Reporters Booted Off Guantanamo
But not because of anything they wrote, the Pentagon swears. It's just that the tribunal they were supposed to be covering was cancelled in the suicide aftermath, and also it's a matter of elementary fairness--other press outlets are currently also barred from direct camp access, so…
From the Editor and Publisher account:
In the aftermath of the three suicides at the notorious Guantanamo prison facility in Cuba last Saturday, reporters with the Los Angeles Times and the Miami Herald were ordered by the office of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to leave the island today.
A third reporter and a photographer with the Charlotte Observer were given the option of staying until Saturday but, E&P has learned, were told that their access to the prison camp was now denied.
……A Pentagon spokesman confirmed the order to leave the island this morning, but told E&P it was unrelated to the stories produced by the journalists, while admitting that Gordon's [of the Charlotte Observer] piece had caused "controversy." He asserted that the move was related to other media outlets threatening to sue if they were not allowed in.
…….
[Miami Herald reporter Carol] Rosenberg revealed that the admiral in charge of the overall base had given them permission to stay but the Pentagon spokesman told E&P that Rumsfeld's office was overruling that idea.
Well, what we don't know won't hurt us. Or at least it won't hurt the Pentagon. Until later when we do know it. I'm sure this has all been thought through, and apparently at the very highest levels.
An example of the Charlotte Observer's apparently controversial coverage of Gitmo by the now-barred Michael Gordon.
