Interesting. Back to you, Ernest.

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From: TOTNMAIL@npr.org Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 18:24:54 -0400 To: HEDGES@INFOPEACE.COM Your "evidence" of NPR collusion and stifling of the news would be most disturbing, except for the fact that I have discussed roving wiretaps on

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air, explained the manner in which they were being rammed through with

Mr. Suarez, Ah ... I see where the misunderstandings are ... I am listening to the program on "The Budget Deal", which is the hour most likely to have any mention of the roving wiretap provision. On-the-air transcripts or not, however, I think you still miss the central point. The issue is that most major news outlets did NOT report on HOW this provision was rammed through Congress. I did not specifically accuse YOU of not reporting, which is probably why you are so defensive. Certainly, the Market Place show reported this, and so did the San Jose Mercury, but not New York Times. ABCNEWS only said that something was passed to help law enforcement, as if anything passed to help law enforcement is necessarily a good thing. The issue is not whether the issue of roving wire taps got any light of day. The issue is that the process of the roving wire taps being rammed through Congress did NOT get the light of day, specifically because the FBI lobbyists did this at the last minute to get it hidden in all the noise of the frantic 11th hour budget deals ... which is why I thought the topic was most appropriate to the discussion of relevant news today. I did not claim to have a solution to the problem of too much noise to valuable news ratio. However, some insight from someone like you, Ray, could have been a good discussion and education for all of us concerned with the FBI's legislative tricks. I would have also brought up the lack of reporting on the EU's concerns about US/UK mass wire tapping. It's clear that the NSA does not want this topic discussed, and in fact, had pressured the EU to not bring up the topic. Wired magazine reported this within the last week, but S J Mercury had nothing on it, nor the N Y Times, etc ... Ray, please do not think I am accusing YOU of censoring the wire tap topic. What I am concerned about is the news media's role in not shining a bright lights on these topics, and that is a very serious issue. Ern -----Original Message----- From: Mark Hedges <hedges@infonex.com> Date: Thursday, October 22, 1998 3:29 PM Subject: Re: Censored news topic censored ... the little

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debate, and talked about how it was a departure from years of precedence regarding warrants and court permission. I have the on-air transcript, you have the hearsay of a caller who is disappointed because he didn't get on the air.

Ray Suarez

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This is most distressing. I was one of the very first callers to your Talk of the Nation show today whose topic was relevant news reporting in the US. My topic was the lack of reporting on the FBI's last minute sneak of the roving wire tap proposal into the intelligence budget bill. I wanted Ray to talk about the editorial process and how these things get dropped on the floor as this item is extremely important to our democracy because it is an agency charged with protecting our Constitutional rights (the FBI) who is deliberately circumventing the democratic legislative process to pass a law which was sounded defeated two years ago in open debate.

Ironically, my topic was censored, and I waited an hour, while other people wanted to discuss things like how they can vent about their divorce difficulties through the Monica Lewinsky scandal, only to be dropped in the end.

Would any of the NPR staff or Mr. Suarez would like to explain just what happened here?

Ern