Sarah Olson

Update, Sarah Olson as been dropped as a witness.

Sarah Olson and the

Struggle to Save Journalism

By John Nichols

American journalism is under assault. The Telecommunications Act of 1996, with its encouragement of media consolidation and homogenization, has provoked a marked decline in the diversity and quality of broadcast news. The latest round of print media mergers and acquisitions is putting newspaper writers out of work at an unprecedented rate. And the people who own the nation's communications combines are, for the most part, so risk averse and so thoroughly obsessed with their bottom lines that they are making it impossible for the serious reporters who remain to do their jobs. These are fundamental, structural and rapidly expanding threats.

Equally serious is the threat posed by a government that, when it is not seeking to deceive a credulous Washington press corps with carefully-woven spin, overtly threatens and punishes reporters who actually seek in these difficult times to practice the craft of journalism.

But the greatest of all threats comes when journalists fail to defend fellow reporters and editors who have come under direct attack.

When the Bush administration decided to ignore legitimate questions from veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas - with presidential press secretaries and their aides going out of their way to try and isolate and discredit her for failing to practice stenography to power - the remainder of the press corps was for the most part silent. And the power of the press, which the founders of the American experiment had intended to serve as a necessary check and balance upon executive excess, was further diminished.

Now comes another test.

Sarah Olson, a 31-year-old independent writer and radio producer from Oakland, California, finds herself in the targets of Army prosecutors. Those prosecutors are demanding that Olson help them build the case against 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, an officer who faces a court-martial trial for expressing opposition to the war in Iraq and for refusing to deploy with a unit being dispatched to that country.

Along with a reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Olson was in December sent a subpoena seeking testimony that would confirm the accuracy of anti-war statements attributed to Watada.

The quotes are not seriously in question; in fact, Lieutenant Watada has made similar statements in a number of public settings. The first commissioned officer in the U.S. armed forces to formally refuse deployment in George Bush's war, Lieutenant Watada has made it absolutely clear that he has lost confidence in the president as his commander-in-chief, that he believes the war lacks legal legitimacy and that he feels his participation in the conflict could make him a party to war crimes. This month, in remarks to a crowd at Seattle Central Community College, the lieutenant spoke at length about "the illegality of this war."

So why subpoena Sarah Olson?

Lieutenant Watada case is a difficult one for the Army prosecutors, and by extension for the commander-in-chief.

An Eagle Scout who joined the Army after finishing a degree at Hawaii Pacific University, Lieutenant Watada served so ably during a tour of duty in Korea that he was rated by his superior officers as "among the best" and "exemplary," and recommended for an early promotion. Lieutenant Watada has volunteered to serve in Afghanistan, where he believes that U.S. troops are participating in "an unambiguous war linked to the September 11 attacks." But he refuses to deploy to Iraq because, he explains, he believes that the U.S. presence in that country violates the Constitution, which requires that wars be declared by Congress, and the War Powers Act, which places limits on presidential war making. Lieutenant Watada also argues that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is in clear conflict with the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg Principles, which bar wars of aggression.

It appears that the prosecutors do not want to provide Watada with an open and fair forum in which to explain his arguments against the war. They are frightened by the prospect that an obviously courageous and patriotic soldier might, in response to questions about why he has refused to deploy to Iraq, make an articulate and convincing case against the legitimacy of an unpopular war.

That's publicity that the Bush administration does not want at a time when its war of whim has gone terribly awry. And it certainly won't help military recruitment.

So the military prosecutors are trying to get journalists to build the case against the lieutenant.

Olson is balking. The reporter is proud of her work, and she is not particularly concerned about confirming quotes - something that journalists frequently do. But Olson does not want to serve as a pawn in the prosecution's game.

"It's not a reporter's job to participate in the prosecution of her own sources,'' she explains. "When you force a journalist to participate, you run the risk of turning the journalist into an investigative tool of the state.''

There is no question that Olson is right.

The question is whether journalists will stand with her as she defends our craft.

Olson is asking reporters and editors to sign a letter objecting to the Army's decision to subpoena journalists to testify in the court-martial of Lt. Watada.

"It's a journalist's job to report the news, not to participate in government prosecutions. The press cannot function if it is used by the government to prosecute political speech, and hauling a journalist into a military court erodes the separation between government and press. Turning reporters into the investigative arm of the government subverts press freedoms and chills dissenting speech in the United States. The press must preserve its ability to cover all aspects of a debate, not just the perspectives popular with the current administration. We believe a journalist's duty is to the public and their right to know, not to the government," reads the statement, which is addressed to the prosecutors. "In the name of the cornerstone values this nation claims to uphold and for which the men and women in the military are fighting, we ask that you end to your insistence that journalists participate in the court-martial of Lt. Watada. We need more information, participation, and debate - inside and outside the military - not less. As the LA Times argued in its January 8th editorial: 'It's time for the Army to back off.'"

I am proud to add my name to the list of signers of a statement that is not merely a defense of Sarah Olson but a reassertion of the founding principle that a free press is the essential underpinning of democracy.

John Nichols, a veteran newspaper and magazine writer and editor, has written and spoken widely on the intentions of the founders who amended the Constitution to protect freedom of the press. The keynote speaker at the 2OO4 Congress of the International Federation of Journalists, he is a cofounder of Free Press, the media reform movement, and the co-author with Robert W. McChesney of three books on media and democracy.