McClatchy is offering a very worth reading commentary, adapted from a speech recently given by The Miami Herald‘s Carol Rosenberg on what it’s like to do journalism from the country’s most high profile detention center
The short answer from the dean of the Guantanamo press corps? “It’s hard.”
An excerpt:
I go to Guantanamo to write about a place the government intentionally chose to be outside the rule of law. The Supreme Court decided otherwise.
It’s a place the Pentagon likes to call the most transparent detention center on Earth. Hundreds of reporters have visited there, they say, since the first al Qaida suspects arrived eight years ago.
They skip the part about how few go back more than once — stymied by the sheer frustration at the rules, the hoops, the time, and the costs of doing basic journalism. Being a court reporter. Writing a feature story. Conducting an interview.
Greg Marx recently wrote for CJR about McClatchy and other news organizations’ joint effort to push for expand access and reporters’ freedom to report at Guantanamo.
Clint Hendler is the managing editor of Mother Jones, and a former deputy editor of CJR.