[governance] Tangential - Transcribing Bradley Manning’s Trial: Group Tries to Ensure Transparency

[Riaz K Tayob]

The shocking treatment of Manning continues, and the trial is dogged 
with all sorts of basic rights problems... one would have thought that 
strict compliance with all laws would be the case, to ensure a 
prosecution... but with a judge already giving time off an potential 
sentence due to bad State behaviour, the matter is settled... forgetting 
that any "compensation" would have to be proportional to the acts and 
findings on the acts committed... seems like the 'court' has made up its 
mind if it can make such a ruling... such legal idiocy... can there ever 
be a fair trial for someone subject to torture or cruel inhumane and 
degrading punishment? What surprises me is that this is an American...


*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*
May 9, 2013
2:32 PM

	

*CONTACT: Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) <http://www.accuracy.org>*

Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167


    Transcribing Bradley Manning’s Trial: Group Tries to Ensure Transparency

WASHINGTON - May 9 - TREVOR TIMM, trevor at pressfreedomfoundation.org 
<mailto:%20trevor%20at%20pressfreedomfoundation.org>, @TrevorTimm 
<https://twitter.com/TrevorTimm>
RAINEY REITMAN, rainey at pressfreedomfoundation.org 
<mailto:rainey%20at%20pressfreedomfoundation.org>, @RaineyReitman 
<https://twitter.com/RaineyReitman>
Timm is co-founder and executive director of the Freedom of the Press 
Foundation <https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/>; Reitman is co-founder 
and chief operations officer of the organization.

The group just released a statement 
<https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2013/05/freedom-press-foundation-crowd-funding-court-reporter-transcribe-bradley-manning> 
about their campaign to ensure a transcript for the trial of Bradley 
Manning, scheduled to begin June 3: “As has been documented by many 
media organizations, the pre-trial hearings of Bradley Manning have been 
hampered by heavy-handed government secrecy. Government briefs are not 
released to the public, written rulings are rarely given to journalists, 
and most importantly, there is no official transcript of the 
proceedings. This has denied the public of opportunities for a range of 
accurate, timely, and in-depth reporting on the trial.

“The Center for Constitutional Rights filed a First Amendment lawsuit on 
behalf of a variety of news organizations and journalists seeking timely 
access to court documents, but the military court of appeals ruled in 
favor of continued secrecy.

“As PBS recounted recently, ‘Because there is no official court record, 
the public is entirely dependent on the accounts of the reporters 
on-scene — the few who can fit into the courtroom making notes longhand, 
or the rest who report from the media center, typing down words and 
details frantically and hoping they don’t make any mistakes.’

“This campaign aims to fully fund a court stenographer, who will be 
credentialed with a media organization and attend the trial in the 
court’s media room. The court stenographer will produce a transcript of 
the trial, and as soon as the transcripts are available, the Freedom of 
the Press Foundation will post them online for journalists and the public.

“‘Journalists covering Manning’s case face many Kafkaesque obstacles, 
but nothing is more punitive than the government’s refusal to provide a 
timely and accurate transcript. By funding a court stenographer, we hope 
to help journalists in their effort to report on the trial,’ said Laura 
Poitras, a documentary filmmaker who serves on the board of directors of 
Freedom of the Press Foundation and attended Manning’s Article 32 hearing.”

Reitman also just wrote the piece “SF Pride Board Denies Public Access 
to Public Hearing 
<http://www.bradleymanning.org/featured/sf-pride-board-denies-public-access-to-public-hearing>” 
about SF Pride Board’s “recent decision to rescind Bradley Manning as a 
grand marshal from the upcoming parade.”

###

A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy 
<http://www.accuracy.org> (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to 
bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few 
major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream 
media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and 
grassroots activists.

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