CBS To Appeal Military Court Ruling On Haditha Interview

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
June 27, 2008
Pg. C2
By Brian Stelter
A First Amendment case has escalated between CBS News and a military court over a “60 Minutes” report about an attack at Haditha, Iraq.
The network is seeking to prevent the government from reviewing the unbroadcast parts of an interview with an officer who is being prosecuted over the incident.
Last Friday, the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the government should be allowed to view the interview with Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, who faces charges including voluntary manslaughter in the deaths of Iraqi civilians at Haditha in November 2005.
A spokeswoman for CBS said on Wednesday that the network was “planning to pursue an appeal” of the military court’s decision. The next highest court is an appeals court representing all the armed forces.
In February, the government issued a subpoena for a videotape of the “60 Minutes” interview, portions of which were broadcast in March 2007. Government lawyers are trying to assess whether Sergeant Wuterich said anything in the parts of the interview that were not broadcast that would be pertinent to their case. CBS declined to share its news-gathering material and called the request “unreasonable and oppressive.”
In February, siding with CBS, a military judge quashed the subpoena, but the Court of Criminal Appeals ruled last week that the judge had been wrong to do so. The appeals court directed the judge to conduct “additional fact-finding,” including a private review of the videotape, to determine if the parts of the interview that were not broadcast were “relevant and necessary” to the sergeant’s prosecution.
Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment lawyer, said that CBS and other news organizations had fought similar government assertions in the past.
“Broadcasters receive a significant number of subpoenas seeking their interviews, their outtakes, and sometimes their confidential sources,” Mr. Abrams said.
 
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