"I'm here to tell you what it's like to be a reporter at Guantanamo. It's hard."

The rules for reporters at Guantánamo Bay change daily. But one stays constant: you can only do your job if there's a member of the military within earshot. From a McClatchy newspaper group commentary by Carol Rosenberg:

It's a place where you can go to court only in the custody of a military public affairs officer. Inside, if there's only one escort -- this happened recently -- and somebody has to go to the bathroom, every reporter has to leave court, too. It's a place where a soldier stands over your shoulder, looks in your viewfinder and says 'Don't take that picture, I'll delete it.'

This happened earlier in July. The government censor stands in front of a No Photography sign and says, "New policy, the sign and scene behind are now OK. Have at it." You take your camera to a shed for a security review a few minutes later and a sergeant says, "Um, 'No Photography' signs are forbidden." "They just told us it was OK," I say. "For real?" he asks. "For real," I reply. He deletes it anyway. There was a sliver of concrete in the frame. The fringes of a bunker you're not allowed to see.

And it's a place where the Pentagon believes it can tell you not to include in your story the name of a man who outed himself in a newspaper interview in 2008 to clear his name.

"Commentary: For reporters, the rules at Guantanamo change daily" [mcclatchydc.com]

Image: "Guantanamo Bay," a CC-licensed photo by Kevin Dooley.

• [Anonymous]

  It seems foolish to complain about a farce that you willingly participate in.

• [Anonymous]

  I can’t believe nobody has posted a comment saying “we have always been at war with Eurasia” yet. Get on the case, people!

• [Anonymous]

  To those who attacking reporters for participating: would you rather there be no journalists there at all? The reporters are just trying to do their job. The Us Military is, apparently, afraid to le them.

• [Anonymous]

  I thought President Obama promised to close Gitmo during his first year in office?

• [Patrick Dodds]

  Pointless, I know, but some words and phrases spring to mind:
  Gulag.
  Torture.
  Dictatorship.
  Detention without trial.
  Losing the moral high ground.

  • [Deidzoeb]

    The word that comes to my mind is “minder,” usually a government official assigned to steer reporters towards acceptable stories and away from unacceptable ones; a one-on-one censor. Maybe it’s a word that only applies when US journalists are talking about other countries, like “torture”.

    • [Deidzoeb]

      Correction: “minder” did appear in the full text of the article. Sorry I didn’t click through and read it before commenting.

• [Shay Guy]

  So is this more Catch-22 or Paranoia?

• [bkad]

  I don’t doubt that the military is excruciatingly careful about PR; that doesn’t mean that is the primary purpose of a minder. Like I said, reviewing photography taken on bases isn’t unusual, and neither is assigning outsiders a one-on-one escort, especially if there’s anything with a ‘Secret’ or even an “FOUO’ label on it in the vicinity.

  Sheesh, I can’t believe I’m defending them. That’s not my intent. I agree lack of access is a problem. But why do we have to assume the worst possible motivation for everything anyone in one of Boingboing’s “disliked groups” does? We need to be skeptical, but being cynical about everything is as ridiculous as thinking everything is honey and roses.

  • [Anonymous]

    Did you read the same article I read? Assuming aside, the article depicts many abusive actions towards reporters. The most damning thing is that the abuses are recent developments.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    If I were assigning blame for Guantanamo, the military wouldn’t be my target. Military leadership, on the whole, has tried to restrain the civilian administration from committing atrocities in the last decade.

    • [Anonymous]

      What?

      Wait… whet?

      OIC, the military wants to kill people itself, instead of letting foreign governments or private contractors do it.

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  Did we outsource Gitmo to the PRC? This sounds just like descriptions of journalists’ factory visits in China.

• [millrick]

  sorry…
  absolutely no sympathy for the reporters of gitmo
  the reporters can leave whenever they like

• [jackdavinci]

  If I’ve learned nothing else from Boing Boing, it’s that various official people want to delete my photos. I know there are tech savvy people here so I challenge you: create or modify a camera such that it looks and acts like a normal digital camera, and deleting photos will delete the files off the memory card, but unbeknownst to others, it contains a secret hidden memory card that retains every file, including those deleted from the main dummy memory card…

• [Rayonic]

  Do other countries let journalists into their military detention centers at all? Not defending these practices, but it’d be nice to have a little context once in a while.

  • [Mark Gritter]

    @Rayonic: it’s not just the detention center. It’s also the courtroom. The author specifically says he’s covered spy trials and court martials (courts martial?), but never had to deal with the same level of arbitrary censorship and obfuscation.

  • [editjunk]

    Being last in a race to the bottom doesn’t mean you are winning, fool.

• [bkad]

  ‘No photographs allowed’, and ‘every photograph must be reviewed and approved / deleted by military personnel’ is standard practice on many US installations, even ones in suburban New Jersey. Such approvals are time consuming and somewhat arbitrary. So that part of the story isn’t unique — it’s the location and the situation that is.

  Rather than being another story about teh evil military, this may be more a story about their bureaucratic inflexibility and slowness to adapt. After the scandal in Abu Grahib, the military should have taken extra steps to open itself to journalists. But they are probably so encumbered they couldn’t even if they wanted to.

• [Trotsky]

  Should Wikileaks join the press corps?

  That article is your answer.

• [Trotsky]

  Reporters make deal with Devil.

  Devil enforces deal.

  Reporters shocked.

  Film at 11.

  Or not.

• [Anonymous]

  The only reason they let “reporters” in at all is so the press can’t say “they won’t let reporters in.”

  People stuck in this position should understand what they’re doing is not reporting. It’s an acting job, where you pretend to be the media and the military pretends to defend democracy.

  See this X on the floor? Walk in, stand here, point the camera over there and “take some pictures.” The director will tell you what to say if you forget.

• [Trotsky]

  Please also note that we are talking about “reporters” at Gitmo and not journalists. Why?

  Journalists are not allowed at Gitmo.

• [Anonymous]

  Doesn’t the pentagon know its really easy to undelete files with the right disk recovery software? You would think if it was important enough to censor they would at least do a thorough job…

• [highlyverbal]

  You know what is ALSO hard at gitmo? Being a prisoner. I bet a lot of prisoners would offer to trade places with the reporters. If this were a karmically ideal world, some very good things would happen to the prisoners. The reporters, not so much.