By Lisa Allen-Agostini
Senior features writer, Trinidad Guardian
Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago

One of the friends I have made in Washington calls me "Scoop." He teases me constantly about the quality of the journalism industry by making up stories he thinks I should be working on. These invariably sound like something ripped from the headlines of the less reputable papers in this country's media, things along the lines of "Man swallows fly; sues fly's family." We joke about how far those papers will go to sell copies but underlying the humor is a kind of wonder about the excesses of the press.

By no means are these excesses limited to the U.S. press, of course, but I think the press here is allowed a rambunctious freedom that few other places enjoy. Working for The Washington Post, I have heard the war stories about the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal and the pivotal role this paper played in bringing those stories to the people. There's no doubt the free press has a role to play; for an informed public is one that theoretically has better tools to make decisions about the path it will take, whom it will put into power and what policies those in power should implement for the good of the people. Yet there are times I think the press does go too far.

One of the first stories I was assigned at The Post was an odd human interest tale about a fragment of rock that had been returned to the Greek Embassy by a man who said his father had stolen it years before from the Parthenon. We all assumed his father had died. It turned out the father and son were estranged and the return of the rock was more an act of revenge than one of restitution. I was asked by my editor not only to unearth the origins of the rock and the tale of its repatriation, but also to find out the roots of the estrangement between the father and son. Like all family squabbles it was complex and full of claims and counterclaims too dense to wade through in one casual foray. I ended up having to ask all kinds of questions of the family, questions which I felt were none of my business and certainly none of the business of the millions of readers of the paper. This was a story I strongly opposed; what could anyone possibly learn by digging into the life stories of these two men? How is reading about bad blood between a father and his son in the public interest? Neither was a public figure and the rock wasn't that significant a find. It was simply, in my opinion, a story of prurient interest.

In my home country, the freedom of the press is limited by factors including those alluded to in the paragraph above: the subject must be a public figure; the story must be true; and the information divulged must be in the public interest. It's more complex than that but in deciding whether to pursue a story or not those are the first things a reporter and editor have to consider. I don't always feel that those guidelines are observed by the U.S. press, particularly in reporting about celebrities such as Kevin Costner in the article cited as an example of the freedom of the press.

There is also the question of national security. I think the press should be free to report things that concern the people; and that includes military issues. With freedom ought to come responsibility, too; is it responsible for the press to publish the location and strength of the armies now in Afghanistan, for instance? I have heard arguments from very reasonable people who think saying what troops are where and what firepower they have, is tantamount to saying: Here I am, come and get me; bring friends.

I don't necessarily agree with that argument but I think it is worth considering. Does the press deserve the right to publish information that could tip the scales in war in favor of the other side? If the old saying—to be forewarned is to be forearmed—is true, is the U.S. media arming the country's opponents when it writes stories about the strength and position of its country's forces?

You wouldn't get that kind of information in the Trinidad and Tobago press, primarily because government control over the information given to the media is tighter. I'm not sure the press would go ahead and publish it, even if it were available.

Press freedom in my home country is a right we take for granted, but there is certainly not freedom of the press there the way it's understood in the United States. The prime minister has had a running battle with the media, with him making barely veiled threats and random accusations of libel and inaccuracy. Reporters and editors soldier on, but it's hard to get information when your sources feel they'll lose their jobs if they talk to the press, and when official information is thin on the ground.

There is much to be thankful for: we aren't physically threatened (except in one memorable case when reporters were pelted with cups and such at a political rally) and our lives aren't in danger. We aren't locked up when we print information the government doesn't want out. (Although there are a couple of exceptions here, too: An editor and a reporter were jailed briefly during a big trial a few years ago because they defied a muzzling order imposed by the court.)

We are pressured more by business than government. It's not unusual for a paper to decide against running a story because the story would put a big advertiser in a bad light. My home paper has lost much of its credibility because it's prohibited from breaking bad news about any of the other subsidiary companies in the group (which includes several influential companies in diverse fields, not just media). It's an argument that's hard to disagree with, posed by the detractors: At times we are the P.R. newsletter for the Ansa-McAl group of companies, the Trinidad Guardian's parent company. In a small country it must be inevitable to face those pressures, I suppose, but there needs to be a line drawn between church and state as there is in the best papers in the United States.

One of the last stories I worked on for The Post was a posthumous profile of Thomas Morris, Jr., one of two D.C. postal workers who was killed by anthrax. His wife said he was a very private person and to honor his wishes she wouldn't talk to the media about him at all. My assignment therefore entailed going around her, the person closest to him, to get any information about his life. Should I have respected his wish for privacy? Perhaps, but in a case such as this, the press has to respond to the public's desire for information about a man who died from a dreaded disease as a result of terrorism. This is what a free press should be able to do, notwithstanding a family's need for privacy. Once what was reported was fact and not fancy, the press has done a good job.