of these government employees and has the right to know what they're up to."

It's cowardly for the FBI to wait until Anderson's death to go after him, essentially pestering his 79 year-old widow. Anderson was a brilliant journalist who spoke truth to power and never let our leaders off the hook.

This is essentially an extension of the criminalization of journalism that we've seen from this Administration for a while now. Several 2006 Pulitzer Prize winners are under investigation for allegedly "harming national security" by disclosing government malfeasance. The National Archives tried to pull back thousands of historical documents after the fact last month, in what can be assumed as an attempt to rewrite history. And the Smithsonian Museum has entered into an exclusive deal with Showtime, basically cutting off archival footage to documentarians who aren't working for Showtime.

Over and over again we see the nation's secrets being walled off, leaving the public ignorant as to what is being done in their name. It's bad enough that these guys are trying to rewrite history in front of our faces. Now they're trying to rewrite the past, and punish anyone trying to speak the truth about the present.