John Cusack wonders if the US attorney general will guarantee press freedom

Sep 18, 2013 13:50 GMT  ·  By

Questions about press freedom have been asked constantly for the past three months, ever since the NSA reporting began based on highly classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

While the United States offers journalists a lot more rights than other countries, there have been several incidents over the past weeks that make everyone wonder exactly how much protection these individuals have.

One of them is the detaining of David Miranda by British authorities, while another is the demand from the GCHQ and the British government to get The Guardian to hand over the hard drives containing the leaked documents or destroy the devices.

While all this was done across the pond from the US, the American authorities were informed on both occasions and didn’t bother lifting a finger to help.

The same concerns over the freedom of the press and of speech is expressed by actor and director John Cusack in an article published by The Guardian. Cusack has published articles in The Huffington Post in the past and is known as a vocal public activist.

Alongside Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, two journalists that have reported on the NSA scandal, as well as Daniel Ellsberg, the famous whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers, Cusack is one of the directors on the board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which was founded in 2012.

Cusack’s concerns lie with the stance the US Attorney General, Eric Holder, will take on the matter. A few months ago, he vowed that as long as he holds his position, the Department of Justice will not prosecute any reporter for doing his or her job.

However, under the current circumstances, with the fierce stance taken by the country’s officials against whistleblowers, are journalists guaranteed the freedom to publish information even if it is based on documents that are considered to be top-secret?