9/11's free speech casualties

9/11'S FREE SPEECH CASUALTIES
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Pat Morrison]
[Commentary] A look at the cases of journalists Dan Guthrie and Tom Gutting. In the days after 9/11, then-White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer took his own blue pencil to the 1st Amendment when he warned that Americans "need to watch what they say." Guthrie and Gutting wrote commentaries questioning President Bush's behavior in the hours after the 9/11 plane crashes -- and then were fired from their small-town papers. And the reaction didn't stop with the men's firings. An Alaskan fisherman professed a wish to use Guthrie for crab bait. In Texas, Gutting became, as the more colorful threats went, "a man who needed killin'."
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-morrison19apr19,1...
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