FoxNews.com
5/17/2010
President Obama signed a law Monday morning hailed as a hammer against countries that stifle press freedoms — though the law, a tribute to murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, does not entail any enforcement.
The Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act would require the State Department to compile a list of nations where press freedoms are violated in its annual Human Rights Practices report. But the bill, championed by Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Mike Pence, R-Ind., and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., leans on a mostly name-and-shame strategy.
It would require the State Department to identify countries where there are press freedom violations — ranging from imprisonment to censorship to physical attacks — and break out countries where “particularly severe violations” occur. For those countries, the State Department would state whether the governments allow or support the violations and what the governments are doing to reverse the trend.
Though the exercise pretty much stops there, co-sponsors say it’s a big step forward in spotlighting bad behavior. They cite Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was killed in Pakistan by kidnappers shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, as the inspiration.
“With this bill we pay tribute to Daniel’s life and his work by shedding a bright light on this repression, and hope to prevent this sort of tragedy from ever happening again,” Dodd said in a written statement after the bill unanimously passed the Senate two weeks ago.
Read the rest at FoxNews.com
